The Albury MS. THE AMALGAMATED GUILD OF ... - RoseCroix.org.au

they were, and still are, denounced. Thus modern Freemasonry
gradually grew out of operative Masonry, so insensibly, indeed, that no
exact epoch can be assigned to its introduction; nay, it is presumable
that the two coexisted, till at length the symbolical overshadowed and
took the place of the operative system. The Order of Freemasons was
introduced from England, and flourished in Protestant Germany and
Sweden, while it made little or no progress in Catholic Germany and
Italy, where it was under the ban. France was never so absolutely
under the papal domination, and the papal bulles were disregarded.
The Jesuits, however, with that admirable tact which is the foundation
of their power, itself a secret society, with secret means of recognition,
discovered more politic means of neutralizing an antagonistic
institution by superimposing Christian degrees which should attract the
better class of society, and place their rivals in a small minority. Their
attempt was successful, and Freemasonry, as a mere Deistic society,
ceased to exist. But, independently of this religious opposition on the
one hand and rivalry on the other, the abuse of the institution for
political purposes in Southern Europe rendered it highly distasteful to
the Governments of those countries.
The Jesuits having, then, introduced the 25 degrees ending in the Rose
Croix, in allusion to the cryptic worship of the early Christians in the
age of Nero and Domitian,[ It is historically clear that the Romans did
not persecute Ch r istians as such, but as a new sect of Judaism. They
troubled themselves little or not at all about the doctrines-in fact,
knew nothing about them, for the Christians are described as
worshippers of Serapis ; "Qui Serapen colunt Cbristiani sunt."]
deduced the regular historical descent from the unity of the Supreme
Being as professed by the Jews, under Solomon, to the development
of Trinitarian Christianity under Nero and his successors, and that
system was so far logical and sequential in the assertion, that they "
came not to destroy but to fulfil." Up to the period of the reformed
French rite this degree was termed the ne plus ultra; but, beyond this,
other degrees, as has been seen, were afterwards added by the French
Commission, to make up somehow or other 33, with an obvious
allusion.
This was, however, not sufficient for the insatiable appetite of the
French people, and the Rite of Mirzaim - i.e., of the two, or Upper and
Lower, Egypts - was invented in 99 degrees, professing, in so far as it
exceeded the Scotch rite, to be based on the initiations of the Egyptian
Hierophants, of which scarcely anything is known now, and at that
time absolutely nothing, and which, therefore, rest, like many of the
degrees of the Reformed French Rite, on no firmer basis than pure