Scott Foster
speaker
577 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 7 Aug
Scott Foster’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The existing lodges of the Freemasons had an inexpressible charm for Ashmole, and in sixteen forty six he, together with Colonel Mainwaring, became members of the craft.
He perfected it, added various mystic symbols to those already in use, and gave partly a scriptural, partly an Egyptian form to his jargon and ceremonies.
The Rosequ or Rosacrucian degree, a society formed after the ideal of Bacon's new Atlantis appeared, and the various grades of companion, master, secret master, perfect master, elect, and Irish master, were either remodeled or newly formed, as we know them now.
Charles I was decapitated in sixteen forty nine, and Ashmole, being a royalist to the corps, soon turned English Masonry from the purposes of Cromwell and his party, and made the craft, which was always strong in Scotland, a means to upset the government of the protector, and to bring back the Stuarts.
Now Hiram became the murdered Charles, who was to be avenged instead of James Mole, and the reconstruction of the temple meant the restoration of the exiled house of Stuart.
On the accession of Charles II, the craft was, of course, not treated with disfavor, and when the misfortunes of James II drove him from the throne, the partisans of the House of Stuart had renewed recourse to it as a means of secret organization against the enemy.
To bring back the pretender, the Jacobites formed a Scotch and an English and Irish constitution.
The English constitution embraced the mother lodge of York and that of London, which latter separated from York, and with a new spring of action started into life as the Grand Lodge of London in seventeen seventeen.
The Jacobite nobles brought it to France chiefly to aid their attempts in favor of the Stuarts.
They opened a lodge called the Amity and Fraternity in Dunkirk in seventeen twenty one, and in seventeen twenty five the Lord Derwentwater opened the famous mother lodge of Paris.
Masonry soon spread to Holland in seventeen thirty, to Germany in seventeen thirty six, to Ireland in seventeen twenty nine, and afterwards to Italy, Spain, and Europe generally.
All its lodges were placed under the Grand Lodge of England and remained so for many years.
I mention these facts and dates in order to let you see that precisely at the period when Freemasonry was thus extending abroad, the infidelity, which had been introduced by Baile and openly advocated by Voltaire, was being disseminated largely amongst the corrupt nobility of France and of Europe generally.
It was, as we have already seen, a period of universal license and morals with the great in every country, and the members of the Grand Lodge in England were generally men of easy virtue, whose example was agreeable to the continental libertines.
Voltaire found that the masonry to which he had been affiliated in London was a capital means of diffusing his doctrines amongst the courtiers, the men of letters, and the public of France.
It was like himself, the incarnation of hypocrisy and lying.
It came recommended by an appearance of philanthropy and of religion, and
Ashmole gave it the open Bible, together with the square and compass.
It called the world to witness that it believed in God, the great architect of the universe.
It had an open eye, which may be taken for God's all seeing providence or for the impossibility of a sworn mason escaping by fate if he revealed the secrets of the craft or failed to obey the orders he was selected to carry out.
Showing 401–420 of 577 · page 21 of 29
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