III. Or, lastly, the truthful elements of actual history may greatly predominate over the

fictitious and invented materials of the myth ; and the narrative may be, in the main, made up
of facts, with a slight colouring of imagination, when it forms an historical legend.^

This classification is faulty, because under it a legend would become either mythical or
historical, according to the fancies of individual inquirers; yet, as it may tend to explain
another passage by the same author, wherein a problem hitherto insoluble is represented as
being no longer so, I give it a place. Of the " Legend of the Craft," or, in other words, the
history of Masonry contained in the " Old Charges " or " Constitutions," * Mackey says : " In
dissecting it with critical hands, we shall be enabled to dissever its historical from its mythical
portions, and assign to it its true value as an exponent of the masonic sentiment of the
Middle Ages." ^

At what time the oral traditions of the Freemasons began to be reduced into writing, it is
impossible to even approximately determine. The period, also, when they were moulded into
a continuous narrative, such as we now find in the ordinary versions of the MS. Constitutions,
is Likewise withheld from our knowledge. This narrative may have been formed out of
insulated traditions, originally independent and unconnected — a supposition rendered highly
probable by the absurdities and anachronisms with which it abounds. The curiosity of the
early Freemasons would naturally be excited about the origin of the Society. E.xplanatory

' Freemasons' Chronicle, April 29, 1S83. a Ante, Chap. II., p. 100.

' Mackey, EncyclopsJia of Freemasonry, p. 456.

* Sue the " Buchanan MS.," No. 15, ante, Chap. II., p. 03. " Eiicyclopaiaia of Freemasonry, p. 459.

VOL. II. H

S8 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

legends would be forthcoming, and, in confounding, as they did, architecture, geometry, and
Freemasonry, Dr Mackey considers that " the workmen of the Middle Ages were but obeying
a natural instinct which leads every man to seek to elevate the character of his profession,
and to give it an authentic claim to antiquity." ^

That the utmost licence prevailed in the fabrication of these legends is apparent on the
face of them. As the remote past was unrecorded and unremembered, the invention of the
etiologist was fettered by no restrictions ; he had the whole area of fiction open to him ; and
that he was not even bound by the laws of nature, witness the story of Naymus Grecus, whose
eventful career, coeval with the building of King Solomon's Temple, ranged over some eighteen
centuries, and was crowned by his teaching the science of masonry to Charles Martel !

Legend-making was also a favourite occupation in the old monasteries — the lives of the
saints, put together possibly as ecclesiastical exercises, at the religious houses in the late
Middle Ages, giving rise to the saying " that the title legend was bestowed on all fictions
which made pretensions to truth." ^ The practice referred to is amusingly illustrated in the
following anecdote : — Gilbert de Stone, a learned ecclesiastic, who flourished about the year
1380, was solicited by the monks of Holywell, in Flintshire, to write the life of their patron
saint. Stone, applying to these monks for materials, was answered that they had none in
their monastery ; upon which he declared that he could execute the work just as easily without
any materials at all, and that he would write them a most excellent legend, after the manner
of the legend of Thomas h. Becket. He has the character of an elegant Latin writer, and,
according to Waiton, " seems to liave done the same piece of service, perhaps in the same
way, to other religious houses ' " ^

Although nothing is more dangerous than to rationalise single elements of a legendary or
mythical narrative,* the circumstance that an annual pledge day was celebrated at York in
connection with the Minster operations, coupled with the ordinary guild usage of making one
day of the year the " general " or " head " day of meeting,^ raises a presumption that the
" Annual Assemblies " mentioned in the " Old Charges " were really held.

It has been laid down, that a person who believes a story to have been constructed, centuries
after the time of the alleged events, from legendary materials and oral relations, is not entitled
to select certain points from the aggregate, upon mere grounds of apparent internal credibUity,
and to treat them as historical.^ In such a case there is no criterion for distinguishing
between the fabulous and the historical parts of the narrative, and it is impossible to devise a
test whereby the fact can be separated from the fiction. Before the authenticity of any part
of a legendary narrative can be admitted, some probable account must be forthcoming of the

' Mackey, Encyclopaedia of Freemasomy, p. 459.

' Cf. ibid., p. 456 ; and Lewis, An Inquiry into the Credibilitj' of Early Roman History, vol. i., chap, xi., § 9.
» Warton, History of English Poetiy, 1778, vol. ii. , p. 190, citing MSS. James, xxxi., p. 6 (ad Iter Lancastr. num.
39, vol. 40), Bodleian Library.

* See A. Schwegler, Romische Geschichte, 1853-58, vol. i., p. 456.

° " The periodical recurrence of an anniversary, . •. . •. the permanence of some legal form or institution, may
serve to stereotype an oral tradition. . • . . ■ . Commemorative festivals may serve as a nucleus, round which tlie
scattered fragments of tradition are, for a time, collected and kept at rest" (Lewis, On the Methods of Observation and
Reasoning in Politics, vol. i., p. 220). See Smith, English Gilds, Introduction, p. xxxiii. ; and ante. Chap. VII.,
p. 374, note 1.

• Lewis, An Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i., p. 439.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY—ENGLAND. 59

means by which a fragment of tradition or of fact has been preserved, or the internal character
and composition of the narrative must in some one or more of its details be borne out by
external attestation.

Now, although the story of the Annual Assemblies is nearer the time of authentic masonic
history than those of Nimrod, EucUd, Naymus Grecus, and Charles Martel, still the interval
is so wide that oral tradition cannot be considered as a safe depository for its occurrences.
This portion of the general narrative presents, however, as already indicated, some features
with respect to its historical attestation, which places it on a different footing from the rest of
the legend.

Conjectures which depart widely from traditional accounts are obviously not admissible ;
yet, if we refrain from arbitrary hypotheses, and strictly adhere to the history which we meet
with in the " legend of the craft," it is impossible that a clear idea of the past of Freemasonry
can be formed. Most of the events have a fabulous character, and there is no firm footing
for the historical inquirer. Even masonic writers, who, as a rule, have a great deal of history
which no one else knows, though they are often deplorably ignorant of that with which all
other men are acquainted, do not venture on an exposition, but content themselves with
furnishing a description of the traditionary belief for which the " Old Charges " are our authority.

It has been observed, that " to divest aU tradition of authority would be depriving human
life of a necessary instrument of knowledge and of practice." Without the aid of tradition-
say the Eabbins— we should not have been able to have known which was the first month of
the year, and which the seventh day of the week. A story is related of a Caraite who,
rejecting traditions, tauntingly interrogated Hillel, the greatest of the Eabbins, on what
evidence they rested. The sage, pausing for a moment, desired the sceptic would repeat the
three first letters of the alphabet. This done, that advocate for traditions in his turn asked,
" How do you know how to pronounce these letters in this way, and no other ? " "I learnt
them from my father," replied the Caraite. "And your son shall learn them from you,"
rejoined Hillel ; " and tliis is tradition " !

In the words of a learned writer : " Tradition casts a light in the deep night of the world ;
but in remote ages, it is like the pale and uncertain moonlight, which may deceive us by
flitting shadows, rather than indeed show the palpable forms of truth." ^
' Isaac Disraeli, The Genius of Judaism, 1833, p. lOr.

6o EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

CHAPTERXIII.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY.

E N G L A N D.— 1 1.

THE CABBALA— MYSTICISM— THE EOSICEUCIANS— ELIAS ASHMOLE.

