has strong allusions to the Christian church.  Since that period they (Masons) have been known by the name of Master Architect; and they have employed themselves in improving the law of that admirable Master.  From hence it appears that the mysteries of the craft are the mysteries of religion.  Those brethren were careful not to entrust this important secret to any whose discretion they had not proved.  For this reason they invented different degrees to try those who entered among them; and only gave them symbolical secrets, without explanation, to prevent treachery, and to make themselves known only to each other.  For this purpose it was resolved to use different signs, words, and tokens, in every degree, by which they would be secured against cowans and Saracens.  The different degrees were fixed first to the number of seven by the example of the Grand Architect of the Universe, who built all things in six days and rested on the seventh.  This is distinguished by seven points of reception in the Master’s degrees.  Enoch employed six days to construct the arches, and on the seventh, having deposited the secret treasure in the lowest arch, was translated to the abodes of the blessed.  Solomon employed six years in constructing his temple; and celebrated its dedication on the seventh, with all the solemnity worthy of the divinity himself.  This sacred edifice we choose to make the basis of figurative Masonry.  In the first degree are three symbols to be applied.  First, the first of the creation, which was only chaos, is figured by the candidate’s coming out of the black chamber, neither naked nor clothed, deprived, etc.; and his suffering the painful trial at his reception, etc.  The candidate sees nothing before he is brought to light; and his powers of imagination relative to what he has to go through are suspended, which alludes to the figure of the creation of that vast luminous body confused among the other parts of creation before it was extracted from darkness and fixed by the Almighty fiat.  Secondly, the candidate approaches the footstool of the Master, and there renounces all cowans; he promises to subdue his passions, by which means he is united to virtue, and by his regularity of life, demonstrates what he proposes.  This is figured to him by the steps that he takes in approaching the altar; the symbolic meaning of which is the separation of the firmament from the earth and water on the second day of creation. (The charge proceeds by giving a figurative interpretation of the ceremonies, etc., of the first and second part of the third degree, which I pass over as uninteresting to my readers, and commence with an interpretation which will be as novel to the Craft of the lower grades as to the cowans, or non-initiated.)