RIGHT CONDUCT
99 Benevolence and Charity are the first Masonic virtues to which an Entered Apprentice is introduced on his Initiation. In the Charge which follows Initiation, the ‘solid foundation on which Freemasonry rests — the practice of every moral and social virtue’ is spelled out at length:
As a Freemason, let me recommend to your most serious contemplation the V(olume) of S(acred) L(aw), charging you to consider it as the unerring standard of truth and justice and to regulate your actions by the divine precepts it contains. Therein you will be taught the important duties you owe to God, to your neighbour and to yourself...
As a citizen of the world, I am to enjoin you to be exemplary in the discharge of your civil duties...
As an individual, let me recommend the practice of every domestic duty as well as public virtue; let Prudence direct you, Temperance chasten you, Fortitude support you, and Justice be the guide of all your actions...
And as a last general recommendation, let me exhort you to dedicate yourself to such pursuits as may at once enable you to be respectable in life, useful to mankind, and an ornament to the society of which you have this day become a member...
100 In all Lodges under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge, the Bible lies open and it is this V S L to which the mind of the Christian Freemason is drawn. Yet the Bible is immeasurably more than a guide to good and proper moral conduct. It is the record of God’s revelation of himself to man and his incarnation in human form to achieve the redemption of man from sin by his own self-offering on the Cross. The First Degree lecture, however, speaks of attaining the ‘Ethereal Mansion’ through the exercise of Faith, Hope and Charity.
In the Ritual of the Second Degree, the candidate is instructed:
But as we are not all operative Masons, but rather free and accepted, or speculative, we apply these ts [tools] to our morals. In this sense, the Sq [Square] teaches morality, the L [Level] equality, and the PR [Plumb Rule] justness and uprightness of life and actions. Thus by square conduct, level steps, and upright intentions we hope to ascend to those immortal mansions whence all goodness emanates.
At the conclusion in the ceremony of Raising, or the ritual of the Third of the Craft Degrees, the newly ‘raised’ Master Mason is told:
Thus the working tools of a Master Mason teach us to bear in mind, and act according to, the laws of our Divine Creator, that, when we shall be summoned from this sublunary abode, we may ascend to the Grand Lodge above, where the world’s Great Architect lives and reigns for ever.
The question arises: Is the Master Mason being assured that if he lives a good and moral life he will inevitably ‘ascend’ to live with his Creator? Is this really what is meant? Comforting though it may be for some, it appears to have the marks of a familiar English heresy — Pelagianism —since the grace and forgiveness of God in Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit are being ignored. The Working Group cannot therefore accept the statement in the United Grand Lodge’s leaflet (referred to in paras. 58 and 73) that Freemasonry ‘does not claim to lead to salvation by works, by secret knowledge, or by any other means’. It seems to the Working Group that in the light of the extracts quoted above, salvation by works is both implicit and explicit in the rituals.