Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

202 FRANCIS BACON
they placidly pursued their way, the custodians of human learning,
and thus acquired the respect, and even the reverence, of
their less cultivated contemporaries. . . . The very fact of their
limited number led to their further elevation in the public
esteem, and there grew up around them somewhat of 'the
divinity that doth hedge a king.' . . .
" It is easy at the present day to see that which is held up
before everyone in the broad light of a tolerant century ; but it
was not so in the days of the Rosicrucians and other fraternities.
There was a dread, amongst the masses of society in bygone
days, of the unseen — a dread, as recent events and phenomena
show very clearly, not yet overcome in its entirety. Hence,
students of nature and mind were forced into an obscurity not
altogether unwelcome or irksome, but in this obscurity they paved
the way for a vast revolution ir mental science. . . . The patient
labours of Trittenheim produced the modern system of diplomatic
cipher-writing. Even the apparently aimless wanderings
of the monks and friars were associated with practical life, and
the numerous missals and books of prayer, carried from camp to
camp, conveyed, to the initiated, secret messages and intelligence
dangerous to be communicated in other ways. The sphere
of human intelligence was thus enlarged, and the freedom of
mankind from a pitiless priesthood, or perhaps, rather, a system
of tyranny under which that priesthood equally suffered, was
ensured.
" It was a fact not even disputed by Roman Catholic writers
of the most Papal ideas, that the evils of society, ecclesiastical
and lay, were materially increased by the growing worldliness
of each successive pontiff. Hence we may see why the origin
of Rosicrucianism was veiled by symbols, and even its founder,
Andrea, was not the only philosophical romancer — Plato,
Apuleius, Heliodorus, Lucian, and others had preceded him in
this path.
" It is worthy of remark that one particular century, and
that in which the Rosicrucians first showed themselves, is distinguished
in history as the era in which most of these efforts at
throwing off the trammels of the past occurred. Hence the
opposition of the losing party, and their virulence against anything
mysterious or unknown. They freely organised pseudo-
Rosicrucian and Masonic societies in return, and these societies
were instructed to irregularly entrap the weaker brethren of
the True and Invisible Order, and then triumphantly betray
anything they might be so inconsiderate as to communicate to
the superiors of these transitory and unmeaning associations.
" Modern times have eagerly accepted, in the full light of