in Europe, with proper inftructions in writing; and, what will feem more strange to you, without the leaft taint of perjury. By this time any reader who is a mafon, will, I know, laugh, and not without indignation. But that matters not much; our fex has long owed yours this good turn. You refused to admit Q. Elifabeth, and even Semiramis Queen of Babylon, though each of them (without punning) had a great deal of male fief upon their bodies; but, at laft, you will be forced to own we have it; and thus it was we came by it. A gentleman, who is a great friend to all our members, who has fince inftructed and formed us into a ledge, and whom we therefore call our guardian, fell in lately with a lodge of Free Mafons at Omagh in Ulfter. They preffed him hard to come into their fociety, and at length prevailed. They wanted an Old Teftament to fwear him by. The innkeeper's Bible having both Old and New bound up together, would not do: for the Free Majons oath being of much older date than the New Teftament, that is, from the building of Solomon's temple, (for till then it was but a proteftation well larded over with curfes and execrations) they are always fworn on the Old Teftament only. They offer to buy the fellow's Bible; he confents; but finding they were to cut away the New Testament from the Old, concluded them at once a pack of profane wretches, and very piously refcued his Bible. This cuftom of fwearing on the Old Teftament only, is what has given birth to the vulgar er. ror, That Free Mafons renounce the New Teftament. So they proceed to the rest of the ceremony, deferring the oath till next inorning, one of them having an Old Tefament for the purpose, at his houfe hard by. This, it is true, was a hainous blunder against the cannons of Free Mafonry. But the gentlemen were far gone in punch and whisky. In fhort, our friend and prefent guardian` is made a Free but unfworn Mason, and was three hours gone on his journey next morning, before the merry Free Mafons awoke to fend for their Old Teftament; and, what was worfe, they had taught him the form of the oath, against he was to fwear in the morning. Now, as to the fecret words and fignals used among Free Mafons, it is to be observed, that in the Hebrew alphabet, alphabet, (as our guardian has informed our lodge in writing) there are four pair of letters, of which each pair is fo like, that, at firft view, they feem to be the fame; Beth and Caph, Gimel and Nun, Cheth and Thau, Daleth and Refch; and on thefe depend all their fignals and grips. Cheth and Thau are shaped like two ftanding gallowfes, of two legs each. When two masons accoft each other, one cries Cheth, the other anfwers Thau; fignifying, that they would fooner be hanged on the gallows than divulge the fecret. Then again, Beth and Caph are each like a gallows lying on one of the fide-posts, and, when used as above, imply this pious prayer, May all who reveal the fecret, bang upon the gallows till it falls down. This is their mafter-fecret, generally called the great word. Daleth and Refch are like two half-gallowfes, or a gallows cut in two at the cross stick on top; by which, when pronounced, they intimate to each other, that they would rather be half hanged, than name either word or fignal before any but a brother, lo as to be understood. When one fays Gimel, the other anfwers Nun; then the firft again joining both letters together, repeats three times, Gimel Nun, Gimel-Nun, Gimel-Nun; by which they mean, that they are united as one in interefts, fecrecy, and affection. This laft word has in time been depraved in the pronunciation from Gimel Nun to Gime- lum, and at laft to Giblun, and fometimes Giblin; which word being by fome accident difcovered, they now-adays pretend it is but a mock-word. bro Another of their words has been maimed in the pronunciation by the illiterate; that is, the letter Lamech, which was the bush word; for, when spoke by any ther in a lodge, it was a warning to the reft to have a care of lifteners. It is now corruptly pronounced Lax ; but the mafons pretended this alfo is a mock-word, for the fame reafon as Giblin. This play with the Hebrew alphabet is very anciently called the MANABOLETH. When one brother orders another to walk like a ma fon, he must walk four steps backwards; four, because, of the four pair of letters already mentioned; and backVOL. VIII. wards, Ee wards, because the Hebrew is writ and read backwards. As to their myfterious grips, they are as follows. If they be in company, where they cannot with fafety fpeak the above words, they take each other by the hand; one draws one of the letters of the Manaboleth with his finger on the other's hand, which he returns as in fpeaking. It is worth obferving, that a certain lodge in town published fome time ago a fheet full of mock-masonry, purely to puzzle and banter the town, with feveral false figns and words, as Mada or Adam, writ backwards, Beas, Nimrod, Jakins, Pectoral, Gutural, &c. but not one word of the real ones, as you fee by what has been said of the MANABOLETH. After King James VI.'s acceffion to the throne of England, he revived masonry, of which he was grand mafier, both