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and rebellion in the state, and the world wore an aspect 

 importing danger and discontent, and commotion and 

 change. In such times to investigate any principle or 

 publish any discovery, is certain to procure both denun- 

 ciation and punishment. The heads of existing establish- 

 ments will always connect the progress of knowledge 

 with that of innovation, and attribute them to the same 

 cause. The clergy, therefore, from having been the pa- 

 trons, became the enemies of science; and those of the 

 laity who in any way added to the mass of knowledge, 

 became liable to charges of sorcery and magic, inferring 

 punishments, at the name of which our ears tingle now. 

 Under such circumstances, associations among philoso- 

 phers became necessary to protect both themselves and 

 their discoveries from the scandal of ignorance and the 

 license of power. These associations were proscribed, 

 and of course necessarily secret— their members being 

 bound to each other by oaths of fearful import. They 

 also availed themselves of the little then known of che- 

 mistry and natural magic as a defence against the vul- 

 gar, and hence were stigmatized by opprobious epithets, 

 and charged with practising unhallowed mysteries, hav- 

 ing for a confederate the devil. There can be but little 

 doubt that such was the original purpose of those frater- 

 nities, which at this time, and subsequently, extended 

 themselves, under different names, over the whole of Eu- 

 rope. They were at first societies for mutual protection 

 and the advancement of knowledge, but by preserving 

 only the formal and unnecessary parts of their constitu- 

 tion, came at last to be both useless and dangerous. 



Previous to the reformation and dawn of civil liberty, 

 philosophers of different nations held mystic communica- 

 tions with each other by means of these combinations, 

 and in this way new facts and new principles were com- 

 municated to those best able to comprehend them. Their 

 knowledge however was held to be private and forbid- 

 den, and science in their hands took deservedly the epi- 

 thet of occult. 



