“Then Moses said to the Lord, O Lord, dost thou sleep or not?  The Lord said unto Moses, I never sleep:  but take a cup and fill it with water.  Then Moses took a cup and filled it with water, as the Lord commanded him.  Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses the breath of slumber; so he slept, and the cup fell from his hand, and the water which was therein was spilled.  Then Moses awoke from his sleep.  Then said God to Moses, I declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my providence from the heavens and the earth for no longer a space of time than thou hast slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like as the cup fell from thy hand.”

[137] I have in my possession a rare copy of the Vulgate Bible, in black letter, printed at Lyons, in 1522.  The frontispiece is a coarsely executed wood cut, divided into six compartments, and representing the six days of the creation.  The Father is, in each compartment, pictured as an aged man engaged in his creative task.

[138] Christian Iconography, Millington’s trans., vol. i. p. 59.

[139] The triangle, or delta, is the symbol of Deity for this reason.  In geometry a single line cannot represent a perfect figure; neither can two lines; three lines, however, constitute the triangle or first perfect and demonstrable figure.  Hence this figure symbolizes the Eternal God, infinitely perfect in his nature.  But the triangle properly refers to God only in his quality as an Eternal Being, its three sides representing the Past, the Present, and the Future.  Some Christian symbologists have made the three sides represent the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but they evidently thereby destroy the divine unity, making a trinity of Gods in the unity of a Godhead.  The Gnostic trinity of Manes consisted of one God and two principles, one of good and the other of evil.  The Indian trinity, symbolized also by the triangle, consisted of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, represented by Earth, Water, and Air.  This symbolism of the Eternal God by the triangle is the reason why a trinitarian scheme has been so prevalent in all religions—­the three sides naturally suggesting the three divisions of the Godhead.  But in the Pagan and Oriental religions this trinity was nothing else but a tritheism.

[140] Noachidae, or Noachites, the descendants of Noah.  This patriarch having alone preserved the true name and worship of God amid a race of impious idolaters, the Freemasons claim to be his descendants, because they preserve that pure religion which distinguished this second father of the human race from the rest of the world. (See the author’s Lexicon of Freemasonry.) The Tyrian workmen at the temple of Solomon were the descendants of that other division of the race who fell off, at Shinar, from the true worship, and repudiated the principles of Noah.  The Tyrians, however, like many other ancient mystics, had recovered some portion of the lost light, and the complete repossession was finally achieved by their union with the Jewish masons, who were Noachidae.