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."
- 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)."
- A.Q.C., XXXII. Part I. p. 34.
- Ibid.
- 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).
- Yarker, The Arcane Schools, p. 437.
- Review by Yarker of Mr. A. E. Waite's book The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry in The Equinox, Vol.