^ HE point we have now reached in the course of onr researches, is at once the most
>v interesting and the most difficult of solution, of all those problems with which the

thorny path of true Masonic inquiry is everywhere beset. It is, I think, abun-
dantly clear that the Masonic body had its first origin in the trades-unions of
mediaeval operatives. At the Eeformation these unions, having lost their raison cVetre,
naturally dissolved, except some few scattered through the country, and these vegetated
in obscurity for a period of close upon two centuries, until we find them reorganised and
taking a new point de depart about the year 1717. But, by this time, the Masonic bodies
appear under a new guise. While still retaining, as was natural, many forms, ceremonies, and
words which they derived from their direct ancestors, the working masons, yet we find that
operative masonry was, and probably long had been, in a state of decay, and a new form, that
of speculative masonry, had been substituted in its place. During these two centm-ies of dark-
ness we also have abundant proof that the world, or, at least, the world of Western Europe,
the world wliich was agitated by the Eeformation, was full of all kind of strange and distorted
fancies, the work of disordered imagination, to an extent probably never known before, not even
in the age -which witnessed the vagaries of the Gnostics and the later Alexandrian school.
These strange fancies, or at least some of them, had been floating about with more or less dis-
tinctness from the earliest period to which human records extend, and, as something analogous,
if not akin, appears in speculative masonry, it has been supposed, either that there existed a
union between the sects or societies who practised, often in secret, these tenets, and the decay-
ing Masonic bodies ; or that some men, being learned in astrology, alchemy, and. Cabbalistic lore
generally, were also Freemasons, and took advantage of this circumstance to indoctrinate their
colleagues with their own fantastic belief, and so, under the cloak, and by means of the organi-
sation of Freemasonry, to preserve tenets which might otherwise have fallen into complete
oblivion. Especially has this been supposed to have been the case with the celebrated anti-
quary Elias Ashmole. Unfortunately, the materials at our disposal are almost nil; the

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 6i

evidence, even as regards Ashmole, is of the slightest, and really amounts to nothing. Hence
it is only possible to deal with these fanciful speculations in general terms, and to offer some
remarks as to the origin of the forms and ceremonies, before alluded to, about which I may venture
to say that much misplaced ingenuity has been expended, causing no small amount of unneces-
sary mystery. This has, in my opinion, arisen mainly from the erroneous mode in which the
subject has hitlierto been treated. For it must never be forgotten that in working out Masonic
history we are in reality tracing a pedigree, and to attain success w^e must, therefore, adhere
as strictly as possible to those principles by means of which pedigrees are authenticated.
The safest way is to trace steadily backwards or upwards, discarding as we go on everytliing
that does not rest on the clearest and strongest available evidence, and so forging step by step
the links in the chain till the origin is lost in the mists of remote antiquity. But, if we pro-
ceed in the contrary direction, if we commence from the fountain head, and, coupling half-a-
dozen families together, making use of similarity of names, connections with the same locality,
and therefore possible intermarriages, family traditions, or rather suppositions, tt hoc gemis
omne, we shall construct a genealogy, flattering indeed to the family vanity, and meant to
be so, but which would vanish like a cobweb before the searching gaze of The College of
Arms.^

With all deference, it would seem that the latter course has i^rincipally commended
itself to the Historians of Masonry. Commencing from the very earliest times they have
pressed every possible fact or tradition into their service, and, by the aid of numberless
analogies and resemblances, some forced, some fortuitous, and others wholly fictitious, they
have succeeded in building up a marvellous legend, which, while it may serve to minister to
their own vanity, and astonish a few readers by the mystical marvels it unfolds, has only
tended to excite the supercilious contempt of the great majority of mankind, — a contempt which
is at once too intense and too disdainful, to condescend to examine the rational grounds for
pride that all true masons may justly claim. As I have hinted above, the direct male line
of Masonic descent is traceable to the lodges of operative masons who flourished towards the
close of the mediaeval period, and, whatever connection the Masonic lodges may have with
the older and more mysterious fraternities and beliefs, can be compared only to a descent by
marriage through the female line, if, indeed, they can claim as much. For the direct descent
of one body of men who, though occasionally varying in aims and often in name, is still one
society tracing direct from the founder, is a very different thing from a variety of societies
with no particular connection the one with the other, but adopting, in many instances, similar
or identical symbols, language, and ceremonies, and formed successively to promote certain
aims, the tendency to which is inherent in the human race.^

' To give one exami>lc, no name of what may be termed the poetical class is perhaps more common than GeralJine.
But it cannot, therefore, be inferred that all Geraldincs are members of one mighty and wide reaching family, whicli
would be a mythical and mystical reductio ad alsxirdum. The probability is that the fame of the " Fair Geraldine"
has recommended the name to novel writers, and that through them the name, being of a somewhat beautiful and poetical
nature, has recommended itself to fond mothers as a fitting appellation for tlieir darlings. But the families iu which
the name is, so to speak; indigenous, exist at this day, and the connection of every one of them with the Eponymus of
the race (the individual from whom the name originally came) can bo traced step by step without a break. This is very
different from mere vague conjecture.

' E.g. Tlie Cocoa Tree is the original Tory Club and still exists. The October has long perished. Besides these, we
have White's, whose political function has ceased, the Carlton, Conservative, Junior Carlton, St Stephen's, Buacousfield,

62 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

Hence I shall not attempt to deny that many of the rites, symbols, and beliefs, prevalent
among Masons may have been handed down from the earliest times ; either they have been
imitated the one from the other, being found useful, without any further connection ; or they
may have been the product of the human mind acting in a precisely similar manner under
sinailar circumstances, in widely different periods and countries,^ and without any possible
suspicion of imitation or other more close connection. Any one who reflects on the wonderful
vitality, even when transmitted to foreign countries, of superstitions, forms, ceremonies, and
customs, and even of jokes, stories, and games, will be very slow to believe that the above
imply any necessary lineal connection as indispensable to their continuance. They are handed
down from one to the other in a manner which is as impossible to trace as it is certain in
its existence. An observant friend informs me that he has seen a ragged child playing a
purely Greek game in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster, and also claims to have
traced a particularly broad story told, after dinner, of an American, through a French epigram,
to the Greek Anthology. The governmental Broad Arrow is believed, not without reason, to
have had a cuneiform origin, having been the mark set by Phoenician traders upon Cornish
tin, and, having been discovered on certain blocks of tin, was adopted by the Duchy of
Cornwall, and was from thence pressed into the service of the Imperial government.^ On
the other hand, many things occur independently to people of a similar turn of mind when
placed under similar circumstances, but without the slightest communication between each
other. Le Verrier and Adams both discovered the existence of the planet Nei^tune at the
same time by different methods, and wholly independent of each other. It is highly im-
probable that the inventor of steamboats, whoever he was — I believe it was really Watt, but
it was certainly not Fulton — knew of the extremely rare tract in which Jonathan Hull fore-
shadowed the discovery in the year 1727, and who, by the way, was not the earliest. Did
Watt or Hull know anything of Hero of Alexandria ? It has been disputed whether Harvey
or an earlier philosopher (Levasseur, circa 1540) was the actual discoverer of the circulation of
the blood, though the balance is much in Harvey's favour ; ^ but it is in the highest degree
improbable that either knew of the work of Nemesius, a Christian philosopher of the fourth
century, who wrote a treatise on " The Nature of Man," a work of unparallelled physical know-
ledge for those times, and in which he seems to have had some idea of the circulation of the

and now the Constitutional. These are all the outcome of Tory politics, but can scarcely be said to be the ofrsprin<; the
one of the other. The Carlton was certainly not the offspring of White's, and it is somewhat doubtful whether any of
the latter five, save the Junior, are descendants of the Carlton. So with the Service Clubs, no one would say that
they are the descendants of the "Senior," though they certainly spring from the wants felt by men in the two services.
Alike as regards the Royal Geogi-aphical Society, which is the direct descendant of the Royal, and the latter the direct
descendant of the Travellers, all three being founded with a view to promote geographical research, and each being started
when its predecessor was found to fail.

' In Japan the Daimios' servants have their master's arms embroidered on their coats, which was a medieval Euro-
pean fashion, but which could scarcely have been communicated to Japan. Per contra, European residents at Yoko-
hama now adopt the Japanese mode.

' As this mark is placed on convict dresses, and as two of the great convict establishments are at Portland and
Dartmoor, near the scene of Phoenician trading operations, an ingenious tlieory might, and probably some day will, be
worked out to the effect that the Broad Arrow had its origin in the mark with which the Phaniciaus branded their
slaved, a mark which has come down in the same capacity to the present day !

' €f. P. Flourens, Histoire de la d^couverte de la circulation du Sang, 1857.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 63

blood.i In the same way the same disputes have agitated the philosophical and speculative
world from the beginning of time, the same philosophical opinions have died out only to be
repeated under the same or a slightly different form ; and the " thinkers " of the present day
might be startled, and perhaps humbled, if such a thing were possible — on finding that their
much vaunted objections against the Scriptures have been advanced times without number by
various heresiarchs of old — and refuted as often.

