Speculative Freemasonry 227historical foundations of the scripture should not be disregarded;
Abraham, David, Solomon, and all other biblical characters truly
existed. But God made these men the heralds of his Son yet to come
upon the earth. Therefore, it is necessary to search through all they said
and did, and in doing so, we will find Christ. "The Old Testament,"
Saint Augustine said, "is nothing other than the New Testament cov-
ered with a veil and the New Testament is merely the old one unveiled."
The Divine Plan transposed into the tangible figure of Christ helps
us to move from the macrocosmic symbolism of the temple to its micro-
cosmic symbolism. Even more, in giving resonance to the millenary
symbolism of this point, Christianity gave it new life.
The Romanesque church, inspired by Solomon's Temple and the
image of the cosmos, is constructed on human measures such as they
most notably were given in Saint Hildegard von Bingen's Liber divino-
rum operum simplicis hominis. Of course, the form of a cross, man's
image, was an ancient symbol used for the blueprint of a temple, the most
grandiose example of which is perhaps the Temple of Luxor in Egypt.
But never was the harmonic correspondence of Universe-Temple-Man
invested with such high significance as it was in Christianity, for while
the Romanesque church offers the image of man, it also presents, first
and foremost, through the perfections of its measurements, the symbol
of the Perfect Man, meaning Christ, Incarnation of God.
This brings us to the foundation of Christian teachings. Man is the
true temple of God, for which Solomon's Temple is a symbol. "Know
you not," Saint Paul asked, "that you are the temple of God?"
(Corinthians 1, 3:16.) "Are you not aware that your body is the temple
of the Holy Spirit within you?" (Corinthians I, 6:19) It is the same
truth, an affirmation of God's immanence, that Saint Bernard would
proclaim in his second sermon devoted to the dedication of the church.
He makes an allusion there to the visible temple built to shelter
humankind, but in which God dwells not as he resides in his image,
meaning within man.
The oldest known mention of Solomon's Temple as origin and con-
tainer of the art of masonry is found in the Cooke Manuscript from the
fourteenth century.^1 Most of the later versions of the old charges repeat
and develop this same theme. One noteworthy fact is that the same