inculcate obedience to the civil powers, and
strictly forbid any mingling in plots or conspiracies against the peace
and welfare of the nation, yet no offense against the state, which is
simply political in its character, can be noticed by a lodge. On this
important subject, the Old Charges are remarkably explicit. They say,
putting perhaps the strongest case by way of exemplifying the principle,
"that if a Brother should be a rebel against the State, he is not to be
countenanced in his rebellion, however he may be pitied as an unhappy man;
and, if convicted of no other crime, though the loyal Brotherhood must and
ought to disown his rebellion, and give no umbrage or ground of political
jealousy to the government for the time being, _they cannot expel him from
the lodge, and his relation to it remains indefeasible_"

The lodge can, therefore, take no cognizance of religious or political
offenses.

The first charge says: "a Mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the moral
law." Now, although, in a theological sense, the ten commandments are said
to embrace and constitute the moral law, because they are its best
exponent, yet jurists have given to the term a more general latitude, in
defining the moral laws to be "the eternal, immutable laws of good and
evil, to which the Creator himself, in all dispensations, conforms, and
which he has enabled human reason to discover, so far as they are
necessary for the conduct of human actions."[96] Perhaps the well known
summary of Justinian will give the best idea of what this law is, namely,
that we "should live honestly, (that is to say, without reproach,)[97]
should injure nobody, and render to every one his just due."

If such, then, be the meaning of the moral law, and if every Mason is by
his tenure obliged to obey it, it follows, that all such crimes as profane
swearing or great impiety in any form, neglect of social and domestic
duties, murder and its concomitant vices of cruelty and hatred, adultery,
dishonesty in any shape, perjury or malevolence, and habitual falsehood,
inordinate covetousness, and in short, all those ramifications of these
leading vices which injuriously affect the relations of man to God, his
neighbor, and himself, are proper subjects of lodge jurisdiction. Whatever
moral defects constitute the bad man, make also the bad Mason, and
consequently come under the category of masonic offenses. The principle is
so plain and comprehensible as to need no furt