The object of the present chapter will therefore be, 1st, to present in as clear and succinct
a manner as possible the origin, history, and development of mysticism or theosophisra;
2nd, to endeavour to give some account of the mystical or theosophistical societies contem-
porary, and it may be connected, with the new development of Freemasonry; of the possibility,
for we can say no more, of such having been the case; together with a short account of the
shadowy and half-mythical Eosicrucians.

To commence, ab initio, Alexandria was an emporium, not only of merchandise, but of
philosophy ; and opinions as well as goods were bartered there to the grievous corruption of
sound wisdom, from the attempt which was made by men of different sects and countries-
Grecian, Egyptian, and Oriental— to frame from their different tenets one general system of
opinions. The respect long paid to Grecian learning, and the honours which it now received
from the hands of the Ptolemies, induced others, and even the Egyptian priests, to submit to
this innovation. Hence arose a heterogeneous mass of opinions which, under the name of
Eclectic Philosophy, caused endless confusion, error, and absurdity, not only in the Alexandrian
school, but also among the Jews, who had settled there in very large numbers, and the
Christians; producing among the former that spurious philosophy which they call the
Cabbala,2 and, among the latter a certain amount of corruption, for a time at least, in the
Christian faith itself.

From this period there can be no doubt but tliat the Jewish doctrines were known to the
Egyptians, and the Greek to the Jews. Hence Grecian wisdom being corrupted by admixture
with Egyptian and Oriental philosophy assumed the form of Neo-Platonism, which, by profess-
ing a sublime doctrine, enticed men of different countries and religions, including the Jews,
to study its mysteries and incorporate them with their own. The symbolical method of instruc-
tion which had been in use from the earliest times in Egypt was adopted by the Jews, who
accordingly put an allegorical interpretation upon their sacred writings. Hence under the
cloak of symbols. Pagan phOosophy gradually crept into the Jewish schools, and the Platonic
doctrines, mixed first with the Pythagorean, and afterwards with the Egyptian and Oriental,
were blended with their ancient faith in their explanations of the law and the traditions. The
society of the Therapeutse was formed after the model of the Pythagorean system ; Aristobulus,
PhOo, and others, studied the Grecian philosophy, and the Cabbalists formed their mystical
system upon the foundation of the tenets tauglit in the Alexandrian schools. This Cabbala

» Cf. Friend's History of Physic ; and J. A. Fabricius, Syll. Script, de Ver. Kel. Christ., c. 2, § 30.

= The observations on the various pliilosophical systems, which next follow, are mainly derived from Brucker's
"HistoriaCritica Philosophia;," 1767 (of which Enfield's "History of Philosophy "is an abridged translation) This work
was the result of a course of investigation, in which the life of an industrious student was principally occupied for the
long term oi fifty years (Praif. ad., vol. vi.). See further Dr Ginsburg, The Kabbalah : Its doctrines, development and
hterature, 1865 ; Gardner, Faiths o. the WoHd ; and Fort, The Fariy History and Anti.iuities ol Freemasonry, chap
xxxvi., and Appendix A.

64 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

was a mystical kind of traditionary doctrine, quite distinct from the Talmud, in which the
Jews, while professing to follow the footsteps of Moses, turned aside into the paths of pagan
philosophy. Tliey pretended to derive their Cabbala from Esdras, Abraham, and even from
Adam, but it is very evident, from the Cabbalistic doctrine concerning Divine emanations,
that it originated in Egypt, where the Jews learned, by the help of allegory, to mix Oriental,
Pythagorean, and Platonic dogmas with Hebrew wisdom. Two methods of instruction were in
use among the Jews, the one public or exoteric, the other secret or esoteric. The exoteric was
that which was openly taught from the law of Moses and the traditions of the Jewish Fathers.
The esoteric treated of the mysteries of the Divine nature and other sublime subjects, and
■was called the Cabbala, which, after the manner of the Egyptian and Pythagorean mys-
teries, were revealed only to those who were bound to secresy by the most solemn oaths.
Even the former was by no means free from extraneous influences, or from the Egyptian
traditions; as far down as the time of Maimonides, 1131-1204 Their notions and
practices concerning the name of God were singular. Seventy-two names were
reckoned in all — agreeing singularly with the tradition of the seventy-two translators of
the Septuagint — and from which, by different arrangements in sevens, they produced seven
hundred and twenty. The principal of these was the Agla, which was arranged in the following
iigure with Cabbalistic characters in each space.

This was called " Solomon's Seal," or the " Shield of David," and was supposed, by some
strange and occult process of reasoning, to be a security against wounds, an extinguisher of
fires, and to possess other marvellous properties.^

The esoteric doctrine or Cabbala, from a word signifying to receive, because it was
supposed to have been received by tradition, was, as might have been expected, more
marvellous still. It is said to have been derived from Adam, to whom, while in Paradise,
it was communicated by the angel Rasiel — wherein may perhaps be traced the origin of
the notion, that Masonry is as old as Adam. The learning was bequeathed to Seth, and
havinw been nearly lost in the degenerate days that followed, was miraculously restored
to Abraham, who committed it to writing in the book Jezirah. This revelation was renewed
to Moses, who received a traditionary and mystical, as well as a written and preceptive
law from God,^ which, being again lost in the calamities of the Babylonish captivity, and
once again delivered to Esdras, was finally transmitted to posterity through the hands of

• Faljr. Cod. Apoc. V.T., t. ii., p. 1006 ; t. iii., p. 143. The hexagonal figure shown above, which consists of
two interlacing triangles, is variously described as the Hexagon, Hexagram, and Hexapla, and answers to the Pentalpha,
Pentagon, or Pentagram. Cf. Kenning's Cyclopedia, p. 307 ; Mackey's Encyclopcedia, p. 700 ; and ante, chap. IX.,
p. 463.

- It is so easy in all times and places to imagine some mysterious tradition which suits one's own fancies wlien tliere
exists no sort of ground for it in written and authentic records.

RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD LEIGH,

PROVINCIAL GRAND MASTER OF WARWICKSHIRE.

Thomu CJuk. London ttEdinburgh

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 65

Simeon ben Setach and others.^ It is, to say the least of it, strange that it should have
been perpetually lost and revealed until about the time when it was first forged.

It is tolerably clear that the abstruse and mysterious doctrines of the Cabbala could
not have been developed from the simple principles of the Mosaic Law, and must have been
derived from an admixture of Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental fancies. It is indeed true
that many have imagined that in the Cabbala they have discerned a near resemblance to
the doctrines of Christianity, and have therefore concluded that the fundamental principles
of this mystical system were derived from Divine revelation. But this is traceable to a
prejudice beginning with the Jews and continued by the Christian Fathers, that aU Pagan
wisdom had an Hebrew origin; a notion which probably took its rise in Egypt, where, as
we have seen. Pagan tenets first crept in among the Jews. When they first embraced
these tenets, neither national vanity nor their reverence for the law of iloses would permit
their being under any obligation to the heathen, and they were therefore forced to derive them
from a fictitious account of their own sacred writings, and supposed that from them all other
nations had derived their learning. Philo, Josephus, and other learned Jews, to flatter their
own and their nation's vanity, industriously propagated this opinion, and the more learned
Christian Fathers adopted it without reflection, on the supposition that if they could trace
back the most valuable doctrines of heathenism to a Jewish origin, they could not fail to
recommend the Jewish and Christian religions to Gentile philosophers, and unfortunately
many in modern times, on the strength of these authorities, have been inclined to give
credence to the idle tale of the Divine origin of the Cabbala.

