Heads of a Charge proper to be given to a newly-admitted Brother; pointing out the Moral and the Masonic Duties imposed upon An Address made to a Body of Free and Accepted Masons; point- ing out the Virtues which they ought to cultivate, and the Vices MASONIC THE MANUAL. ARGUMENT I. ON THE NATURE AND NECESSITY OF THE MASONIC SOCIETY, AND THE DUTY INCUMBENT ON MASONS TO ACT AS UPRIGHT AND HONOURABLE MEN. If we duly consider Man, we shall find him a social being; and, in effect, such is his nature, that he cannot well subsist alone: for out of society he could neither preserve life, display nor perfect his faculties and talents, nor attain any real or solid happiness. Had not the God of Nature intended him for society, he would never have formed him subject to such a variety of wants and infirmities. This would have been highly inconsistent with divine wisdom, and the regularity of divine omniscience: on the contrary, the very necessities of human nature unite men together, and fix them in a state of mutual dependence on one another. For, select the most perfect and accomplished of the human race,-a Hercules or a Sampson, a Bacon or a Boyle, a Locke or a Newton; nay, we need not except Solomon himself,-and suppose him fixed alone, even in this happy country, where Nature, from her bounteous stores, seems to have formed another Eden, and we should soon find him deplorably wretched; and, by being destitute of social intercourse, deprived of every shadow of happiness. Therefore, for the establishment of our felicity, Providence, in its general system, with regard to the government of this world, has ordained a reciprocal connection between all the various parts of it, which cannot subsist without a mutual dependence; and, from the human species down to the lowest parts of the creation, one chain unites all nature. This is excellently observed, and beautifully described, by a celebrated poet, in the following lines: God in the nature of each being founds So from the first eternal order ran, And creature link'd to creature, man to man.-POPE. Under these circumstances, men must of necessity form associations for their comfort and defence, as well as for their very existence. Had revelation been altogether silent on this point, yet we might, by the mere light of nature, have easily discovered it to be our duty to be kindly affectioned one to another. No system can be more agreeable to the common sentiments of mankind, nothing built upon surer terms of equity and reason, than that I should treat my fellow-creature with the same candour and benevolence, with the same affection and sincerity, I should expect myself. It is true this was not delivered in express words till the time of Moses, nor so fully explained and understood as at the coming of the prophets. Yet we have great reason to believe that this was the first law revealed to Adam, immediately upon his fall, and was a genuine precept of uncorrupted nature. That every one is naturally an enemy to his neighbour, was the malevolent assertion of the late philosopher Hobbs, one, who, vainly thinking himself deeper versed in the principles of man than any before him, and, having miserably corrupted his own mind by many wild extravagancies, concluded, from such acquired corruption, that all men were naturally the same. How to reconcile a tenet of this kind with the justness and goodness of a Supreme Being, seems a task too difficult for the most knowing person to execute; and the author himself was contented barely to lay it down without the least show of argument in its defence. That God should be a being of infinite justice, creating us in a necessary state of dependence on, and at the same time bring us into the world with inclinations of enmity and cruelty towards each other, is a contradiction so palpable as no man can assert consistently with a reverential notion of his Maker. And were there no sufficient proofs against it, even from our imperfect ideas of the Creator, the very laws of nature would confute it. By the law of nature, I would be understood to mean, that will of God which is discoverable to us by the light of reason, without the |