by several learned investigators, especially by Creuzer,
connected with the hypothesis of _an ancient and highly instructed body of
priests_, having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and
communicating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and
historical knowledge, _under the veil of symbols_." What is here said only
of the Greeks is equally applicable to every other intellectual nation of
antiquity.

9. The system or doctrine of the former class has been called by Masonic
writers the "Pure or Primitive Freemasonry" of antiquity, and that of the
latter class the "Spurious Freemasonry" of the same period. These terms
were first used, if I mistake not, by Dr. Oliver, and are intended to
refer--the word _pure_ to the doctrines taught by the descendants of Noah
in the Jewish line and the word _spurious_ to his descendants in the
heathen or Gentile line.

10. The masses of the people, among the Gentiles especially, were totally
unacquainted with this divine truth, which was the foundation stone of
both species of Freemasonry, the pure and the spurious, and were deeply
immersed in the errors and falsities of heathen belief and worship.

11. These errors of the heathen religions were not the voluntary
inventions of the peoples who cultivated them, but were gradual and almost
unavoidable corruptions of the truths which had been at first taught by
Noah; and, indeed, so palpable are these corruptions, that they can be
readily detected and traced to the original form from which, however much
they might vary among different peoples, they had, at one time or another,
deviated. Thus, in the life and achievements of Bacchus or Dionysus, we
find the travestied counterpart of the career of Moses, and in the name of
Vulcan, the blacksmith god, we evidently see an etymological corruption of
the appellation of Tubal Cain, the first artificer in metals. For
_Vul-can_ is but a modified form of _Baal-Cain_, the god Cain.

12. But those among the masses--and there were some--who were made
acquainted with the truth, received their knowledge by means of an
initiation into certain sacred Mysteries, in the bosom of which it was
concealed from the public gaze.

13. These Mysteries existed in every country of heathendom, in each under
a different name, and to some extent under a different form, but always
and everywhere with the same design of inculcating, by allegorical and
symbolic teachings, the great Masonic doctri