The real truth, as far as can be ascertained, is briefly as follows : The Jews, like other
Oriental, and indeed many Western, nations, had from the most remote period their secret
doctrines and mysteries. It was only Christianity which laid open the whole scheme of
salvation to the meanest, and therein showed more conclusively than by any other possible
proof its Divine origin. It had no strange mysteries that it feared to disclose to the eye of
the world, and, secure in its immeasurable majesty, it could not be derogatory to stoop to the
meanest of creation. When the sects of the Essenes and Therapeutse were formed, foreign tenets
and institutions were borrowed from the Egyptians and the Greeks, and, in the form of
allegorical interpretations of the law, were admitted into the Jewish mysteries. These
innovations were derived from the Alexandrian schools where the Platonic and Pythagorean
doctrines had already been much altered from being mixed with Orientalism. The Jewish
mysteries thus enlarged by the addition of heathen dogmas, were conveyed from Egypt to
Palestine, when the Pharisees, who had been driven into Egypt under Hyrcanus, returned to their
own country. From this time the Cabbalistic mysteries continued to be taught in the Jewish
schools, tiU at length they were adulterated by Peripatetic doctrines and other tenets which
sprang up in the iliddle Ages, and were particularly corrupted by the prevalence of the
Aristotelian pliilosophy.^ The Cabbala itself may be divided into three portions, the
Theoretical, -which treats of the highest order of metaphysics, that relating to the Divinity
and the relations of the Divinity to man ; the Enigmatical, consisting of certain symbolical
transpositions of the words or letters of the Scriptures, fit only for the amusement of children ;

' Buxtorf, Bib. Rabb., p. 184 ; Reuchlin de Arte Cabb., 1. i., p. 622 ; Wolf, Bib. Hub., pt. i., p. 112.
= Knorr, Cabb. Denud., t. ii., p. 389 ; Wachter, Elucid. Cabb., c. ii., p. 19.
VOL. IL I

66 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

and the Practical, which professed to teach the art of curing diseases and performing other
wonders by means of certain arrangements of sacred letters and words.

Without wearying my readers with a long account of the Cabbalistic doctrines, which
would be as useless and unintelligible to them as they probably were to the Jews themselves,
I shall content myself with giving as brief a summary as is possible of the common
tenets of the Oriental, Alexandrian, and Cabbalistic systems, first premising that the former
is evidently the parent of the two latter. AH things are derived by emanation from one
principle. This principle is God. From Him a substantial power immediately proceeds,
which is the image of God and the source of all subsequent emanations. Tliis second principle
sends forth, by the energy of emanation, other natures, which are more or less perfect,
according to their different degrees of distance in the scale of emanation, from the first source
of existence, and which constitute different worlds or orders of being, all united to the eternal
power from which they proceed. Matter is nothing more than the most remote effect of the
emanative energy of the Deity. The material world receives its form from the immediate
agency of powers far beneath the first source of being. Evil is the necessary effect of the
imperfection of matter. Human souls are distant emanations from the Deity ; and, after they
are Liberated from their material vehicles, will return, through various stages of purification,
to the fountain whence they first proceeded. Besides the Cabbala, properly so called, many
fictitious writings were produced under the aegis of gi-eat names which tended greatly to tlie
spread of this mystical philosophy, such as the Sepher Happeliah, " The Book of Wonders ; "
Sepher Hakkaneh, " The Book of the Pen ; " and Sepher Habbahir, " The Book of Light." The
first unfolds many doctrines said to have been delivered by Elias to the Eabbi Elkanah ; the
second contains mystical commentaries on the Divine commands ; the third illustrates the
more sublime mysteries. Two of the most eminent Piabbis who studied these things were
Akibha and Simeon ben Jochai. The former, after the destruction of Jerusalem, opened a school
at Lydda, where, according to Jewish accounts, he had 24,000 disciples ; and afterwards, in an
evil moment, joined the celebrated impostor Bar Cochbas, sometimes called Barochebas, in the
reign of the Emperor Adrian. After sustaining a siege of three years and a half in the city
of Bitterah, the pretended Messiah was taken and put to the sword with aU his followers ;
Akibha and his son Pappus, who were taken with them, were flayed alive, being in all
probability regarded with justice as the mainsprings of the insurrection. His principal work,
the "Jezirah," was long regarded by the Jews, who asserted that he had received it from
Abraham, as of almost Divine authority. He was succeeded by his disciple Simeon ben
Jochai,^ who was said to have received revelations faithfully committed to writing by his
followers in the book " Sohar," which is a summary of the Cabbalistic doctrine expressed
in obscure hieroglyphics and allegories.

From the third century to the tenth, from various causes but few traces of the Cabbalistic
mysteries are to be met with in the writings of the Jews, but their peculiar learning began to
revive when the Saracens became the patrons of philosophy, and their schools subsequently
migrated to Spain, where they attained their highest distinction. By this time the attention
paid both by Arabians and Christians to the writings of Aristotle excited the emulation of

' Called by the Jews, the prince of the Cabbalists. The Eabbi Saadias Gaon, circa 927 A.D., wrote a work outitled
"The rhilosopher's Stune," whicli is uot, as might be e.xpected. Alchemic, but Cabbalistic.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 67

the Jews, who, notwithstanding the ancient curse pronounced on all Jews who should instruct
their sons in the Grecian learning, a curse revived a.d. 1280 by Solomon Eashba, continued
in their philosophical course, reading Aristotle in Hebrew translations made from the inaccurate
Arabic (for Greek was at this period little understood) and became eminent for their know-
ledge of mathematics and physics. In order to avoid the imputation of receiving instruction
from a pagan, they invented a tale of Aristotle having been a convert to Judaism, and that
he learned the greater part of his philosophy from the books of Solomon.^ The greatest of the
niediaival Jewish philosophers were undoubtedly two Spaniards. Aben Esra, born at Toledo
in the twelfth century, and Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, born at
Cordova a.d. 1131, and who possessed the rare accomplishment of being a good Greek scholar.
The writings of these mediaeval Jewish philosophers are very numerous, as may be seen by a
glance at such works — among many — as Wolf's " Bibliotheca Hebraea," the earlier work of
Bartolocci, " Bibliotheca Magna Eabbinica," the later volumes of the " Histoire Littdraire de
la France," etc. After having long been almost totally neglected, a vague and transient interest
has of late been e.xcited in this kind of learning, by a few articles which have appeared from
time to time in various magazines and reviews, and are well suited to the modern appetite for
acquiring a smattering of novel learning without trouble, but there can be but little doubt that
the great mass consists of a farrago of useless and unintelligible conceits, which has deservedly
sunk into oblivion, for though in all probability it possesses numerous grains of wheat, yet
they are too much encumbered with chaff to render their laborious disinterment a matter of
use or profit.

Of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonic, or as it may be and is sometimes called, the Eclectic
school, not to mention ApoUonius of Tyana, who had all the gifts of a first-class impostor, but
who is rather to be numbered with those who attempted to revive the Pythagorean system, or
Simon Magus, who was a charlatan fighting for his own hand ; we have the famous school,
founded originally by Plotinus,^ and continued by Porphyry, who wrote his life ; Amelius,
another pupil, lamblichus of Chalcis in Ccelo-Syria, Porphyry's immediate successor, under whose
guidance the school spread far and wide throughout the empire, but was obliged to remain
more or less secret under the Christian Emperors Constantino and Constantius.^ OEdesius, the
successor of larabKchus ; then Eunapius, the weak and credulous biographer of the sect ;
Plutarch, the son of Nestorius, oh. a.d. 434 ; Syrianus ; Proclus, at once one of the most
eminent, and, at the same time, most extravagant of the wliole, oh. 485 ; Marinus ; Isodorus
of Gaza ; and Damascius. These philosophers, who, though men of talent, were half dreamers,
half charlatans, dissatisfied with the original Platonic doctrine, that the intuitive contempla-
tion of the Supreme Deity was the summit of human felicity, aspired to a deification of the
human mind. Hence they forsook the dualistic .system of Plato for the Oriental one of
emanation, which supposed an indefinite series of spiritual natures derived from the Supreme
source ; whence, considering the human mind as a link in this chain of intelligence, they
conceived that by passing through various stages of purification, it miglit at length ascend

' Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., p. 383.

' Plotinus, the father of Neo-Platonism, was born at Lycopolis in Egypt about 203 A.D. He lectured at Eome for
twenty-five years, and died at Putcoli in Campania about 270 a.d.
^ Sozomen, Hist. Ecd., 1. i., c. 5.

