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borrowed by them from the Egyptian custom * of veiling their religious mysteries under hieroglyphics. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico" is a maxim that was acted upon by most people long before it was enuntiated by Tacitus ; but there can be little doubt that the Rosicrucians deceived themselves to a certain extent as well as others, so much more easily are men led away by sensible signs than by abstract principles.

It would be tedious, and quite unnecessary for the present purpose, to enter into all the Rosicrucian symbols. The principal, and those which alone we shall have occasion to refer to, were the globe, the circle, the compasses, the square, the triangle, the level, and the plummet. In the Atalanta Fugiens of Maier, (Emblem xxi.) we find the most of them. A sage is employed in the manufacture of the philosopher's stone, as may be

* But this love of the mysterious was not the only cause that led to the use of symbols. Men are for the most part unable, or at least unwilling, to entertain abstract ideas, and they must have things presented in a visible and tangible form before it has any existence for them. Hence in all times has arisen the popular tendency to multiply the ONE into many by giving form and substance to his attributes; and thus the worship of the Godhead, which was in all probability common to most nations, has in so many instances degenerated into polytheism. Amongst the Jews there was a constant struggle between this natural weakness and the ordinances of pure theism; they were for ever lapsing into idol-worship in spite of the most terrible denunciations, and the same feeling has led the Catholics on so many occasions to adopt under another form so much of the pagan principle; where the one deified human beings, the others elevated them to Saints and martyrs and implored their intercession. Nor is it just to visit this with any degree of harshness upon the latter. It is scarcely possible to maintain the pure and abstract idea of the Deity in the minds of uneducated men; so that one of two things seems to be inevitable; they must either have something tangible presented to their senses, or they become the wildest visionaries and fanatics, with a belief as incomprehensible to themselves as it is to others.

learnt from the two-fold inscription-Latin and German -at the top of the page.* Indeed without some such

help it would hardly have been possible to guess what was intended by the engraving. Within a small circle stand a man and woman in the primitive costume of Paradise, just born as we may suppose by some magic process, and intended to symbolize the first step of the experiment. About this couple is a square, enclosed in a triangle, and about the triangle again is a second circle, which the sage is carefully measuring with a pair of Brobdinagian compasses, if the relative proportions of the objects around are to go for any thing. Upon the floor are scattered the other emblems of his occupation.

Thus far we have seen Rosicrucians, but no traces whatever of a Rosicrucian lodge or college. Buhle however positively asserts † that, though such a thing was a mere fable in Germany, it became a positive fact, that is to say, did really exist,-in England. But of this he offers no proof whatever, and an assertion of such a kind is hardly to be taken without some sort of proof, either negative or affirmative. I can find no traces of it. The thing that comes nearest to it is the " Astrologer's Feast," the existence of which is proved by a passage in Ashmole's Diary, August 8th. "I being at the Astrologer's Feast was chosen steward for the next year.” ‡

* "Fac ex mare et fæminâ circulum, inde quadrangulum, hinc triangulum, fac circulum, et habebis lap. Philosophorum."-i.e. "Make of man and woman a circle; thence, a square; thence a triangle; form a circle; and you have the Philosopher's Stone."Nothing on earth can be more easy than the complying with these conditions, which of course are to be considered as the emblems merely of something unexpressed. Not belonging to the Brotherhood we are unable to interpret these high matters.

+ Buhle," Ueber den Ursprung der R. C. und Freimaurer," p. 244. Life of Elias Ashmole, p. 310. 8vo. London, 1774.

Still, though no Rosicrucian college existed in England more than in Germany, there was little want of Rosicrucians, that being quite another thing, as we have shown already. The leaders of the sect, Dr. Flood, John Pordage, and the two Nortons, all of whom are duly recorded by Wood in his Athenæ Oxonienses, had the mania of proselytizing strong upon them, and were indefatigable in the promulgation of their doctrines. Flood, by far the ablest of them, had the misfortune to fall into the hands of Gassendi, who took up the cudgels for his friend, Mersenne, when the latter had been routed, and with no little loss, by the doctor. But though Gassendi did his best to castigate Flood, he did not altogether spare his friend, Mersenne, even while throwing his ægis over him-whether from candour or from policy is another question. Remarking upon the acerbity of Flood's style, he yet delicately hints to Mersenne, that he has given a handle for it himself, inasmuch as he has been somewhat pungent in his own remarks; and he then goes on to say that much as he admires his zeal, still it is very hard for any one living in a Christian land to hear himself called " foul magician, the doctor and teacher of a horrid stinking magic," to say nothing of the charge of heresy and atheism.* These are things, he says, which might stir the patience of a Rufinus or a Hieronymus; and possibly the reader will be of the same opinion.

