Excerpt from Historic Masonry: Outlines of a History of Freemasonry From the Most Ancient to Modern Times
This continuous history of Freemasonry has been written to supply a want long felt by members of the Masonic fraternity. Innumerable books have appeared from time to time, professedly histories of the Craft, which, on examination, prove to be a mere repetition of unreliable legends, whose only claim to attention is undoubted age. During the past century, an unfortunate spirit manifested itself among writers on the subject of Freemasonry, - without critical examination of authorities considered reliable, the sole purpose seems to have been to produce propositions of an antiquity whose proofs were essentially silly and absurd. While Masonic authors have, in many instances, carefully collected material which added a fairer and more correct appreciation of Lodge ritualism, its general scope and purpose, a too palpable reiteration of unsubstantial and flimsy traditions has at length impressed the minds of members and others that no other origin of the fraternity can be received than that which leads back to the Solomonian Temple at Jerusalem, and, indeed, until within a few years past, it was gravely asserted that Masonry had begun in the garden of Eden. As a consequence of such untimely deductions, a well-defined scepticism naturally sprung up, which, with every appearance of reason, doubted the remote antiquity of the society, and, as an ultimate concession, maintained its medi?val creation.
The original design of the present work has uniformly been to arrive at truth, and is the result of considerable labor. Oftentimes the author has attempted to verify the quaint assertion of Masonic Chronicles with undisputed historical evidence, and in no instance are traditions resting on unsubstantial ground adduced as corroborative testimony of the line of research which, after careful examination of facts, he has adopted.
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