cording to his own account is perfect in all kinds of knowledge, yet so extremely ignorant as to blunder Pytagore, the French pronunciation of Pythagoras, into Peter Gower, and mistaking the Phoenicians for the Venetians, and Croton in Greece for Groton in England. The pseudo-Locke indeed observes in his notes that this might arise from the ignorance of a monkish clerk, deceived by similarity of sounds, but how could this be when the original MS. is stated to have been by Henry the Sixth, and the monk, if there were any monk in the case, must have been a transcriber?

Scarcely less surprising is it that so profound a master of the English language as Locke, and one of such multifarious learning, should be puzzled by the word, Abrac,* which any moderately-informed schoolboy could have told him was an abbreviation of abracadabra. But these are trifles. If this document be authentic the heathen Pythagoras, the believer in the metempsychosis, was a Freemason, and then what becomes of the Christianity of the order? surely they will not pretend that the doctrines of Christ were known from the time of Adam downwards by a set of men, who kept the secret to themselves. Allowing them to get over this stumbling-block -no easy matter-what will they say to the next difficulty arising out of this precious document? If it be true, the Freemasons received from God "the arte of finding neue artes"—" the arte of wonder werkynge”—the art "of foresayinge thynges to comme," i.e. of prediction-"the arte of chaunges," i.e. of transmuting metals-and "the wey of wynnynge the facultye of Abrac," i.e. of Abracadabrawill the Freemasons pretend that they still possess such secrets? or will they tell us that while they have so carefully preserved their trash of symbols-their plummets, their globes, and their death's-heads-with all their oral

*Or Abrax, i.e. Abraxis, another name for Abracadabra.

explanations, from the time of Solomon, they have lost the more valuable parts of their mystery since the reign of Henry the Sixth? nay will they affirm that they believe any human beings at any period could prophecy, and make gold? Yet one of these things they must do, or allow the paper to be spurious. If they give up its authenticity, then have they lost the only link that united. them historically to the working guilds, and the consequences of that we have already seen; if they maintain it to be genuine, then they are manifest charlatans who pretend, or did pretend, to the possession of the philosopher's stone. They had therefore much better abandon this unlucky document, even though by so doing they at the same time resign all connection with the guilds.

Another thing, which must strike every reader of tolerable information, is the monstrous pretence to every sort of knowledge, which according to their own account, they derived from the Jews in the time of Solomon. learned Thomas Burnet,* no very willing witness, admits that the Jews knew nothing of mathematics or philoso

The

*"Notum est vero," says the learned, but not very philosophic, Thomas, "in disciplinis Mathematicis aut Philosophicis nunquam præcelluisse hanc gentem, neque in cæterarum artium studiis, aut id genus ullo humani ingenii eximio fœtu... Quæ autem apud ipsos erant scholæ et academiæ pristinæ, non tam ad encyclopædia studia, ut solent hodie, formatæ et compositæ erant, quàm ad religionis instituta et dona prophetica imbibenda. Nulla enim gens per terrarum orbem, nullus populus, tantùm abundabat prophetis ac viris cælesti spiritu tactis, quantùm Judæi; ut ipsi solo et climati vis aliqua divina inhæsisse videretur."-Archæologia Philosophica, p. 59, 8vo. London, 1733. If Burnet had possessed only half as much common sense as he undoubtedly did learning, he would not have been surprised at the spiritual tendencies of the Jews, nor would he have sought for the cause of them in the soil or climate. When Moses placed the temporal rule over his people in the hands of the priesthood, he effectually provided for such a result.

phy, or indeed, of any other science, but comforts himself with observing that no people abounded so much in prophets and inen imbued with the celestial spirit-a somewhat awkward testimony, since it supposes the union of the highest spiritual gifts with the profoundest ignorance. Burnet, however, had good authority for what he said. We find Apollonius Molo, as quoted by Josephus, roundly declaring that the Jews were the most foolish of all barbarians, and had contributed nothing whatever to the useful arts. And yet this is the race from whom the Freemasons got their pretended superiority of scientific knowledge, the claims to which they have after all been forced to abandon.*