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* "Sane verò hoc, mi Mersenne, negare non licet, quin tu ipse ita scribendi ansam aliquam feceris. Reverà enim dici potes paulo acriùs illum tetigisse. Ac zelus quidem, quo evectus es, commendari cum debeat, attamen te latere non potest quin admodùm durum sit viventi in Christiano orbe appellari Cacomagum, Hæretico-Magum, seu, fætidæ et horrendæ Magia Doctorem et propagatorem; audire, non esse ferendum hujusmodi doctorem impune...ut nihil dicam de Atheïsmo atque Hæresi quam tu quoque objicis Fluddo!" Fluddana Philosophic Examen.-P. Gassendi Opera, tom. iii. p. 215, folio. Lugduni, 1658.

A conflict begun in so much bitterness was not likely to die away for want of fuel. In a short time it spread, like an Irish fray, from individuals to the multitude, and what Benedict styles "the paper-bullets of the brain," flew fast and thick on all sides. Naude, Valentine Alberti, Irenæus Agnostus, and Heaven knows how many others,* dull and witty, learned and unlearned, credulous and sceptical, now poured like two opposing torrents into the field, 'till, after the expenditure of much ink and some humour on the part of the assailants, the poor Rosicrusians were utterly put to the rout. So complete, indeed, was their discomfiture, that they were fain to drop a name which had become contemptible, and shroud themselves under the title of Sapientes. "We R. C." says Flood, in reply to the terrible Gassendi, who had been soundly pommelling him in his Examen-"We brothers R. C., formerly thus called, but whom we now term Sapientes, that name being laid aside as odious to wretched mortals covered with the veil of ignorance," &c.

But even this appellation does not seem to have lasted long, or to have been very general, for we soon lose every trace of it, and most probably because it was swallowed

* As some readers may be curious on this subject, I subjoin the names of a few only of such publications. 1. Rosea-Crucis, das ist Bedenken der gesambten Societet von dem verdekten scribtore F. Menapio, 12mo. 1619. The place of publication not mentioned, but two other similar tracts form part of the same volume. Menapius was the assumed name of Alberti, and the name of Schweighardt is jestingly affixed to the third tract. 2. Fons Gratiæ, &c. Durch Irenæum Agnostum, 1619,-no place of publication, 12mo. 3. Portus Tranquillitatis, &c. by the same, 1620, 12mo. 4. Chymische Hochzeit, 12mo. 1616. This is one of Andrea's anonymous attacks upon the Fraternity.

"Fratres, inquam, R.C. (olim sic dicti), quos nos hodiè Sapientes vocamus, omisso illo nomine tanquam odioso, miseris mortalibus velo ignorantiæ obductis, et in oblivione hominum jam fere sepulto." Clavis Philosophia, p. 50, folio, Francofurti, 1633.

up in the new Fraternity of Freemasons, which now seems to have sprung out of Rosicrucianism and the yearly meeting of Astrologers. It is about this time that we have the first authentic reports of Masonic Lodges in the modern acceptation of the term, not as designating a guild of workmen, but a body of philosophers with whom building and its various implements were used only as a myth, as external symbols, the outward and visible signs of concealed truth. A variety of concurrent circumstances seem to prove this; and particularly the quiet extinction of the Sapientes or Sophees, and as also of the Astrologers' Meeting, the sudden recognized appearance of lodges, and the avowed character of the first known members as Paracelsists; for Fludd, Ashmole, Pordage, and others, were all ardent Rosicrucians in principle, though the name was no longer owned by them. Still this does not give us the date of the first Freemasons with the exactness that might be desired, and I fear it will be in vain to look for it. The German Freemasons at Wilhelmsbad in 1782, and the Lodge of the Contract Social at Paris, in 1787, each summoned a general meeting of the Brethren from all countries, to enquire into the time and manner of their origin, but, as might have been expected, to no purpose. The founders in their wish to establish a descent from the oldest times, as the best means of sanctifying their claims to superior wisdom, had taken care to leave no traces of their origin. In the absence, therefore, of all that is positive, we must try what can be done by negative proof and by the help of circumstantial evidence; we shall thus come quite near enough to the period of their origin for any useful purpose. Through the rest of this enquiry we shall use the word, mason, as designating the workman, and the word Freemason, as signifying the philosopher who employs masonry for the mythus of his order; thus too, we shall adopt guild to express the society of the former, and lodge or brotherhood, to denote

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