THE OLD CHARGES OF BRITISH FREEMASONS.
84
The MS.
begins, as already observed, with
an Invocation ^ to
"
God our
glorious Fadir
"
tone of so intensely religious a
character as that of Xo. 1), and then proceeds to narrate the main features of the usual versions,
"
"the whiche thingis (to use the compiler's words) "if I scholde reherse him hit were to longe
(but not to the Trinity as in the ordinary forms, neither
and
to telle
to wryte."
is its
comes the science of geometry and how it was founded, a
"
the causer of all the other sciences enumerated (as in No.
First of all
"
claim being set up of its being
15), the reasons urged in support of this distinction being so numerous, that we shall do well
"
to take them for granted and to admit that,
Crafte ]\Iasonry hath the moste notabilite and
and seyd in storiall." Adam, Noah, Lamech,