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HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
vs.
classes. It is free alike from the enthusiasm and the
errors of the elder Order, for though at one time it appears
to have excluded Catholics from its ranks, as at this day
the Catholic Church excommunicates and denounces its
members, it has been singularly devoid of prejudices and
singularly unaffected by
the crazes of the time. It has not
committed itself to second Advent theories ;
the Pope Antichrist ; it does not expect
it does not call
a universal
cataclysm. It preaches a natural morality, and has so little
interest in mysticism that it daily misinterprets and practi-
cally despises its own mystical symbols.
Those who believe in the hypothesis of Professor Buhle
cannot shew that Fludd was either a Rosicrucian or a Free-
mason. There is some reason to believe that the former
Brotherhood did split up subsequently into different
sections, but there is no tittle of evidence to prove that they
developed into Freemasons. Mackey says that they pro-
tracted their existence till the middle of the eighteenth
century,
and then ceased to meet on account of the death
of one of their chiefs named Burn, but he does not state
his authority. He also tells us that out of the Kosicrucian
Fraternity there was established in 1777 that association
called " The Brothers of the Golden Cross," whose al-
chemical processes are described by Sigmund Eichter.
" This Society was very numerous in Germany, and even
extended into other countries, especially into Sweden. A
second schism from the Rosicrucians was the society of
' The Initiated Brothers of Asia,' which was organised in
1780, and whose pursuits, like those of the parent institu-
tion, were connected with alchemy and the natural sciences.
In 1785, it attracted the attention of the police, and, two
years later, received a fatal blow, in the revelation of all its