The following, or fifth General Regulation, says that “no man can be made or admitted a member of a particular lodge, without previous notice, one month before, given to the same lodge.”

Now, as a profane cannot be admitted an Entered Apprentice, or in other words, a member of an Entered Apprentices’ lodge, unless after one month’s notice, so it follows that an Apprentice cannot be admitted a member of a Fellow Crafts’ lodge, nor a Fellow Craft of a Masters’, without the like probation.  For the words of the regulation which apply to one, will equally apply to the others.  And hence we derive the law, that a month at least must always intervene between the reception of one degree and the advancement to another.  But this rule is also subject to a dispensation.

Section XII.

Of Finishing the Candidates of one Lodge in another.

It is an ancient and universal regulation, that no lodge shall interfere with the work of another by initiating its candidates, or passing or raising its Apprentices and Fellow Crafts.  Every lodge is supposed to be competent to manage its own business, and ought to be the best judge of the qualifications of its own members, and hence it would be highly improper in any lodge to confer a degree on a Brother who is not of its household.

This regulation is derived from a provision in the Ancient Charges, which have very properly been supposed to contain the fundamental law of Masonry, and which prescribes the principle of the rule in the following symbolical language: 

“None shall discover envy at the prosperity of a Brother, nor supplant him or put him out of his work, if he be capable to finish the same; for no man can finish another’s work, so much to the Lord’s profit, unless he be thoroughly acquainted with the designs and draughts of him that began it.”

There is, however, a case in which one lodge may, by consent, legally finish the work of another.  Let us suppose that a candidate has been initiated in a lodge at A——­, and, before he receives his second degree, removes to B——­, and that being, by the urgency of his business, unable either to postpone his departure from A——­, until he has been passed and raised, or to return for the purpose of his receiving his second and third degrees, then it is competent for the lodge at A——­ to grant permission to the lodge at B——­ to confer them on the candidate.

But how shall this permission be given—­by a unanimous vote, or merely by a vote of the majority of the members at A——?  Here it seems to me that, so far as regards the lodge at A——­, the reasons for unanimity no longer exist.  There is here no danger that a “fractious member will be imposed on them,” as the candidate, when finished, will become a member of the lodge at B——.  The question of consent is simply in the nature of a resolution, and may be determined by the assenting votes of a majority of the members at A—–.