Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

Prince of Rose-Croix
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 261
Heredom, " to a pious monk named John
Valentine Andreas, who flourished in the early part of the seventeenth
century, and who wrote, amongst other works, two treatises,
oue entitled Judicorum de Fraternitate R. C, the other
Noces Chimiques de Rozen Crutz. Ragon says that Andreas,
grieved at seeing the principles of Christianity forgotten in idle
and vain disputes, and that science was made subservient to
the pride of man, instead of contributing to his happiness,
passed his days in devising what he supposed to be the most
appropriate means of restoring each to its legitimate moral and
benevolent tendency. Clavel absurdly afhrrns that the degree
was founded by the Jesuits, for the purpose of counteracting
the insidious attacks of free-thinkers upon the Romish faith,
but he offers no evidence in support of his assertion,; in fact,
the Jesuits were the great enemies of Masonry, and, so far from
supporting it, wrote treatises against the order. Many of the
Rosicrucians were amongst the reformers of the age, and hence
the hostility of the Romish Church. The almost universal recognition
of this degree in all countries would favour the theory
of its being of long standing.
Kurd, in his Treatise on Religions, speaks of the Brethren of
the Rose, or Ne Plus Ultra. " They were to declare openly that
the Pope was Antichrist, and that the time would come when
claimed a
they should pull down his triple crown. . . . They
right of naming their successors, and bequeathing to them all
their privileges; to keep the devil in subjection; and that their
fraternity could not be destroyed, because God always opposed
an impenetrable cloud to screen them from their enemies."
Rosetti, in his work on the Antipapal Spirit of Italy, asserts
similar statements with regard to this and other societies connected
with Freemasonry. " The ceremonies of the degree of the
Rose-Croix are of the most imposing and impressive character,
and it is eminently a Christian degree. Its ritual is remarkable
for elegance of diction, while the symbolic teaching is not qply
pleasing, but consistent with the Christian faith, figuratively
expressing the passage of man through the valley of the shadow
of death, accompanied and sustained by the Masonic virtues —