How soon Coxe acted on the authority given him is not certain, but the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, published by Benjamin Franklin, contains many references to Masonic affairs as early as July, 1730. Just when Franklin himself became interested in Masonry is not of record--he was initiated in 1730-31[138]--but he was a leader, at that day, of everything that would advance his adopted city; and the "Junto," formed in 1725, often inaccurately called the Leathern-Apron Club, owed its origin to him. In a Masonic item in the _Gazette_ of December 3, 1730, he refers to "several Lodges of Free-masons" in the Province, and on June 9, 1732, notes the organization of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, of which he was appointed a Warden, at the Sun Tavern, in Water Street. Two years later Franklin was elected Grand Master, and the same year published an edition of the _Book of Constitutions_--the first Masonic book issued in America. Thus Masonry made an early advent into the new world, in which it has labored so nobly, helping to lay the foundations and building its own basic principles into the organic law of the greatest of all republics. II Returning to the Grand Lodge of England, we have now to make record of ridicule and opposition from without, and, alas, of disloyalty and discord within the order itself. With the publication of the _Book of Constitutions_, by Anderson, in 1723, the platform and principles of Masonry became matters of common knowledge, and its enemies were alert and vigilant. None are so blind as those who will not see, and not a few, unacquainted with the spirit of Masonry, or unable to grasp its principle of liberality and tolerance, affected to detect in its secrecy some dark political design; and this despite the noble charge in the _Book of Constitutions_ enjoining politics from entering the lodge--a charge hardly less memorable than the article defining its attitude toward differing religious creeds, and which it behooves Masons to keep always in mind as both true and wise, especially in our day when effort is being made to inject the religious issue into politics: /#[4,66] In order to preserve peace and harmony no private piques or quarrels must be brought within the door of the Lodge, far less any quarrel about Religions or Nations or State-Policy, we being only, as Masons, of the Catholic Religion above mentioned (the religion in which all men agree); we are also of all Nations, Tongues, Kindreds and Languages, and are resolved against all Politics as what never yet conduced to the welfare of the Lodge, nor ever will. This charge has always been actively enjoined and observed; but especially ever since the Reformation in Britain or the dissent and secession of these Nations from the communion of Rome. #/