But though I am quite satisfied of the forgery, it still serves to prove the feelings of the age in which it was fabricated, and distinctly shows what the Freemasons of the period wished the world to believe of their craft. In this respect it is highly valuable, for, being so purely and wholly Rosicrucian as to identify the two fraternities, the only question remaining is, which was the first? Now we have already shown the date of the Rosicrucians, so far as they can be called a fraternity, without any fixed place of meeting, and the Freemasons have never been able to produce any record of their lodges of so early a period by many years. Whatever meetings they speak of before that time, were, for ought they can show to the contrary, mere guilds. The inference is unavoidable. It may perhaps, be urged that the word, freemason, is of old date. No doubt of it. But the word free meant no more with the operative masons than it did with any other Λέγει δὲ καὶ ἀφυεσάτους εἶναι τῶν βαρβάρων. Καὶ διὰ τέτο μηδὲν εἰς τὸν βίον εύρημα συμβεβλῆσθαι μόνες.” F. Josephi Contra Apionem. Lib. ii. sect. 14. As a matter of course, Josephus, when quoting this testimony against the Jews, stoutly denies the truth

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guild-nanely, that the apprentice had passed his time, and was now free of his craft.

Nothing could have been more artful on the part of the pseudo-philosophers than this mixing of themselves up with a body of men like the masons. Nobody could deny that builders had existed from very remote times, and hence, if the two could be blended to the eye of the world, their antiquity would be established. To effect this, they, or rather the Rosicrucians, from whom they took the idea, used Solomon's temple and the various implements of the builder, as the myth of their new order. Crafty as the plan might be, it was yet liable to some objections which have been already noticed——it derived a scheme of Christian morals from Jews and idolators, and preserved it for ages by the same means.

It will scarcely add to the force of what has just been stated, but the fact is that even the guilds, although much older than the lodges, are yet not antient in the common acceptation of the word. The first thing of the kind, so far as antiquarian industry has been able to trace it, was in the reign of Henry the Sixth, when a company of Italian masons was especially licensed by a papal bull, while in Germany the first guild is supposed to have arisen in 1452, out of the building of the celebrated cathedral at Strasburgh. They may have been earlier, but this is not very likely to have been the case. The union of men of any trade or occupation would hardly take place 'till the pursuits themselves had acquired some degree of public importance. The main question, however, is not at all affected by considerations of this kind. The utter impossibility of uniting the mythus with the craft itself is too evident to make this of the least importance; and, indeed, nothing but the eagerness for blending themselves with antiquity could have led them into the error of basing

themselves on an art, to which Christians have contributed so little. The five orders of architecture belong to the heathen Greeks; and the Gothic style, it is well known, has come to us from the Persians.*

What has been said will probably be considered by most readers quite sufficient to prove that the Freemasons are not anterior to the Rosicrucians; and their principles, so far as they were avowed about the middle of the seventeenth century, being identical, it is fair to presume that the Freemasons were in reality, the first incorporated body of Rosicrucians or Sapientes.

In the "Fama of Andrea," we have the first sketch of a constitution, which bound by oath the members to mutual secrecy, which proposed higher and lower grades, yet levelled all worldly distinctions in the common bonds of brotherhood, and which opened its privileges to all classes, making only purity of mind and purpose the condition of reception. The emblems of the two brotherhoods are the same in every respect-the plummet, the level, the compasses, the cross, the rose, and all the rest of the symbolic trumpery, which the Rosicrucians named in their writings as the insignia of their imaginary associations, and which they also would have persuaded a credulous world concealed truths ineffable by mere language; both too derived their wisdom from Adam, adopted the same myth of building, connected themselves in the same unintelligible way with Solomon's temple, affected to be seeking light from the East,-in other words, the Cabala-and accepted the heathen Pythagoras amongst

* See a dissertation on the subject, by M. Lenormont, in M. De Caamont's" Architecture Religeuse," &c.

+ Let me again remind the reader, that though there might be no actual colleges, or lodges of Rosicrucians, I have never denied the existence of a large body of men, who under that name professed the same alchemical and theosophic doctrines, and pretended to form a brotherhood.