Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry — John Shaqi
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of FreemasonryPike, Albert
Religion
Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Pike, Albert
Freemasons
Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand; and Persecution
matures them both. A people content with the thoughts made for them by
the priests of a church will be content with Royalty by Divine
Right,--the Church and the Throne mutually sustaining each other. They
will smother schism and reap infidelity and indifference; and while the
battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only sink the more
apathetically into servitude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally
interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed by helpless exhaustion.
Despotism is not difficult in any land that has only known one master
from its childhood; but there is no harder problem than to perfect and
perpetuate free government by the people themselves; for it is not one
king that is needed: all must be kings. It is easy to set up Masaniello,
that in a few days he may fall lower than before. But free government
grows slowly, like the individual human faculties; and like the
forest-trees, from the inner heart outward. Liberty is not only the
common birth-right, but it is lost as well by non-user as by mis-user.
It depends far more on the universal effort than any other human
property. It has no single shrine or holy well of pilgrimage for the
nation; for its waters should burst out freely from the whole soil.
The free popular power is one that is only known in its strength in the
hour of adversity: for all its trials, sacrifices and expectations are
its own. It is trained to think for itself, and also to act for itself.
When the enslaved people prostrate themselves in the dust before the
hurricane, like the alarmed beasts of the field, the free people stand
erect before it, in all the strength of unity, in self-reliance, in
mutual reliance, with effrontery against all but the visible hand of
God. It is neither cast down by calamity nor elated by success.
This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and of
performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the
functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the individual
moral vigor.
And the maxim is no less true than old, that eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty. It is curious to observe the universal pretext by
which the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties. It is
stated in the statutes of Edward II., that the justices and the sheriff
should no longer be elected by the people, on account of the riots and
dissensions which had arisen. The same reason was given long before for
the suppression of popular election of the bishops; and there is a
witness to this untruth in the yet older times, when Rome lost her
freedom, and her indignant citizens declared that tumultuous liberty is
better than disgraceful tranquillity.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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