untenable theory as that proposed by some imaginative writers, that the
Freemasonry of the patriarchs was in its organization, its ritual, or its
symbolism, like the system which now exists. We know not indeed, that it
had a ritual, or even a symbolism. I am inclined to think that it was made
up of abstract propositions, derived from antediluvian traditions. Dr.
Oliver thinks it probable that there were a few symbols among these
Primitive and Pure Freemasons, and he enumerates among them the serpent,
the triangle, and the point within a circle; but I can find no authority
for the supposition, nor do I think it fair to claim for the order more
than it is fairly entitled to, nor more than it can be fairly proved to
possess. When Anderson calls Moses a Grand Master, Joshua his Deputy, and
Aholiab and Bezaleel Grand Wardens, the expression is to be looked upon
simply as a _facon de parler_, a mode of speech entirely figurative in its
character, and by no means intended to convey the idea which is
entertained in respect to officers of that character in the present
system. It would, undoubtedly, however, have been better that such
language should not have been used.

All that can be claimed for the system of Primitive Freemasonry, as
practised by the patriarchs, is, that it embraced and taught the two great
dogmas of Freemasonry, namely, the unity of God, and the immortality of
the soul. It may be, and indeed it is highly probable, that there was a
secret doctrine, and that this doctrine was not indiscriminately
communicated. We know that Moses, who was necessarily the recipient of the
knowledge of his predecessors, did not publicly teach the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. But there was among the Jews an oral or secret
law which was never committed to writing until after the captivity; and
this law, I suppose, may have contained the recognition of those dogmas of
the Primitive Freemasonry.

Briefly, then, this system of Primitive Freemasonry,--without ritual or
symbolism, that has come down to us, at least,--consisting solely of
traditionary legends, teaching only the two great truths already alluded
to, and being wholly speculative in its character, without the slightest
infusion of an operative element, was regularly transmitted through the
Jewish line of patriarchs, priests, and kings, without alteration,
increase, or diminution, to the time of Solomon, and the building of the
temple at Jerusalem.

Leaving it, then, to pursue this even course of descent, let us refer once
more to that other line of religious history, the one passing through the
idolatrous and polytheistic nations of antiquity, and trace from it the
regular rise and progress of another division of the masonic institution,
which, by way of distinction, has been called the _Spurious Freemasonry of
Antiquity_.





IV.

The Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity.



In the vast but barren desert of polytheism--dark and dreary as were its
gloomy domains--there were still, however, to be found some few oases of
truth. The philosophers and sages of antiquity had, in the course of their
learned researches, aided by the light of nature, discovered something of
those inestimable truths in relation to God and a future state which their
patriarchal contemporaries had received as a revelation made to their
common ancestry before the flood, and which had been retained and
promulgated after that event by Noah.

They were, with these dim but still purifying perceptions, unwilling to
degrade the majesty of the First Great Cause by sharing his attributes
with a Zeus and a Hera in Greece, a Jupiter and a Juno in Rome, an Osiris
and an Isis in Egypt; and they did not believe that the thinking, feeling,
reasoning soul, the guest and companion of the body, would, at the hour of
that body's dissolution, be consigned, with it, to total annihilation.

Hence, in the earliest ages after the era of the dispersion, there were
some among the heathen who believed in the unity of God and the
immortality of the soul. But these doctrines they durst not publicly
teach. The minds of the people, grovelling in superstition, and devoted,
as St. Paul testifies of the Athenians, to the worship of unknown gods,
were not prepared for the philosophic teachings of a pure theology. It
was, indeed, an axiom unhesitatingly enunciated and frequently repeated by
their writers, that "there are many truths with which it is useless for
the people to be made acquainted, and many fables which it is not
expedient that they should know to be false." [6] Such is the language of
Varro, as preserved by St. Augustine; and Strabo, another of their
writers, exclaims, "It is not possible for a philosopher to conduct a
multitude of women and ignorant people by a method of reasoning, and thus
to invite them to piety, holiness, and faith; but the philosopher must
also make use of superstition, and not omit the invention of fables and
the performance of wonders." [7]

While, therefore, in those early ages of the world, we find the masses
grovelling in the intellectual debasement of a polytheistic and idolatrous
religion, with no support for the present, no hope for the future,--living
without the knowledge of a supreme and superintending Providence, and
dying without the expectation of a blissful immortality,--we shall at the
same time find ample testimony that these consoling doctrines were
secretly believed by the philosophers and their disciples.

But though believed, they were not publicly taught. They were heresies
which it would have been impolitic and dangerous to have broached to the
public ear; they were truths which might have led to a contempt of the