68 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

to the first fountain of intelligence, and enjoy a mysterious union with the Divine nature.
Tliey even imagined that the soul of man, properly prepared by previous discipline, might
rise to a capacity of holding immediate intercourse with good demons, and even to enjoy
in ecstasy an intuitive vision of God,— a point of perfection and felicity which many of
their great men, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, lamblichus, and Proclus, were supposed to
have actually attained.

Another striking feature in this sect was their hatred and opposition to Christianity,
which induced them to combine all important tenets, both theological and phUosophical,
Christian or Pagan, into one system, to conceal the absurdities of the old paganism by
covering it with a veil of allegory, and by representing the heathen deities as so many
emanations of the Supreme Deity, while in the hopes of counteracting the credit which
Christianity derived from the exalted merit of its Founder, the purity of the lives of His
followers, and the weight which must necessarily attach to authentic miracles, these philo-
sophers affected, and probably felt, the utmost purity and even asceticism, and by studying
and practising the magical or theurgic arts sought to raise themselves on a level with our
Saviour Himself. Lastly, for the purpose of supporting the credit of Paganism against
Christianity they palmed upon the worid many spurious books under the names of Hermes,
Orpheus, and other celebrated but shadowy personages.

On the whole, if we can conceive— which I admit to be difficult— our modem spiritualists
to be possessed of real talent, and to be animated by real but mistaken enthusiasm, working
together for a definite purpose, and with a decided objection to imposture, we shall be able
to form a pretty fair notion of this famous sect. Neo-Platonism did not survive the reign of
Justinian, and in fact received the coup de grace at the hands of that emperor. In respect,
indeed, of the action of Justinian in breaking up the academy at Athens, we can but echo the
laudation bestowed on an earlier Eoman— " That he caused the school of folly to be closed."^
Some scattered and vague reminiscences may have come down indirectly through the
philosophy of the Jews to the Middle Ages, but the direct influence must have been very
slight, or more probably nil, as will be evident when we consider the almost total ignorance
of Greek, in which language their works were written. At the revival of learning, however,
they were eagerly caught up, especially the supposed works of Hermes Trismegistus.^

Another ill effect followed the establishment of this strange and dreamy philosophy. In
its infancy not a few of the fathers were so far deluded by its pretensions that they imagined
that a coalition might advantageously be formed between it and Christianity ; and this the

' "CluJere ludum jTist^McnMo! jussit."

= Hormes Trismegistus, or the "Thrice Great," was, if not an utterly mythical personage, some extremely early
Egyptian iihilosopher, who, for liis own ends, passed himself olf as either a favoured pupil or incarnation of the
Egj'ptian god Thoth, identical with the Phoenician Taaut, and, or assumed to be (for the Greeks and Romans fitted all
foreign gods to their own), the Greek Hermes and the Latin Mercury. Trismegistus is the reputed author of 20, 000
volumes, hence there can be no wonder that when Mr Shandy extolled him as the greatest of every branch of science,
" ' and the greatest engineer,' said my Uncle Toby." The sacred books of the Egyptians were attributed to him, and
were called the Hennetic Books. All secret knowledge was believed to be propagated by a series of wise men called tlio
"Hermetic Chain." Hermes and his reputed writings were highly esteemed by all kinds of enthusiasts, who called
themselves from him " Hermetic!." The learned Woodford, whilst admitting "that a great deal of nonsense has been
written about the Hermetic origin of Freemasonry," stoutly contends " that the connection, as between Freemasonry
and Hermeticism, has yet to be explained " (Kcnning's Cyclopaidia, s. v. llcnncs).

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 69

more so as several of the philosophers became converts to the faith, the consequence natur-
ally being, that Pagan ideas and opinions became gradually intermingled with the pure and
simple doctrines of the gospel, without the slightest advantage being gained to counterbalance
so great an evil ; nay, philosophy herself became a loser, for in attempting to combine into
one system the leading tenets of each sect they were obliged, in many cases, to be understood
in a sense different from that intended by the original authors. Moreover, finding it imprac-
ticable to produce an appearance of harmony among systems essentially different from each
other without obscuring the whole, they exerted their utmost ingenuity in devising fanciful
conceptions, subtle distinctions, and vague terms ; combinations of which, infinitely diversified,
they attempted only too successfully to impose upon the world as a system of real and
sublime truths. Lost in subtleties, these pretenders to superior wisdom were perpetually
endeavouring to explain by imaginary resemblances and arbitrary distinctions what they
themselves probably never understood. Disdaining to submit to the guidance of reason and
common sense, they gave up the reins to the imagination, and suffered themselves to be borne
away through the boundless regions of metaphysics where the mental vision labours in vain
to follow them, as may be seen by a very cursory examination of the writings of Plotinus
and Proclus, not to mention others, on the Deity and the inferior divine natures, where,
amidst the undoubted proofs of great talent, will be found innumerable examples of
egTegious trifling under the name of profound philosophy. But in justice to the Alex-
andrian Neo-Platonists, it should be allowed that they are by no means the only sinners in
this respect. Even the greatest of the Fathers are fuU of the weakest reasonings, and the
majority of our modern thinkers, much as we may vaunt them, difier only in being less acute
and less learned.^

In spite of the popular notion, the Arabians themselves not only were barbarous in their
origin, but never in the times of their most exalted civilisation made any great advances in
science, their most eminent philosophers having sprung from conquered, though, perhaps, kin-
dred races. But towards the end of the eighth century, the Caliphs, beginning with Al-Mansor,
Al-Rashid, Al-]\Iamon, and others, having reached a height of luxury and magnificence perhaps
never equalled either before or since, were not unnaturally desirous of adding to the lustre
of their reigns by encouraging science and literature ; and they accordingly invited learned
Christians to their court. But by this time the Eclectic sect was nearly, if not quite, extinct,
so that nearly the whole Christian world professed themselves followers of Aristotle,
deriving their ideas of his philosophy, however, not from the fountain-head, but from the
adulterated streams of commentators, who were deeply infected with the spirit of the Alex-
andrian schools ; and hence arose confusion twice confounded, for the system of Aristotle was
now added to those other systems which were already, we cannot say blended, but jumbled
together. Add to tliis that the Arabians were obliged to have recourse to Arabic versions,
aiul these not taken directly from the original Greek, but from Syriac translations, made by
Greek Christiansat a period when barbarism was overspreading the Greek world and philo-

> "The sect of the Rationalists," says tho learned Eahbi Ahen Tibbon, "is composed of certain philosophical
sciolist-s, who judge of things, not according to truth and nature, but according to their own imaginations, and wlio
confound men by a multiplicity of specious words without meaning ; whence their science is called 'The Wisdom of
Words ■ " (In Lib. Morch). Human lolly is alike in all ages.

70 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

sophy was almost extinct. The first translators themselves were ill qualified to give a true
representation of the Aristotelian philosophy, so obscurely delivered in the first instance by
its author, and of which the text had been for many centuries corrupt beyond the ordinary
degrees of corruption, which had been further obscured by hints of commentators, who, follow-
ing with extreme vigour the usual pursuits of the tribe, had succeeded in making obscurity
more obscure and in intercepting rays of light wherever practicable. What then could be
hoped from the second class of translators who implicitly followed such blind guides ? ^ The
truth is, that the Arabian translators and commentators executed their task neither judiciously
nor faithfully ; often mistaking, even when there was no excuse for it, the sense of tlieir
author, adding many things which were not in the original, and omitting many passages that
they did not understand. These errors, greatly increased, were transferred into the subsequent
Latin versions, and became the cause of innumerable misconceptions and absurdities in the
Christian schools of the west ; where the doctrines of Aristotle, after having passed through
the hands of the Alexandrians and Saracens, and to a certain extent also of the Jews,
produced that wonderful mass of subtleties and dialectic ingenuity — the Scholastic

Philosophy.

