And, lastly, I have shown how, at the building of the Solomonic temple, on
the invitation of the king of Israel, a large body of these architects
repaired from Tyre to Jerusalem, organized a new institution, or, rather,
a modification of the two old ones, the Primitive Freemasons among the
Israelites yielding something, and the Spurious Freemasons among the
Tyrians yielding more; the former purifying the speculative science, and
the latter introducing the operative art, together with the mystical
ceremonies with which they accompanied its administration.

It is at this epoch, then, that I place the first union of speculative and
operative Masonry,--a union which continued uninterruptedly to exist until
a comparatively recent period, to which I shall have occasion hereafter
briefly to advert.

The other branches of the Spurious Freemasonry were not, however,
altogether and at once abolished by this union, but continued also to
exist and teach their half-truthful dogmas, for ages after, with
interrupted success and diminished influence, until, in the fifth century
of the Christian era, the whole of them were proscribed by the Emperor
Theodosius. From time to time, however, other partial unions took place,
as in the instance of Pythagoras, who, originally a member of the school
of Spurious Freemasonry, was, during his visit to Babylon, about four
hundred and fifty years after the union at the temple of Jerusalem,
initiated by the captive Israelites into the rites of Temple Masonry,
whence the instructions of that sage approximate much more nearly to the
principles of Freemasonry, both in spirit and in letter, than those of any
other of the philosophers of antiquity; for which reason he is familiarly
called, in the modern masonic lectures, "an ancient friend and brother,"
and an important symbol of the order, the forty-seventh problem of Euclid,
has been consecrated to his memory.

I do not now propose to enter upon so extensive a task as to trace the
history of the institution from the completion of the first temple to its
destruction by Nebuchadnezzar; through the seventy-two years of Babylonish
captivity to the rebuilding of the second temple by Zerubbabel; thence to
the devastation of Jerusalem by Titus, when it was first introduced into
Europe; through all its struggles in the middle ages, sometimes protected
and sometimes persecuted by the church, sometimes forbidden by the law and
oftener encouraged by the monarch