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On Freemasonry. The Spurious Freemasonry Of Ancient Times,
the Deluge began . The whole tenor of these bodies thus preserved , clearly pointing forth the month of May . Nor have I ever met with so much as one single plant , or body , which is peculiar to any other season of the year . " Usher and others have repudiated the above doctrine , and affirm that the work of creation commenced on Sunday
, 23 d October . But the testimony of the fathers , Ambrose , Eusebius , Athanasius , as well as that of Bede and Theodoret , goes to establish the ancient belief ; and it is corroborated by Luther , and many of our old divines . Augustine , quoting Josephus , says , " God notified the spring , in which all things bloom and blossom , to be an annual memorial of
the world ' s creation . " Bede asserts , that it was determined at a Synod holden in Palestine , by Theophilus , Bishop of Cesarea , that the creation took place in the spring . By consent of all these authorities , it is conjectured that the fourth day of the creation , viz ., the day on which the stars and lanets belonging to our system were called into
exp istence , was April 27 ; ancl that the sun was placed in the fourth degree of Taurus ; which appears to be a very ancient opinion , and is found in the mythology of Persia . The favourite symbol of initiation in that country was Sol in the constellation Taurus ; depicted as a bull couchant with the sun rising from his back .
In all the systems which I have enumerated in this paper , the reference to the Mosaic account of the creation is obvious ; and the uniformity could scarcely have been preserved with so faithful an accuracy , had not some traces of an original tradition assisted the inquiries of those philosophers to whom each nation was indebted for their ingenious
theories . But , unfortunately , the Great First Cause was frequently overlooked ; and the means were inadequate to the end . The Creator was studiously kept out of sight ; and the vast fabric of this globe was erroneously described in the lower degrees of spurious Freemasonry as the work of inferior agents ; or more probably , of chance ; for the true
doctrine of God the Creator , whose existence is eternal , and whose attribute are infinites , was one of the arcane secrets of the Greater Mysteries ; ancl to publish it to the world was esteemed the most enormous crime that could be committed ; the punishment of which was death . It is not less true , however , that the heathen cosmogonies were a transcript of that described in the first chapter of Genesis ; although
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On Freemasonry. The Spurious Freemasonry Of Ancient Times,
the Deluge began . The whole tenor of these bodies thus preserved , clearly pointing forth the month of May . Nor have I ever met with so much as one single plant , or body , which is peculiar to any other season of the year . " Usher and others have repudiated the above doctrine , and affirm that the work of creation commenced on Sunday
, 23 d October . But the testimony of the fathers , Ambrose , Eusebius , Athanasius , as well as that of Bede and Theodoret , goes to establish the ancient belief ; and it is corroborated by Luther , and many of our old divines . Augustine , quoting Josephus , says , " God notified the spring , in which all things bloom and blossom , to be an annual memorial of
the world ' s creation . " Bede asserts , that it was determined at a Synod holden in Palestine , by Theophilus , Bishop of Cesarea , that the creation took place in the spring . By consent of all these authorities , it is conjectured that the fourth day of the creation , viz ., the day on which the stars and lanets belonging to our system were called into
exp istence , was April 27 ; ancl that the sun was placed in the fourth degree of Taurus ; which appears to be a very ancient opinion , and is found in the mythology of Persia . The favourite symbol of initiation in that country was Sol in the constellation Taurus ; depicted as a bull couchant with the sun rising from his back .
In all the systems which I have enumerated in this paper , the reference to the Mosaic account of the creation is obvious ; and the uniformity could scarcely have been preserved with so faithful an accuracy , had not some traces of an original tradition assisted the inquiries of those philosophers to whom each nation was indebted for their ingenious
theories . But , unfortunately , the Great First Cause was frequently overlooked ; and the means were inadequate to the end . The Creator was studiously kept out of sight ; and the vast fabric of this globe was erroneously described in the lower degrees of spurious Freemasonry as the work of inferior agents ; or more probably , of chance ; for the true
doctrine of God the Creator , whose existence is eternal , and whose attribute are infinites , was one of the arcane secrets of the Greater Mysteries ; ancl to publish it to the world was esteemed the most enormous crime that could be committed ; the punishment of which was death . It is not less true , however , that the heathen cosmogonies were a transcript of that described in the first chapter of Genesis ; although