Aristotle, or rather the half mythical Aristotle, which was all that these Saracens could
obtain, was i'mpUcitly followed, as were some other Greek works in mathematics, medicine, and
pure physics, which also they were obliged to view through the intermedium of imperfect
translations. The mathematical sciences were cultivated with great industry by the Arabians,
and in arithmetic, and especially in algebra, which derives its name from them, their in-
ventions and improvements are valuable ; but in geometry, instead of improving on, they
rather deteriorated from the works of the Greeks. In medicine, to which they paid much
attention, their chief guides were Hippocrates and Galen, but by attempting to reconcile their
doctrine with that of Aristotle they naturally introduced into their medical system many
inconsistent tenets and useless refinements.! So with botany, though they made choice of
no unskilful guide, and spent much labour in interpreting him, yet they frequently mistook
his meaning so egregiously, that in the Arabian translation a botanist would scarcely suppose
himself to be reading Dioscorides, nor were they more successful in other branches of natural
history. Their discoveries in chemistry, it is true, were not inconsiderable, but they were
concealed under the occult mysteries of alchemy. Even in astronomy, where they obtained
the liighest reputation, they made but few improvements upon the Greeks, as appears from
the Arabic version of Ptolemy's " Almagest" and from their account of the number of fixed
stars.2 111 astrology, indeed, they attained pre-eminence, but this cannot be called a science,
and owes its existence to ignorance, superstition, and imposture.

The Saracens wanted confidence in their own abHities, and they, therefore, chose
to put themselves under the guidance of Aristotle or any other master rather than to
speculate for themselves ; and hence, with all their industry or ingenuity they contri-
buted but little towards enlarging the field of human knowledge. Not that there were not
great men among the Arabians, or that philosophy owed nothing to their exertions, but
at the same time we must confess that the advances wliich the Saracens^ made in know-
ledge were inconsiderable ; they certainly fell far short of the Greeks in general know-

1 Friend, Hist. Med., pt. ii., rr- 12, 14. 'Ibid., pt. ii., p. 11.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 71

ledge or in philosophical acuteness, and that it is only in a very few particulars that they
made any addition to the fund of general knowledge. Per contra, we must accuse them of
materially adding to that development of mystery which formed so prominent a feature in
the revived learning of the sixteenth century.

We have now explored, I admit, in a very imperfect manner, the sources from which the
mystical learning of the Eeformation period was derived, and shall be the better able to
estimate the value of these dreamy tenets from which, by a kind of morganatic marriage, the
learning and tradition of the Freemasons are supposed to have been derived. We see that all
ancient learning. Oriental, Jewish, Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, combined with that of
Egypt, was strangely compounded into one, which gave birth to the Cabbala and the Arabian
philosophy. Neo-Platonism had perished, save in so far as its influence was indirectly exerted
in the formation of the Arabian and the mediaeval Jewish schools; and our task now will be to
endeavour to ascertain how far this ancient learning, descending from one family to the other,
influenced the Eeformation mystical philosophers, and whether it had sufficient influence on
certain classes in the Middle Ages, to form a body of men who could transmit whole and
entire, the old world doctrines to a generation living in a totally altered state of society.

As before stated, the Alexandrian school perished, it may be said, with the edict
of Justinian closing the schools of Athens towards the middle of the sixth century. The
Saracenic began three, and the new Jewish five, centuries later, and there is little in
the writings of Western Europe, to suppose that an uninterrupted sequence of Alexandrian
doctrines existed during the interval. But both Jew and Saracen, apart from what they
may have derived from earlier sources, had, doubtless, many strange fancies of their own,
which, while influencing the future, may have been influenced by the remotest past. The
intercourse between the East and the West was constant and complete. In the Anglo-Saxon
times, to take but one example, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were customary, — witness the
travels of Arculfus, Willibald, and Saiwulf Indeed, one cause of the Crusades was the ill-
treatment of pilgrims by the new dynasties which held sway in Palestine. The learning of
both Jews and Saracens in Spain spread certainly throughout the south of France, and how
much farther it is difiicult, at this period, to ascertain. The universal diffusion of the Jews,
and the influence of the Crusades themselves, doubtless assisted in this new development,
and when the romantic ardour of the Cross — an ardour so perfectly consonant with the
spirit of the times — had ceased, the mercantile enterprise of the Genoese and Venetians
doubtless kept the flame alive. Hence we may easily conclude that the Jewish and Saracenic
ideas to a certain extent penetrated the intellectual feeling of Western Europe ; but we may
well pause, before giving our consent to the notion, however popular, that one mysterious and
deathless body of men, worked in silence and in darkness, for the transmission of ancient
fancies to generations yet unborn. Mathematicians, astrologers, and alchemists, especially
when we remember the peculiarly romantic tendency of the IMiddle Ages, doubtless existed
here and there, and the quasi knowledge which they imperfectly learned from their Oriental
teachers, may have been cultivated by some few votaries, but the metaphysical speculations,
the philosophy of the Middle Ages was, save in its origin, essentially difl'erent, and depended
more on Augustine than upon Aristotle. Metaphysics, i.e., abstract speculations as to the
soul and its relations to the Divinity, is one thing ; Theurgy, a magic alchemy and astrology,
the attempt to bring these theoretical speculations to some practical point, such as coutroUin<'

72 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

the secret powers of nature, is another— and we may as well attempt to connect the specu-
lations of Eeid or Sir William Hamilton, with the vagaries of Mesmer or Cagliostro.

Alchemists, astrologists, d Iwc genus omne, doubtless existed in the Middle Ages, but not, I
imagine, to any great extent. We must remember the power of the Church, the tremendous
enghie of confession, and the fact that in an age in which, though often unduly decried,
physical learning and science, properly so called, was at a very low ebb. Gerbert,i Roger
Bacon, and Sir Michael Scott were all accounted as wizards. No actual magical lore, save
what might have existed among the most superstitious and ignorant of the commonalty, had
a chancr of raising its head without being at once detected. It is a reductio ad absurdum
to suppose that the mediaeval masons who were mere mechanics, and were perhaps more than
any other class of operatives under the immediate eye of the Church, could have been chosen
to transmit such secrets, or that they would have had a chance of doing so if they had been
so chosen. But I shall doubtless be met with the argument that mystic signs, such as the
Pentalpha, etc., have been repeatedly found among masonic marks on stones, to say nothing of
rings and 'other similar trinkets. To this I reply, that it is a very common thing for men to
copy one from the other without knowing the reason why, and that the greater part of these
supposed mysterious emblems, were transmitted from one to the other without any higher
reason than that they were common and handy, and had, so to speak, fashion on their side.
What, for instance, could be more absurd than to suppose that poor and ilUterate masons
should copy the signs of magical lore on stones under the very eyes of tlieir employers— the
clergy,— even supposing they knew their value, to be then turned in and buried within massive
waUs.'on the chance of their being discovered by some remote generation which would have
lost all sense of their symbolism ? As well suppose that a nun bricked up in a niche, if ever
such there were, was placed there as a warning to remote posterity and not as a punishment

for present sin.^

So matters stood at the era of the Reformation. This era, of which the Reformation was
only a part, formed a prodigious leap in the human intellect, a leap for which preparations
had long been made. The phase of thought, peculiar to the Middle Ages, had long been
silently decaying before the fall or impending fall of Constantinople had driven the Greek
learned to Italy, before the invention of printing had multiplied knowledge, and long before
the Reformation itself had added the cUmax to the whole, for the Reformation was only
the final outcome of the entire movement.

For good or for evil, the mind of man in Western Europe— for the revolution was
limited in area, far more so than we are apt to think— was then set free, and, as few
people are capable of reasoning correctly, the wildest vagaries ensued as a matter of course.

