[348.] Dr. Anderson, a native of Aberdeen and at this period minister of the Presbyterian Church in Swallow Street, and Dr. Desaguliers, of French Protestant descent, who had taken holy orders in England and in this same year of 1717 lectured before George I, who rewarded him with a benefice in Norfolk (Dictionary of National Biography, articles on James Anderson and John Theophilus Desaguliers).
[349.] The Free Mason's Vindication, being an answer to a scandalous libel entitled (sic) The Grand Mystery of the Free Masons discover'd, etc. (Dublin, 1725). It is curious that this reply is to be found in the British Museum (Press mark 8145, h. I. 44), but not the book itself. Yet Mr. Waite thinks it sufficiently important to include in a "Chronology of the Order," in his Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, I. 335.
[350.] Gentleman's Magazine for April 1737.
[351.] Dates given in A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. pp. 11, 12, and Deschamps, Les Sociétés Secrétes et la Société, III. 29. The writer of the paper in A.Q.C. appears not to recognize the authorship of the second work L'Ordre des Francs-Maçons trahi; but on p. xxix of this book the signature of Abbé Pérau appears in the masonic cypher of the period derived from the masonic word LUX. This cypher is, of course, now well known. It will be found on p. 73 of Clavel's Histoire pittoresque.
[352.] The British Museum possesses no earlier edition of this work than that of 1797, but the first edition must have appeared at least thirty-five years earlier, as A Free Mason's Answer to the suspected Author of ... Jachin and Boaz, of which a copy may be found in the British Museum (Press mark 112, d. 41), is dated 1762. This book bears on the title-page the following quotation from Shakespeare:
"Oh, that Heaven would put in every honest Hand a Whip to lash the Rascal naked through the World."
[353.] The author of Jachin and Boaz says in the 1797 edition that in reply to this work he has received "several anonymous Letters, containing the lowest Abuse and scurrilous Invectives; nay some have proceeded so far as to threaten his Person. He requests the Favour of all enraged Brethren, who shall chuse to display their Talents for the future, that they will be so kind as to pay the Postage of their Letters for there can be no Reason why he should put up with their ill Treatment and pay the Piper into the Bargain. Surely there must be something in this Book very extraordinary; a something they cannot digest, thus to excite the Wrath and Ire of these hot-brained Mason-bit Gentry." One letter he has received calls him "a Scandalous Stinking Pow Catt (sic)."
[354.] A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 34.
[355.] Ibid.
[356.] Ibid., p. 15. Mackey also thinks that R.A. was introduced in 1740, but that before that date it formed part of the Master's degree (Lexicon of Freemasonry, p. 299).