Being liberated from a monitor whom they regarded with some degree of awe and reverence, mankind proceeded to the unlimited gratification of their rebellious passions, without fear of restraint.

The fascinations held out by the Cainites were toc powerful for the children of Seth to resist, and their minds became rapidly tainted with the abominations of idolatry; they worshipped the host of heaven; they erected shrines to the honour of imaginary rural deities; and at length Tubal Cain was exalted to the dignity of a god, under the appellation of Vulcan. This was the first instance of a mortal being deified, and it took place in the seventh generation from Adam. To this god the Egyptians afterwards assigned the attributes of prescience, power, and unlimited duration or immortality. While the reign of other gods was confined within certain and specific limits, the reign of Vulcan was declared without end.

Lamech, unable to stem the torrent of depravity, placed the government in the hands of Noah, who endeavoured to restore the principles of CHARITY, or love of God and man, which appeared to be in danger of universal deterioration. To accomplish this purpose, he did not confine his Lectures to the private and select assemblies of immediate friends, but publicly denounced the judgments of God against those wicked practices to which they were inordinately addicted, and at the same time persuaded them, by the most affectionate exhortations, to keep their passions within compass, to adore their Creator, and to act upon the square with all their fellow-creatures.

In the first ages of the antediluvian world, all men lived in the enjoyment of unrestrained freedom, and it was impossible for any person to be reduced to a state of bondage: and this was one of the primitive laws of civil society, as many writers are of opinion. Personal slavery, which, according to Cicero, means the devotion of an abject mind, which has no will of its own, is supposed to have begun amongst that race of people whom the Scriptures denominate giants. By the hand of violence they assaulted and made slaves of men and women, whom they kept in a degrading state of servitude, and compelled to administer to their pleasures or their vices. This was

5 Sanch. in Euseb. Pæp. Evan., 1. 1, c. 10.

so terrible an innovation in the divine economy, and so destructive of the principles of Masonry, that Noah laboured with incessant diligence and assiduity to restore the primitive laws against slavery, and prevent amongst mankind an unnatural traffic in their own species.

Mankind, thus besotted with their lusts, and advancing by rapid but almost imperceptible gradations to the utmost extent of wickedness, slighted the precepts of wisdom and experience; even Noah himself was derided, and esteemed little superior to a visionary enthusiast. Foreseeing, therefore, the world's destruction to be inevitable, he proclaimed himself clear of their blood, and offered up his prayers to God for the salvation of his house. The prayer of Noah was heard, for he had found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And God said unto Noah, "The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold I will destroy them with the earth! Make thee an ark of gopher wood: roonis shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of:-the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark to keep them alive with thee."

The ark of Noah is a superb specimen of the perfection to which the art of naval architecture attained before the Flood. It has, indeed, been asserted that the description given by Moses was figurative;—that it was impossible to construct a machine of treble the dimensions of a first-rate man-of-war, which would have answered the intended purpose. But the futility of this reasoning is evinced by the corroborating testimony of heathen authors, not only respecting the ark itself; but also in reference to other ancient vessels, of equal, if not superior bulk. Gen. vi., 8-19.

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In obedience to the commands of God, Noah began the work, and proceeded in it amidst the ridicule and derision of mankind; who slighted his warnings, despised his promises, and even threatened 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. 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.9

"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 the mountains were covered. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the 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

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

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 shows, 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.

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

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 .rom 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.

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PERIOD III.

CHAPTER V.

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

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 comparison between the mysteries of idolatry and genuine Masonry will show 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

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.