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ROSICRUCIAN APOLOGISTS: ROBERT FLUDD. 295
Mersenne, the publisher, and the year, were severally the
same as in the '
Sophise cum Moria Certamen '
which
Fludd acknowledged, there cannot be much reason to doubt
that it was his." But as I am unwilling to consider that a
man of Fludd's high character would be guilty of deliberate
falsehood, and as it was not his habit to write either
anonymously or pseudonymously, I prefer
the alternative
offered by the German critic when he says, " If not Fludd's,
it was the work of a friend of Fludd's." In either case,
his opinions are represented. On the title-page of the
" Summum Bonum," there is a large Rose on which two
bees have alighted, with this motto above Dat Rosa mel
apibus. The book treats of the noble art of magic, the
foundation and nature of the Cabala, the essence of veritable
alchemy,
and of the Causa Fratrum Eosece Crucis. It
identifies the palace or home of the Rosicmcians with the
Scriptural
house of wisdom. Ascendamus ad montem
rationabilem, et cedificemus domum Sapientice. The founda-
tion of the mountain thus referred to is declared to be the
Lapis angularis, the corner-stone, cut out of the mountain
without hands. This stone is Christ. It is the spiritual
palace which the Rosicrucians desire to reveal, and is there-
fore no earthly or material abode. There is a long dis-
quisition on the significance of the Rose and the Cross, a
purely spiritual interpretation being adopted. At the
conclusion, the writer anticipates the question whether he
himself is a brother of the Rose Cross, since he has settled
all questions as to their religion and symbolism. His
answer is that he least of any has deserved such a grace of
God ; if it have pleased God to have so ordained it, it is
enough. To satisfy, however, the curiosity of his readers,
he supplies them with a curious letter supposed to have