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CHAPTER VI.
ON THE CONNECTION OF THE ROSICRUCIAN CLAIMS WITH
THOSE OF ALCHEMY AND MAGIC.
THE guise of antiquity being almost indispensable to the
pretensions contained in these singular documents, I have
preferred presenting them to my readers in the archaic
form of the original English translations, which, moreover,
represent the Rosicrucian period in this country,
than to
undertake the somewhat superfluous task of a new version.
If the "Fama" and "Confessio Fraternitatis " are to be
taken in their literal sense, the publication of these documents
will not add new lustre to Rosicrucian reputations. We are
accustomed to regard the adepts of the Rose-Cross as beings
of sublime elevation and preternatural physical powers,
masters of Nature, monarchs of the intellectual world,
illuminated by a relative omniscience, and absolutely ex-
alted above all weakness and all prejudice. We imagine
them to be " holding no form of creed, but contemplating
all " from the solitary grandeur of the Absolute, and in-
vested with the " sublime sorrow of the ages as of the lone
ocean." But here in their own acknowledged manifestoes
they avow themselves a mere theosophical offshoot of the
Lutheran heresy, acknowledging the spiritual supremacy of
a temporal prince, and calling the pope Antichrist. We
have gauged in these days of enlightenment and universal
tolerance the intellectual capacities of all professors, past