WILLIAM IMBRIE AND WILLIAM GEDDES, THE POOR MAN’S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE WHOLE UNWARRANTABLE PROCEDURE OF THE ASSOCIATE SESSION IN GLASGOW, ANENT HIM AND OTHER S IN SEEKING A CONFESSION OF THE MASON AND CHAPMAN OATHS (1754)

William Imbrie ’s pamphlet2 is a contribution by a Glasgow stonemason to a controversy that had emerged following secessions from the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland in the mid-eighteenth century. In 1733 what became known as the Secession Church split from the established Church of Scotland , denouncing it for allowing the civil powers to control the appointment of parish ministers. The existence of masonic secrets and oaths had been widely known in Scotland for more than a century under the name of the ‘Mason Word’. The term, though in the singular form, covered much more than one word, just as the term the ‘Word of God’ was used to refer to the whole of the Bible. However, in the Secession Church controversy the term 'mason word' is generally avoided, ‘mason oath’ being preferred. The term ‘the word’ was, it seems, to be reserved for the Bible, and the masons’ use of it to describe their secrets seen to verge on blasphemy.