Page 20 - Scottish Alchemists

founders surpassed everything that had ever been imagined since the creation
of the world, without even excepting the revelations of the Deity; that they
were destined to accomplish the general peace and regeneration of man
before the end of the world arrived; that they possessed all wisdom and piety
in a supreme degree; that they possessed all the graces of nature, and could
distribute them among the rest of mankind according to their pleasure; that
they were subject to neither hunger nor thirst, nor disease nor old age, nor to
any other inconvenience of nature; that they knew by inspiration and at the
first glance every one who was worthy to be admitted into their society; that
they had the same knowledge then which they would have possessed if they
had lived from the beginning of the world, and had always been acquiring it;
that they had a volume in which they could read all that ever was or ever
would be written in the books till the end of time; that they could force to
and retain in their service the most powerful spirits and demons; that by
virtue of their songs they could attract pearls and precious stones from the
depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that God had covered them with
a thick cloud by means of which they could shelter themselves from the
malignity of their enemies, and that they could thus render themselves
invisible from all eyes; that the eight first brethren of the ‘Rose Cross’ had
power to cure all maladies; that by means of the fraternity the triple diadem
of the pope would be reduced into dust; that they only admitted two sacra-
ments, with the ceremonies of the primitive church renewed by them that
they recognised the fourth monarchy and the Emperor of the Romans as
their chief and the chief of all Christians, that they would provide him with
more gold, their treasures being inexhaustible, than the king of Spain had
ever drawn from the golden regions of Eastern and Western Ind.”5

These singular beliefs of his followers had been kept, by the rules of the
order, profoundly secret till 1604, viz., six times twenty years after the death
of Rosencreutz, but after that period were promulgated for the welfare of
mankind. Missionaries were sent by the Society from Germany to all the
more important countries of Europe, where they obtained many converts;
and it has already been remarked that it is not improbable that Dr Politius
was one of those who visited Scotland, for the purpose of meeting with Sir
George Erskine and other believers in these doctrines.

Among the Erskine manuscripts is the first part of a kind of Rosicrucian
treatise, entitled “Arbatel, or the magick of the auncient Philosophers the
cheef studie of wisdom,” and stated to have been written “Anno Virginei
partus saluberrimi 1602 Febii. xiii. G. A.” This work seems to have been

5 Mackay's Popular Delusions, vol. iii. p. 145.

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