1 Afterwards Sylvester IT. He was the first French Pope.

» It has been already mentioned {ante, Chap. IX., p. 456, note 3) that atthe present day, if a stonemason, on moving
from his own nei"hboiirhood, finds his mark employed by another workman, the etiquette or usage of the trade requires that
the new comer shall distinguish his work by a symbol differing in some slight respect from that of the mason whose trade
mark so to speak, is identical with his own. The Cabbalistic signs, doubtless originating in the East, must have always
been very convenient for this purpose. A friend informs me that some two years ago, when the south-western portion
of the nave of Westminster Abbey was in process of restoration, he saw a stone in the cloisters which had been taken
down and which bore the name of the mason and the date in full {area. March 30, 1663). the whole being enclosed by
a line' or border. A mere diagram was infinitely simpler and easier to cut, especially for those who could neither read
nor write.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 73

It was not only in theology that a new starting point was acquired ; science, politics,
art, literature, — everything, in short, that is capable of being embraced by the mind of man,
shared in the same movement, and, as a matter of course, no phase of human folly remained
unrepresented. The mind of man thus set free was incessantly occupied in searching after
the ways of progress, but mankind saw but through a glass darkly ; they were ignorant of
fundamental principles ; they drew wild inferences and jumped at still wilder conclusions,
while the imagination was seldom, if ever, under control, and they were in the dark as to the
method of inductive science, i.e., the patient forging of the links in the chain from particulars
to generals. This, one of the most precious of earthly gifts yet vouchsafed to the human
intellect, had escaped the Greek philosophers and the perhaps still subtler scholastic doctors,
and awaited the era of the Columbus of modern science. Lord Bacon. It is not, therefore, to
be wondered at that everything of ancient lore, more especially when it possessed a spark of
mystery, should have been eagerly examined, and that as the printing press and the revival of
Greek learning aided their efforts, everything that could be rescued of the Neo- Alexandrian school,
of the jargon of the Cabbalists, the alchemists, and the astrologers, should have been pressed
into the service, and resulted in the formation, not exactly of a school, but of a particular phase
of the human mind, which was, as I have before said, even more extraordinary than that
of the visionaries of Alexandria. It was not confined to the philosophers strictly so-called,
— there was no folly in religion, politics, or arts, which was not eagerly embraced during the
same period, until finally the storm died away in a calm which was outwardly heralded by the
peace of Westphalia, the termination of the Fronde, and the English Eestoration.i

First in point of date — for we may pass over the isolated case of Eaymond LuUy, oh.
1315, now principally remembered as the inventor of a kind of Babbage's calculating machine
applied to logic, but who was also a learned chemist and skilful dialectician — comes John
Picus de Mirandola, born of a princely family, 1463. Before he was twenty-four years of
age he had acquired so much knowledge that lie went to Eome and proposed for disputation
nine hundred questions in dialectics, mathematics, philosophy, and theology, which he also
caused to be hung up in aU the open schools in Europe, challenging their professors to public
disputation, and offering " en 2n-i>ice " to defray the expenses of any one travelling to Kome
for that purpose. Naturally, he merely excited envy and jealousy, and after a few years he
gave himself up to solitude and devotion, and formed a resolution to distribute his property
to the poor, and to travel barefooted throughout the world, in order to propagate the gospel.
But death put an end to this extravagant project in the thirty-second year of his age.^ Pro-

1 The whole of this period, toth in the matters which led up to it, and the phases througli which it passed, have
had almost their counterpart in the Frencli Revolution and its causes, and the stormy and perplexed state which
nations are now in and have during the century heen passing through.

'■' The custom, of which the famous nine hundred questions afford a typical illustration, was a common enough form
of literary distinction in those days, though this is probably the most celebrated instance. By far the greater part were
from Aristotle or the Cabbala. The secret of the whole is simple enough. lie, and others like him, studied certain
authors, and then offered to be examined in them, themselves setting the examination papers. Any one would be glad
to go into a civil service examination on these terms. But the subjects must have been uncommonly well "got up."
Most people will remember the story of Sir T. More, who, when a young man, answered the pedant who at Brussels
offered to dispute " de omni scibili" by the proposition " An averia capta in Withernamia sint irrcplcgibilia?" (whether
cattle taken in Withernam be irrepleviable ?). Only an English common lawyer could have answered it ; but the bar-
barous Latin in which it was couched made it appear still more terrible.
VOL. II. K

74 EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

bably tlie blade had worn out the scabbard. I do not pretend to any deep learning in the
doctrines of this school, or rather of the various classes of enthusiasts who sprang up — we
cannot exactly say flourished — during this period. It is tolerably clear that very few formed
any connected school, but that each was eagerly searching after truth, or following will o' the
wisps, as his own fancies prompted ; and if several pursued the same mode of investigation
it was more from chance than design. What store of metaphysics they had was most probably
gathered from their predecessors, — their physics, that is the empirical arts which they pro-
fessed, from themselves, based on what they could gather from the Cabbalists and Saracens.
Hence it would seem that the mystical descent of the Freemasons must be derived, if it be
so derived at all, from a bastard philosophy springing from a somewhat mixed and doubtful
ancestry. Men's minds being thoroughly upset, any one of ill-regulated or ardent imagination
naturally became excited, and launched out into every kind of absurdity. The superior and
more educated classes believed in alchemy, magic, astronomy, and fortune telling of a superior
order; the common people believed almost universally in witchcraft. For this witchcraft
was not the effect of the " gross superstition of the dark ages " and of ignorance, as is
generally assumed by the glib talkers and writers of the day, but was rather the effect of the
" outburst of the human intellect " and " the shaking-off of the thraldom of ignorance." It
is strange that it prevailed mainly, if not entirely, in those countries most shaken by the
throes of the Reformation — England, Scotland, France, and Germany (there is little heard of
it, I believe, in Ireland), and seems most likely to have been a kind of lasting epidemic of
nervous hysteria.^ Its existence was believed in by the ablest of our judges; it was the
subject of a special treatise by His Most Gracious Majesty James I., who was by no means
the fool it is the fashion to suppose him ; and if his opinion be not deemed of much weight
it was equally supported, and that at a comparatively late period by one of the acutest geniuses
England has yet produced— Glanvill — in his " Sadducismus Triumphatus." Indeed, there was
nothing very extraordinary in this universal belief, for earth and air were full of demons, and
the black and other kindred arts objects of universal study. Not to mention Nostradamus,
WaUenstein, who was probably mad, had his astrologer, and a century earlier, Catherine de
Medicis, who was certainly not, had hers. Between the two flourished the famous Dr Dee
and Sir Kenelm Digby,^ whose natural eccentricity wanted no artificial stimulus, followed in
the same path as did Dr Lamb, who was knocked on the head by the populace early in
Charles the First's reign, from which arose the cant phrase, " Lamb him," ^ teste, Macaulay. Lilly,
the astrologer, who seems to have been half enthusiast, half fool, and whole knave, gives in his

' The poor women accused of witchcraft constantly asserted the truth of their having dealings with the Evil One,
although they well knew that the confession would subject them to a cruel death. They must, therefore, in some way
have been deluded into the belief. Again, they constantly asserted that they bore marks on their persons made by the
iicnd, and on their being examined this was generally found to be the case. This is another proof of nervous hysteria.

- Sir K. Digby being in the East, and finding, or fancying that he found, his virtue in danger, preserved his
fidelity to his wife, the beautiful Venetia Stanley, to whom he was passionately attached, by writing a panegyrical
biography of her. As he does not appear, however, from the same narrative to have been over scrupulous of his wife's
honour, the performance seems to have savoured slightly of supererogation.

* To " lamb into a follow " is a very old school phrase. If this is derivable from the former, it is another illustra-
tion, and a curious one, of the way things are handed down without any visible connection. For even the proverbially
omniscient schoolboy can scarcely be supposed to be well acquainted with, or much interested in, the details of the life
and death of the ill-staired Dr Lamb.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 75

aiitobiofjraphy several most curious accounts of the various astrologers of his contemporaries
then flourishing in London, every one of whom would now, most certainly, and with great
justice, be handed over to the police. He also mentions that he himself (he seems to have
towered above his colleagues) was consulted as to some of the attempted escapes of Charles I.,
which, according to him, only failed owing to the king having wilfully neglected his advice,
wliile, on the other hand, he was thanked at Windsor by some of the leading officers of the
Eepublican army for the astrological predictions, with which he had occasionally revived
their drooping hopes. Before perusing Lilly's autobiography ,1 I was of opinion that these
pious sectaries always " wrestled with the Lord in prayer," or, at the worst, tried a " fall " in
the Bible akin to the Sortes Virgiliance, but it would seem that, as they deceived others, so
they themselves should be deceived. Lilly's business was so extensive that he complains,
towards the end of his work, that he had not proper time to devote to his prayers, and,
accordingly, retired to Hersham, near "Walton-on-Thames, a place he had long affected.
Having, through the interest of his friend Ashmole (of whom hereafter), obtained the degree
of M.D. from Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, he practised physic with much success at
Kingston-on-Thames, and, dying in 1681 (he was born in 1602), was buried in the chancel of
Walton Church. Whatever his success, however, he did not take in everybody, for the
honour of human nature, be it said, that Pepys records : —

