eting their symbol, called the R.C. which was an ebony cross,
flourished and decked with roses of gold; the cross typifying Christ's
sufferings upon the cross for our sins, and the roses of gold the glory
and beauty of his Resurrection. This symbol was carried alternately to
Mecca, Mount Calvary, Mount Sinai, Haran, and to three other places, which
must have been in mid-air, called _Cascle_, _Apamia_ and _Chaulateau
Virissa Caunuch_, where the Rosicrucian brethren met when they pleased,
and made resolution of all their actions. They always took their pleasures
in one of these places, where they resolved all questions of whatsoever
had been done, was done, or should be done in the world, from the
beginning to the end thereof. "And these," he concludes, "are the men
called Rosicrucians!"

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, more rational ideas took
possession of the sect, which still continued to boast of a few members.
They appear to have considered that contentment was the true philosopher's
stone, and to have abandoned the insane search for a mere phantom of the
imagination. Addison, in _The Spectator_,[45] gives an account of his
conversation with a Rosicrucian; from which it may be inferred that the
sect had grown wiser in their deeds, though in their talk they were as
foolish as ever. "I was once," says he, "engaged in discourse with a
Rosicrucian about the great secret. He talked of the secret as of a spirit
which lived within an emerald, and converted every thing that was near it
to the highest perfection that it was capable of. 'It gives a lustre,'
says he, 'to the sun, and water to the diamond. It irradiates every metal,
and enriches lead with all the properties of gold. It heightens smoke into
flame, flame into light, and light into glory.' He further added, 'that a
single ray of it dissipates pain and care and melancholy from the person
on whom it falls. In short,' says he, 'its presence naturally changes
every place into a kind of heaven.' After he had gone on for some time in
this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas
together into the same discourse, and that his great secret was nothing
else but content."

[45] No. 574. Friday, July 30th, 1714.

JACOB BOeHMEN.

It is now time to speak of Jacob Boehmen, who thought he could discover the
secret of the transmutation of metals in the Bible, and who invented a
strange heterogeneous doctrine of mingled alchymy and