ing to our received and known principles, and the plain rules of the Lord's word, and sound reason:

AND whereas the synod, at their meeting at Edinburgh on the 6th of March, 1755, when a particular cause about the Mason oath was before them,-did appoint all the sessions, under their inspection, to require all persons in their respective congregations, who are presumed or suspected to have been engaged in that oath, to make a plain acknowledgment, whether or not they have ever been so; and to require that such as they may find to have been engaged therein, should give ingenuous answers to what further inquiry the sessions may see cause to make, concerning the tenor and administration of the said oath to them ;-and that the sessions should proceed to the purging of what scandal they may thus find those persons convicted of, according to the directions of the above mentioned act of synod in September, 1745:

AND whereas the generality of the sessions have, since the aforementioned periods, dealt with several persons under their inspection about the Mason oath; in the course of which procedure, by the confessions made to them, they have found others, beside those' of the Mason Craft, to be involved in that oath and the synod finding it proper and necessary to give more particular directions to the several sessions, for having the heinous profanation of the Lord's name by that oath purged out of all the congregations under their inspection:

THEREFORE the synod did, and hereby do, appoint

that the several sessions subordinate to them, in dealing with persons about the Mason oath, shall particularly interrogate them,-If they have taken that oath, and when and where they did so? If they have taken the said oath, or declared their approbation of it, oftener than once, upon being admitted to a higher degree in a Mason Lodge? If that oath was not administered to them, without letting them know the terms of t till in the act of administering the same, to them? it was not an oath binding them to keep a number of secrets, none of which they were allowed to know hen fore swearing the oath? If, beside a solemn invocation of the Lord's name in that oath, it did not contain a capital penalty about having their tongues and hearts taken out in case of breaking the same? If the said oath was not administered to them with several superstitious ceremonies; such as the stripping them of, or requiring them to deliver up, any thing of metal which they had upon them,—and making them kneel upor their right knee bare, holding up their right arm bare, with their elbow upon the Bible, or with the Bible laid before them, or having the Bible, as also the square and compasses, in some particular way applied to their bodies? and, if among the secrets which they were bound by that oath to keep, there was not a passage of scripture read to them, particularly 1 Kings, vii. 21, with or without some explication put upon the same, for being concealed.

MOREOVER, the synod appoint, that the several sessions shall call before them all persons in their congregations who are of the Mason Craft, and others whom they have a particular suspicion of, as being

involved in the Mason oath, except such as have been already dealt with, and have given satisfaction upon that head; and that, upon their answering the first of the foregoing questions in the affirmative, the sessions shall proceed to put the other interrogatories before appointed: as also, that all persons of the Mason Craft, applying for sealing ordinances, and likewise others, concerning whom there may be any presumption of their having been involved in the Mason oath, shall be examined by the ministers if they have been so; and upon their acknowledging the same, or declining to answer whether or not, the ministers shall refer them to be dealt with by the sessions, before admitting them to these ordinances: and that all such persons offering themselves to the sessions for joining in covenanting work, shall be then examined by the sessions, as to their concern in the aforesaid oath.

AND the synod further appoint, that when persons are found to be involved in the Mason oath, according to their confessions in giving plain and particular answers to the foregoing questions, and professing their sorrow for the same; the said scandal shall be purged by a sessional rebuke and admonition,—with a strict charge to abstain from all concern afterwards in administering the said oath to any, or enticing any into that snare, and from all practices of amusing people about the pretended mysteries of their signs and secrets. But that persons who shall refuse or shift to give plain and particular answers to the foregoing questions, shall be reputed under scandal incapable of admission to sealing ordinances, till they answer and give satisfaction, as before appointed.

AND the synod refer to the several sessions to proceed unto higher censure as they shall see cause, in the whom they may find involved in the

case of persons said oath with special aggravation, as taking or relapsing into the same, in opposition to warnings against doing so.

AND the synod appoint, that each of the sessions under their inspection shall have an extract of this act, to be inserted in their books, for executing the same accordingly.

AN IMPARTIAL EXAMINATION

OF THE ACT OF THE ASSOCIATE SYNOD AGAINST THE FREE-MASONS, FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE FOR OCTOBER, 1757.

THE society of Free-Masons, which, notwith

standing the opposition of human power, civil and ecclesiastic, has now subsisted for many ages, and always maintained its inseparable character of secrecy, prudence, and good manners, stands at this day in such high repute, than an apology in its behalf is certainly unnecessary.

PUBLIC esteem has always been reputed a crime in the eyes of Malevolence; and virtue and goodness have always been held as declared enemies by hypocritical Sanctity and bigot Zeal. To such impure sources alone can be attributed a very extraordinary act, lately pronounced against this venerable society, by the synod of the Associate Brethren, and published in the Scots Magazine for August, 1757.

FROM this act the practices of this holy association appear so agreeable to those of the Roman Catholic church, that they afford a shrewd suspicion, that the principles from which such practices result, are of the same nature, and have the same dangerous tendency, with those professed by the Roman see.

IN the year 1738, his holiness at Rome, by the

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