to recompense with personal violence his benevolent intentions towards them. The ark was finished in three periods of forty years each, which was the term to which God limited human life after this event.R At the expiration of one hundred and twenty years, Noah, with his family, entered into the ark, with the clean beasts by sevens, and the unclean by pairs."

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and

8 Jos. Ant. 1. 1, c. 4.

9 The form and dimensions of the ark have afforded much speculation amongst the learned, who have almost unanimously pronounced its capacity too small, according to the common mode of calculation, to contain the number of animals which went into it. But Bishop Wilkins shews, that, by taking the cubit at eighteen inches, the ark was rather too large than otherwise. This learned prelate concludes, that there were only seventy-two species of quadrupeds in the ark; the carnivorous animals, he computes, would not occupy more room, or consume a greater quantity of food, than twenty-seven wolves, and for these about one thousand eight hundred sheep would be sufficient for food. The remainder would take up no more room than two hundred and eighty oxen, and would consume about 109,500 tons of hay. These would not be sufficient for the capacity of the two first stories, as it would allow a space of upwards of sixteen square feet for each animal; and Noah and his family, with every species of winged fowl, would leave room, in the third story, for the necessary offices, besides a considerable space for exercise.

the mountains were covered. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

"10

This great convulsion of nature not only destroyed all created flesh (and the antediluvian world is supposed to have contained two millions of millions of souls), but washed away and obliterated almost every vestige of the works of art. Scarcely a building, or the remains of a building, was left, to mark the spot where human greatness or human folly had reared the proud monument of emptiness and vanity; even the brazen pillar of Enoch gave way before the overwhelming torrent of destruction, which even removed mountains and shook rocks from their solid base. But God preserved the pillar of stone, and by this means the state of Masonry, before the Flood, was transmitted to posterity.

10 Gen. vii. 11, 12, 19, 20, 23, 24.

PERIOD III.

CHAPTER V.

On the Idolatrous Mysteries, as contrasted with Free-Masonry.

1

THE mysteries practised by idolatrous nations were nothing else but the secret solemnities of divine worship, and were invented to cast a solemn veil over their rites, which might sanction and recommend the worship of false gods to those who, without some splendid and imposing stimulus, might be disinclined to renounce the true God, and embrace the worship of idols. These mysteries, avowedly established on the same basis as Masonry, were secretly intended to produce an effect quite the reverse; for they were instituted with the express design of making our science subservient to the very worst and most degrading practices of idolatry. Hence the two institutions have been frequently confounded together; and Masonry becomes stigmatized with infidelity, if not atheism, and charged with renouncing every scriptural doctrine contained in the genuine fountain of revealed truth. A com

' And they did accordingly produce a most astonishing effect upon the minds of an ignorant and superstitious people; and by their means, the power of the priesthood was extended to the verge of despotism.

parison between the mysteries of idolatry and genuine Masonry will shew how far the latter was practised in these institutions, and will distinctly mark the line of separation which distinguishes the one from the other.

The Eleusinian, the Orphic, the Bacchic, and all those innumerable mysteries practised by the heathen in every age, were instituted to perpetuate a remembrance of the events which occurred at the universal Deluge, and to preserve the knowledge of a future state of rewards and punishments. But, while inculcating that true doctrine, they added many false and pernicious tenets, which perverted both its nature and end. 66 They taught," says Warburton," that the initiated should be happier than all other mortals in a future state; that while the souls of the profane, at their leaving the body, stuck fast in mire and filth, and remained in darkness, the souls of the initiated winged their flight directly to the happy islands, and the habitations of the gods."

66

Now Masonry does not inculcate any such doctrine. Its design is thus concisely and truly defined in Arnold's dictionary. Masonry," says that lexicographer, "is a moral Order, instituted with the praiseworthy design of recalling to our remembrance the most sublime truths in the midst of the most innocent and social pleasures, founded on liberality, brotherly love, and charity."

The idolatrous mysteries date their origin from the Cabiri, and Thoth, who were certainly Masons;

2 Div. Leg. 1. 2, s. 4.

Diod. Sic. 1. 1. It is an undoubted fact, that the mysteries

but, forsaking the pure channel of God's worship, they sunk into the grossest defilements of idolatry, and founded, on the pattern of our craft, an institution calculated to make the worship of imaginary deities fascinating and permanent. In the time when the pastor kings reigned over Egypt, many noble Egyptians, with their families and attendants, migrated into other countries, and disseminated throughout the world the improvements in the mysteries of that superstitious nation. Masonry originated with God; like that eternal Being, it existed before time was, and shall exist when time shall be

no more.

The former and the latter degrees of the ancient idolatrous mysteries were inconsistent, and even positively contradicted each other: those of Masonry are a regular and progressive series; each were derived from some institution previously in existence, although learned men are not agreed respecting their origin. An opinion, supported by great ingenuity, has been propagated in our own day, that they were established to commemorate the general deluge; and this conjecture is partly true; as a reference to the diluvian ogdoad, and the events attending that great convulsion of nature, were undoubtedly preserved in these celebrated institutions. But these were not the only facts of which the spurious Free-masonry was the depository. Other authors, equally talented, have dated its origin from the establishment of the Levitical dispensation; arguing from the presumption that all the heathen deities may be resolved into an identity with the Jewish lawgiver. Others have ventured to pronounce that it was instituted to preserve the doctrine of rewards and punishments. How true soever all these opinions may be in detail, they are only branches of the real intention of the spurious Free-masonry, which was intended to perpetuate a memory of the chief facts and doctrines that were designed by Providence to form the basis of a universal religion.