‘How many Apprentices can dance on the head of a pin?’

    

Honestly, some guys look to be confounded.

This question was posed on Faceypage several weeks ago:

A good friend recently asked me the following great question: ‘Which is the correct reading? To learn to subdue my passions and improve myself in Masonry; or To learn, to subdue my passions, and improve myself in Masonry? One of my brothers brought this to my attention and I’m curious as to how different lodges put this into their ritual. It doesn’t change overall purpose, but is it two commands or three commands?’

You recognize the phrase from the Entered Apprentice Degree. In the Grand Lodge of New York, this appears in Part I of the Second Section. There is no ambiguity thanks to the absence of that first preposition, so it reads: “Learn to subdue my passions and improve myself in Masonry,” meaning there are two purposes, not three. In my previous grand lodge, the catechism does say “To learn to subdue my passions…” I’ve never seen a comma after “to learn” in any ritual text.

Sure, some of us came here to learn, but the Entered Apprentice emphasizes personal growth, not formal education. Instruction in thinking, speaking, and understanding the world will come in the Second Degree.

Subduing the passions is not human nature; it must be cultivated through deliberation and diligent action. That’s why we, as Free and Accepted Masons, must learn to subdue our passions and improve ourselves. Instruction in subduing the passions is revealed in the discussion of the Four Cardinal Virtues and is symbolized by the Common Gavel working tool. Capisce?

From my initiation almost twenty-nine years ago, I understood “to learn to subdue my passions” to mean something like I must train to restrain the impulses of enmity and anger; to gain a victory over myself; to be not merely kind to men of virtue, but also be indulgent and reconcilable to the injurious. Thanks, Plutarch.

In his Parallel Lives, the second century biographer, writing of the ancient Greek philosopher Dion of Syracuse, puts these words in his mouth: “...by being long conversant in the academy, I have learned to subdue my passions, and to restrain the impulses of enmity and anger. To prove that I have really gained such a victory over myself, it is not sufficient merely to be kind to men of virtue, but to be indulgent and reconcilable to the injurious.” It is possible this 1784 translation is influenced by our ritual. And you see the Four Cardinal Virtues at work here.

As for a documented entry point of this idea into Masonic ritual, it helps to consult Masonry Dissected, that early ritual exposure from 1730, which gives us reliable insight into what the lectures of the degrees sounded like at that time. Please understand that a lecture in a degree back then was not the long monologue delivered from memory that most of us in America have today, but was in question-and-answer format, with the lodge Master asking the brethren in lodge, who took turns responding. (Also, you should know Q&A dialogue lives on in our candidate examinations and Opening and Closing ceremonies.)

Query three is: What do you come here to do? 

Answer:

Not to do my proper Will,

But to subdue my Passion still;

The Rules of Masonry in hand to take,

And daily Progress therein make.

It is safe to say Masonry Dissected reports how ritual worked during the 1720s, if not earlier, and I believe much of our thinking derives from Christian life in England, for which we’d delve further back for subduing the passions.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), the famous Anglican theologian, who wrote so poetically for the common man (he was called the Shakespeare of Divines), published The Worthy Communicant in 1660. This text instructs the faithful on receiving the Eucharist, and it ranks character and conduct over knowledge of the church’s laws.

He writes:

Thou givest thy self to be the food of our souls in the wonders of the Sacrament, in the faith of thy Word, in the blessings and graces of thy Spirit: Perform that in thy Servant, which thou hast prepared and effected in thy Son; strengthen my infirmities, heal my sicknesses; give me strength to subdue my passions, to mortifie my inordinations, to kill all my sin: increase thy Graces in my soul; enkindle a bright devotion; extinguish all the fires of hell, my lust and my pride, my envy, and all my spiritual wickednesses; pardon all my sins, and fill me with thy Spirit, that by thy Spirit thou maist dwell in me, and by obedience and love I may dwell in thee, and live in the life of grace till it pass on to glory and immensity, by the power and the blessings, by the passion and intercession of the Word incarnate; whom I adore, and whom I love, and whom I will serve for ever and ever.

This is too much for a reply to a Facebook post, but if Bro. Gilbert happens to see this, I hope it helps. Two commands, not three.