The Origins of Freemasonry and the Invention of Tradition
of the Goose and Gridiron Lodge . 51 Others continued to wonder what secrets lay behind freemasonry . Indeed , it seems that the search for an ur-religion , something that preoccupied such early eighteenth-century figures as Anderson and Stukeley , is a fundamental theme in the history of freemasonry . 52 At the end of the eighteenth century , writers like Thomas Paine used historical narratives of freemasonry to attack Christianity . 53 Paine suggested that Christianity was a blasphemous perversion of the sun religion , and that freemasonry preserved the secrets of the primeval religion . The Yorkshire radical and social activist Godfrey Higgins became a freemason in order to investigate these claims more deeply . With the backing of the Duke of Sussex , who was also deeply interested in the origins of religion , Higgins explored the records of the Grand Lodge in York and took away early copies of the Old Charges . In Anacalypsis , published posthumously in 1834 , Higgins used these documents as evidence that freemasonry embodied rituals of the ancient sun religion of which the masons were the high priests . These claims were popularised by the radical writer and campaigner Richard Carlile , who published a substantial collection of masonic rituals in his periodical The Republican in 1825 .
These esoteric views of the traditions of freemasonry profoundly influenced the development of freemasonry in the first half of the nineteenth century . One thread in the complex politics surrounding the Duke of Sussex ’ s promotion of the union of the two Grand Lodges in England was his interest in reviving the ancient religion described by his associate Higgins . 54 Perhaps even more influential was the reaction to Higgins ’ s work by George Oliver , an associate and supporter of Robert Crucefix . Crucefix and his party were thorns in the side of the Duke of Sussex as they campaigned to modernise freemasonry with the publication of masonic periodicals containing reports on the proceedings of Grand Lodge and the promotion of charitable campaigns such as home for elderly masons . 55 Oliver developed a Christian riposte to the deist theories of radicals such as Higgins and Carlile . 56 Oliver accepted their assumptions about the antiquity of religion , but sought to show that early religions were part of
51 William Preston , State of Facts : Being a Narrative of Some Late Proceedings in the Society of Free Masons , Respecting William Preston ( London : n . p ., 1778 ), reprinted in British Freemasonry 1717-1813 , vol . 1 , Institutions , ed . Cecile Revauger ( Abingdon : Routledge , 2016 ), pp . 241-300 .
52 David Boyd Haycock , William Stukeley : Science , Religion and Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England ( Woodbridge : The Boydell Press , 2002 ).
53 For all the following , see Andrew Prescott , '" The Cause of Humanity ": Charles Bradlaugh and Freemasonry ', Ars Quatuor Coronatorum , 116 ( 2003 ), pp . 26-28 , and Andrew Prescott , ‘ Godfrey Higgins and his Anacalypsis ’, Library and Museum News for the Friends of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry , 12 ( Spring 2005 ), pp . 2-6 .
54 Prescott , ' Godfrey Higgins '.
55 R . S . E . Sandbach , Priest and Freemason : the Life of George Oliver ( Addlestone : Lewis Masonic , 1988 ); Susan Mitchell Sommers , ' Robert Thomas Crucefix , Redux ', Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism 3:1 ( 2012 ), pp . 73-97 .
56 For the following , see Sandbach , Priest and Freemason , pp . 32-42 , 122-48 .
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