THE FEENCH IN FREEMASONRY 391 



oorner-stoue of which is religious toleration, and which was peopled in 

 large measure, at first, by Puritans, Quakers, Church of England men, 

 and Pluguenots. 



The gist of the Pope's charge, and the reason for chief dread of its 

 spread among Roman Catholics, may be found in the statement of the 

 Encyclical, that Freemasonry exerts itself for this purpose, that the 

 rule of the Church should be of no weight, that its authority should be 

 as nothing in the State ; and for this reason they everywhere assert 

 and insist that sacred and civil ought to be wholly distinct. By this 

 they exclude the most wholesome virtue of the Roman Catholic relig- 

 ion from the laws and administration of a country ; and the conse- 

 quence is that they think whole States ought to be constituted outside 

 of the institutes and precepts of the church. 



In other words, the Roman Church protests against that fundamen- 

 tal principle of constitutional government, dear above almost all else 

 to the people of the United States, that Church and State should act 

 each within its proper sphere, and that with the civil government and 

 political administration of affairs the Church should have nothing to 

 do. The people of the United States do not propose to argue that with 

 the Church of Rome. 



IV 



The first permanent foothold of Freemasonry in North First Lodge i 

 America was made in the town of Boston, Mass., in the ^°^^°" '733 

 year 1733. It was then that under a dispensation issued 

 by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England to 

 Henry Price, Esq., of Boston, the First Lodge of Boston 

 and the Saint John's Grand Lodge were instituted. 



The records of the First Lodge — now called St. John's 

 Lodge— and of the other early lodges in Boston, disclose 

 a large number of Huguenot names. The following 

 names of brethren, evidently of Huguenot blood, are 

 drawn from the lists of members of St. John's lodge, with 

 the year of taking membership affixed. 



