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UNTAINTED probity frequently meets with strong opposition from villany supported by fraud. Experience has taught her to oppose prudence to cunning, and secrecy and resolution to the dark designs and dire machinations of her foes. But the depravity or facility of mankind soon discovered the difficulty of attaining that degree of secrecy, upon which the success of enterprize must often depend; and, from a confidence of which, resolution and activity result. To remedy this defect, religion opportunely interposes, and affords the sanction of an oath; under the security of which the schemes suggested and maturely planned by judgment, are entrusted to prudence and resolution for their execution. Hence oaths of secrecy have become one of the necessary hinges of government; they have been adopted by every civil state; and every branch of administration requires them. To them must be ascribed the success of the greatest enterprizes. Under their influence the noble, generous plan of British liberty was matured into execution, and the purposes of popish tyranny rendered abortive by the revolution: and to them the Free-Mason owns his grateful acknowledgments, for the unrestrained liberty of defending his Craft, and of detecting the damnable principles and black practices of the pretended messengers of Christ, without the dread of a merciless inquisition. innocence of such oaths cannot then be doubted; and their necessity sufficiently sanctifies their use.

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BUT it seems the Seceders hold it a crime to exact an oath of secrecy, before the things required to be kept secret be revealed. Can any thing be more ridiculous than this objection? The purposes of such

oaths would thereby be disappointed, for the secret would be communicated without any security or obligation to preserve it; and it would then become optional to grant it or not. Cromwell, that arch politician, when he imagined his secretary's clerk, who was fast asleep, had overheard him deliver some important orders, would not trust to the security of a subsequent oath, and thought that secrecy could be assured only by his immediate death. The common practice of the world refutes the objection, which could only proceed from those whose want of modesty equals that of their honesty.

MANKIND is so prone to religion, that it requires only confidence enough, for any person, however unqualified, to assume the character of spiritual guides, and they will not fail to obtain votaries. These, from that same tendency, soon yield up their judgment and consciences to the direction of their teachers; and their affections or antipathies, which become no longer their own, are pointed at particular objects, as the zeal or private interest of their priests shall dictate.

ONE distinguishing characteristic of the associate brethren seems to be, an abhorrence of every oath not devised by themselves, and framed to promote the interest of faction, rebellion, and schism.* They have not as yet, however, perverted the morals of all their followers; some of them, notwithstanding of all their endeavours, still retain a regard for an oath as the sacred and inviolable bond of society. This, they per

* They have in their synods condemned, as unlawful, the clauses in burgess oaths, with respect to religion and allegiance to the king.

ceived, was a check to their ambitious views of an unlimited obedience from their people. It was therefore necessary to diminish that reverence in hopes that, when their deluded flock had learned to overleap the fence in one instance, they would not be scrupulous to do it in any other. And for this end the nature of an oath of secrecy is deliberately misrepresented, and rashness and profanity ascribed to it.

As I am obliged to suppose the secrets of Masonry such as they are represented by the associate brethren, I shall follow the order laid down for their interrogatories in their act.

THEY object, that the Mason oath is administered by an invocation of the name of God, attended with certain rites and ceremonies of a superstitious nature, and under a capital penalty.

By attending to the nature of an oath, it will appear, that the obtesting God, as a witness and avenger, necessarily implies an imprecation of his wrath; which, if the doctrine of providence is believed, must imply all temporal as well as eternal punishments: it matters not whether any penalty is expressed; nor does the doing so, in any degree alter the nature of the obligation.

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* Illud videtur esse certum, omne juramentum promissorium, quacunque forma concipiatur, explicatiore vel contractiore, utramque virtualiter continere attestationem, sc. et execrationem. Nam in juramento, et execratio supponit attestationem, ut quid sibi prius; et attestatio subinfert execrationem ut suum necessarium consequens Saunderson, de oblig. juram, præl. I. sect. X. ૨૧

As to the ceremonies pretended to be adhibited to this oath, they appear to be innocent in themselves : and, if the Masons use any such, instead of ascribing these to a superstitious regard, charity would conclude they were not without an emphatic and allegorical meaning.

OATHS have almost universally had some rite or ceremony annexed, which, however insignificant in themselves, were originally expressive of something that tended to increase the awe and respect due to that solemn act. The casuists agree, that, though the oath is equally obligatory without them, the perjury is however increased, by the solemnity. All nations have adopted them: the Hebrews, by putting their hand below the thigh of the person to whom they swore the Pagans, by taking hold of the altar; and both, protending their hands to heaven ; in which last, they have been followed by all christian nations; some of whom, particularly our sister kingdom, when they take an oath, touch or kiss the holy gospels: and not only so, but every private society, every court of justice have forms of administering oaths peculiar to themselves. Shall not then the society of Free-Masons be allowed that privilege, without the imputation of superstition and idolatry?

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Et ut mos Graecorum est, Jurandi causa, ad aras accederet.---s

Cic. pro Balbo.

+ Gen. xiv. 22.

Suspiciens coelum, tenditque ad sidera dextram,
Haec eadem, Ænca, terram, mare, sidera juro.

VIRG. I. 12, v. 196.

THE matter of the oath comes next under consideration. The Free-Masons pretend to take some of their secrets from the Bible: A grievous accusation truly!" Jack," in the Tale of a Tub, "could work "his father's will into any shape he pleased; so that it "served him for a 'night-cap when he went to bed, or K an umbrella in rainy weather. He would lap a piece "of it about a sore toe; or, when he had fits, burn "two inches under his nose; or, if any thing lay heavy "on his stomach, scrape off and swallow as much of "the powder as would lie on a silver penny ;-they "all were infallible remedies." But it seems Knocking Jack of the North will not have all these pearls to be cast before swine, and reserves them only for his special favourites. What magical virtue there can be in the sacred passage mentioned in the act, the world will be at a loss to discover; and the holy brethren, so well versed in the mysteries, are the most proper to explain.

BUT there are other things which are ground of scruple in the manner of swearing of the said oath. This the synod have not thought fit to mention; but their publisher has supplied the defect, by a reference to a Mason's confession of the oath, word, and other secrets of his Craft; which indeed contains variety of mat ters insignificant and ridiculous in themselves, and only fit for the amusement of such persons as the ignorance and incoherence of the author display him to be.

THE Free-Mason does not think himself at all concerned to defend and support whatever nonsense || Vide Scots Mag. 1755, p. 133.

* I Kings, vii. 21.

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