nes of the unity of God and
the immortality of the soul. This is an important proposition, and the
fact which it enunciates must never be lost sight of in any inquiry into
the origin of Freemasonry; for the pagan Mysteries were to the spurious
Freemasonry of antiquity precisely what the Masters' lodges are to the
Freemasonry of the present day. It is needless to offer any proof of their
existence, since this is admitted and continually referred to by all
historians, ancient and modern; and to discuss minutely their character
and organization would occupy a distinct treatise. The Baron de Sainte
Croix has written two large volumes on the subject, and yet left it
unexhausted.

14. These two divisions of the Masonic Institution which were defined in
the 9th proposition, namely, the pure or primitive Freemasonry among the
Jewish descendants of the patriarchs, who are called, by way of
distinction, the Noachites, or descendants of Noah, because they had not
forgotten nor abandoned the teachings of their great ancestor, and the
spurious Freemasonry practised among the pagan nations, flowed down the
stream of time in parallel currents, often near together, but never
commingling.

15. But these two currents were not always to be kept apart, for,
springing, in the long anterior ages, from one common fountain,--that
ancient priesthood of whom I have already spoken in the 8th
proposition,--and then dividing into the pure and spurious Freemasonry of
antiquity, and remaining separated for centuries upon centuries, they at
length met at the building of the great temple of Jerusalem, and were
united, in the instance of the Israelites under King Solomon, and the
Tyrians under Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif. The spurious
Freemasonry, it is true, did not then and there cease to exist. On the
contrary, it lasted for centuries subsequent to this period; for it was
not until long after, and in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, that
the pagan Mysteries were finally and totally abolished. But by the union
of the Jewish or pure Freemasons and the Tyrian or spurious Freemasons at
Jerusalem, there was a mutual infusion of their respective doctrines and
ceremonies, which eventually terminated in the abolition of the two
distinctive systems and the establishment of a new one, that may be
considered as the immediate prototype of the present institution. Hence
many Masonic students, going no farther back in their investigations than
the fa