in Scotland and England: it had been entirely fuppreffed by Queen Elifabeth, becaufe fhe could not get into the fecret. All perfons of quality, after the example of the King, got themfelves admitted Free Mafons; but they made a kind of MANABOLETH in Englifh, in imitation of the true and ancient one; as I. O. U. H. a gold key; I owe you each a gold key, H. CCCC. his ruin. Each forefees his ruin. I. C. U. B. YY. for me, 1 fee you be too wife for me. And a great deal more of the fame foolish ftuff, which took its rife from a filly pun upon the word Bee; for you must know, that A bee has, in all ages and nations, been the grand hieroglyphic of masonry, because it excels all other living creatures in the contrivance and commodiousness of its habitation or comb; as, among many other au thors, Dr Macgregor, now profeffor of mathematics in Cambridge, (as our guardian informs us), hath learnedly demonftrated; nay, majonry or building feems to be the very effence or nature of the bee; for her building not the ordinary way of all other living creatures, is the generative caufe which produces the young ones; (you know, I fuppofe, that bees are of neither fex.) For this reafon the Kings of France, both Pagans and Chriflians, always eminent Free Mafons, carried three bees for their arms. But, to avoid the imputation of the Egyptian idolatry of worshipping a bee, Clodovæus, their first Christian King, called them lilies, or flower-deluces; in which, notwithstanding the fmall change made for difguife fake, there is ftill the exact figure of a bee. You have perhaps read of a great number of golden bees found in the coffin of a Pagan King of France near Bruffels, many ages after CHRIST, which he had ordered fhould be buried with him, in token of his having been a mafon. The Egyptians, always excellent and ancient Free Mafens, paid divine worship to a bee, under the outward fhape of a bull, the better to conceal the myflery; which bull, by them called Apis, is the Latin word for a bee. The anigma representing the bee by a bull confifts in this that, according to the doctrine of the Pythagorean lodge of Free Mafons, the fouls of all the cow-kind tranfmigrate into bees; as one Virgil a poet, much in favour with the Emperor Auguftus, becaufe of his profound fkill in mafonry, has defcribed; and Mr Dryden has thus bowed. Ariftæus Four altars raises; from his herd he culls Straight iffue through the fides affembling fwarms, &c. What modern mafons call a lodge, was, for the above reafons, by antiquity called a HIVe of Free Mafons. And, for the fame reafons, when a diffenfion happens in a lodge, the going off and forming another lodge is to this day called SWARMING. Our guardian is of opinion, that the prefent masonry is fo tarnished by the ignorance of the working, and fome other illiterate mafons, that very many, even whole lodges, fall under the cenfure of the venerable Chinese Ee 2 brachman brachman, whofe hiftory of the rife, progrefs, and decay of Free Masonry, writ in the Chinese tongue, is Jately tranflated into a certain European language. This Chinele fage fays, the greateft part of current mafons judge of the mysteries and ufe of that facred art, juft as a man perfectly illiterate judges of an excellent book ; in which, when opened to him, he finds no other beau ties than the regular uniformity in every page, the exactness of the lines in length, and equidiftance, and blackness of the ink, and whiteness of the paper; or, as the famous British Free Mason MERLIN fays of the stars in the firmament, when viewed by a child, &c. But I thall not trouble you with the length of the quotation at prefent, becaufe Merlin and Friar Bacon on Free Mafonry are foon. to be dreffed up in modern English, and fold by our printer Mr Faulkner, if duly encouraged by fubfcribers; and alfo a key to Raymundus Lullius, without whofe help, our guardian fays, it is impoffible to come at the quinteffence of Free Mafonry. But fome will perhaps object, How come your unfworn guardian by this refined and uncommon knowledge in the great art? To which I answer, that The branch of the lodge of Solomon's temple, afterwards called The lodge of St John of Jerufalem, on which our guardian fortunately hit, is, as I can eafily prove, the ancienteft and pureft now on earth; from whence came the famous old Scottish lodge of Kilwinning, of which all the kings of Scotland have been from time to time grand mafters, without interruption, down from the days of Fergus, who reigned there more than two thousand years ago, long before the knights of St John of Jerufalem, or the knights of Malta; to which two Lodges I must nevertheless allow the honour of having adorned the ancient Jewish and Pagan mafonry with many religious and Christian rules. Fergus being eldeft fon to the chief king of Ireland, was carefully instructed in all the arts and sciences, especially in the natural magic, and the cabaliftical philofophy, (afterwards called the Roficrucians), by the Pagan Druids of Ireland and Mona, the only true cabalifts then extant in the western world. (For they had it immediately from the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, |