"Oct. 24, 1660. — So to Mr Lilly's, with Mr Spong, where well received, there being a
clubb to-night among his friends. Among the rest. Esquire Ashmole, who, I found, was a very
ingenious gentleman. With him we two sang afterwards in Mr Lilly's study. That done we
all parted : and I home by Coach taking Mr Eooker with me, who did tell me a great many
fooleries which may be done by nativities, and blaming Mr Lilly for writing to please his
friends and to keep in with the times (as he did formerly to his own dishonour) and not
according to the rules of art, by, which he could not well erre as he had done." ^ And again : —
" June 14, 1667. — We read and laughed at Lilly's prophecies this month in his Almanack
for this year." ^

Among the numerous philosophers, all of them more or less eminent, and many
endowed with really powerful genius who were led astray by these fancies, may be men-
tioned Johann Eeuchlin,* born at Pforzheim in Suabia a.d. 1455, who professed and taught a
mystical system compounded of the Platonic, Pythagorean, and Cabbalistic doctrines princi-
pally set forth in his works.^ Henry Cornelius Agrippa, born near Cologne in 1486, a man
of powerful genius and vast erudition, but of an eccentric and restless spirit, and who finally
closed a roving and chequered existence at Grenoble in 1535.' His occult philosophy is
rather a sketch of the Alexandrian mixed with the Cabbalistic theology than a treatise on

» Life of William Lilly, with Notes by Mr Ashmole. Ed. 177i.

° Samuel Pepj's, Diary and Con-espondence. ' llul-

* Reuchlin's zeal for the Hebrew learning once nearly got him into great trouble. One Pfefferkorn, a converted Jew,
of Cologne, with the not always disinterested zeal of converts, succeeded in obtaining an order from tlie Emperor that
all Jewish books should be collected at Frankfort and burnt. The Jews, however, succeeded in inducing the Emi>eror
to allow them first to be examined, and Reuchlin was appointed for that purpose, and his recommendation that all should
be spared save those written against the Faith was carried out ; by which means he inciirrcd the intense hatred of the
more bigoted churchmen. Ob. 1522.

' " De Verbo Mirifico" (1494), and "De Arte Cabbalistica " (1516).
See H. Morley, Life of Cornelius Agrippa vou Mettcsheim, Doctor and Knight, commonly known as a Magician, 185C.

•jS EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND.

magic, and explains the harmony of nature and the connection of the elementary, celestial,
and intellectual worlds on the principles of the emanative system. Two things may be especially
noted of him. He started in life as a physician with the wild project of recommending him-
self to the great by pretending to a knowledge of the secrets of nature, and especially of the
art of producing gold. The other, that in the course of his wanderings he came for a short
time to England, where he is said to have founded an hermetic society.^ Jerome Cardan, an
Italian phydcian, born at Pavia in 1501, and who died about 1576, was a wonderful compound
of wisdom and folly. An astrologer all his life, his numerous predictions, and the cures
which he undertook to perform by secret charms, or by the assistance of invisible spirits, made
him pass for a magician, while they were in reality only proofs of a mind infatuated by
superstition. His numerous works, collected and published by Spon, in 10 vols, (fob, Lugd.,
1663), show him to have been a man of great erudition, fertile invention, and capable of many
new and singular discoveries both in philosophy and medicine. Innumerable singularities,
both physical and metaphysical, are found in his works, accompanied by many experiments
and observations on natural phenomena, but the whole is thrown together in such a confused
mass as to show clearly that, though he had no lack of ideas, he was incapable of arranging
them, an incapacity which will render nugatory the most ingenious and original conceptions.
His works ^ exemplify this combined strength and weakness, for if he could only have preserved
a clear head and cool judgment, he would doubtless have contributed largely to the progress of
true science. Thomas Campanella, a Dominican, born in Calabria in 1568, was also undoubtedly
a man of genius, and it must be equally without doubt, that his imagination greatly pre-
dominated over his judgment, when we find that he not only gave credit to the art of astro-
logy, but believed that he was cured of a disease by the words and prayers of an old woman ;
that demons appeared to him, and that he persuaded himself that when any danger threatened
him, he was, between sleeping and waking, warned by a voice which called him by name. Still,
in spite of his childish credulity and eccentricity, CampaneUa could reason soberly, and is
especially worthy of praise, for the freedom with which he exposed the futility of the Aris-
totelian philosophy, and for the pains which he took to deduce natural science from observa-
tion and experience. He died in a Dominican monastery at Paris, a.d. 1639, in the seventy-
first year of his age. Numerous other philosophers who have attained the highest eminence
were, at least occasionally, not exempt from a belief in these follies, and that in compara-
tively modern times. Henry More, the famous Platonist, one of the most briUiant of the
alumni of Cambridge, the friend and colleague of Cudworth, 1614-1687, shows in his works a
deep tincture of mysticism, a belief in the Cabbala, and the transmission of the Hebrew
doctrines through Pythagoras to Plato. Locke, 1632-1704, the father of modern thought and
philosophy, was, early in life, for a time seduced by the fascinations of these mysteries ; and
the eminent Descartes, 1596-1650, in his long search after truth— which he did not ultimately
succeed in finding— for a time admitted the same weakness.

' "In the year 1510 Henry Cornelius Agiippa came to London, and, as appears l>y his correspondence (O/iiwcuto,
t. ii. p. 1073), he founded a secret society for alchemical purposes similar to one which he had previously instituted at
Paris, in concert with Landolfo, Brixianus, Xanthus, and other students at that university. The memhers of these
societies did agree on j'rivalc signs of recognition ; and they founded, in various parts of Europe, corresponding associa-
tions for the prosecution of the occult sciences " (Monthly Review, second series, 1798, vol. xxv., p. 304).

2 "De Reruni Subtilitate, " and " De Rerum Varietate " afford a couspicuous illustration.

EARLY BRITISH FREEMASONRY— ENGLAND. 77

So far I have treated of philosophers who yielded principally to the weaknesses of
astrology, magic, and a belief in demons; we now come to those who, also, in their new
born ardour for the pursuit of material science, explored, or rather attempted to explore,
the realms of chemistry, and to the vague generalities with which men commencing a study,
and groping therefore in the dark, feeling their way gradually with many errors, added the
mystical views of their contemporaries. The idea of demons, which is probably at the root of
all magic, inasmuch as it supposes an inferior kind of guardians of the treasures of the earth, air,
and planets, who can be communicated with by mortals, and, human vanity will add, controlled
by them, is iu all probability derived from the CabbaUsts, whose doctrine of emanation was
peculiarly suited to it, and from the Saracens (the two streams having united as already shown)
who had plenty of jius and demons of their own, as may be gathered from the "Arabian Nights."
To this possibly the old Teutonic, Celtic, and Scandinavian legends may have been super-
added, so that the whole formed a machinery to which the earlier chemists, confused in their
knowledge, and hampered with the superstitions of their times, attributed the control of
the various forces of nature, — a system, of which a French caricature is given, by the author
of the memoirs of the Count de Gabalis, of whom more anon.

The first, and perhaps the greatest, certainly the most celebrated of these, was Philippus
Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus, a man of strange and paradoxical genius, born at Einsidlen,
near Zurich, in 1493. His real name ^ is said to have been Bombastus, which, in accordance
with the pedantry of the times, he changed to Paracelsus, which expresses tlie same
thing in somewhat more learned language. Brought up by his father, who was also a
physician, liis ardour for learning was so great that he travelled over the greater part of
Europe, and possibly even portions of Asia and Africa, in search of knowledge, visiting, not
only the learned men, but the workshops of mechanics, and not only the universities, but
the mines, and esteeming no person too mean nor any place too dangerous, provided only
that he could obtain knowledge. It may easily be believed that such a man would despise