By the planet Mercury, you are taught continually to mistrust, shun, and run away from those who, by a false practice, maintain commerce with people of a vicious life, who seem to despise the most sacred mysteries—­that is, to depart from those who by the vulgar fear, or a bad understanding, are ready to deny the solemn obligations that they have contracted among us.—­When you come to the foot of our arch you are to apprehend that you come to the “Sanctum Sanctorum.”  You are not to return; but rather to persist in sustaining the glory of our order, and the truth of our laws, principles, and mysteries, in like manner as our Respectable Father Hiram Abiff, who deserved to have been buried there for his constancy and fidelity.  We have also another example in the firmness of “Galaad,” the son of “Sophonia,” chief of the Levites, under Surnam, the High Priest, as mentioned in the history of perfection.  Learn in this moment, my dear brother, what you are to understand by the figures of Solomon, Hiram, King of Tyre, and St. John the Baptist.  The two first exert you, by their zeal in the royal art, to follow the sublime road of which Solomon was the institutor, and Hiram of Tyre, the “supporter;” a title legitimately due to that king, who not only protected the order, but contributed with all his might to the construction of the temple (furnishing stone from Tyre, and the cedars of Lebanus) which Solomon built to the honor of the Almighty.

The third, or St. John the Baptist, teaches you to preach marvellous to this order, which is as much as to say, you are to make secret missions among men, which you believe to be in a state of entering the road of truth, that they may be able one day to see her virtues and visage uncovered.

Hiram Abiff was the symbol of truth on earth.  Jubelum Akirop was accused by the serpent of ignorance, which to this day raises altars in the hearts of the profane and fearful.  This profaneness, backened by a fanatic zeal, becomes an instrument to the religious power, which struck the first stroke in the heart of our dear Father, Hiram Abiff; which is as much as to say, undermined the foundation of the celestial temple, which the Eternal himself had ordered to be raised to the sublime truth and his glory.

The first age of the world has been witness to what I have advanced.  The simple, natural law rendered to our first fathers the most uninterrupted happiness.  They were in those times more virtuous; but as soon as the “monster of pride” started up in the air and disclosed herself to those unhappy mortals, she promised to them every seat of happiness, and seduced them by her soft and bewitching speeches, viz.:  That “they must render to the Eternal Creator of all things an adoration with more testimony, and more extensive, than they had hitherto done,” etc.  This Hydra with a hundred heads, at that time misled, and continues to this day to mislead men who are so weak as to submit to her empire; and it will subsist, until the moment that the true elected shall appear and destroy her entirely.