Page:Horrid Mysteries Volume 1.djvu/11

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE

TRANSLATOR's PREFACE.

Secret Societies have, at all times, and in all civilized countries, either held out private advantages, or pretended to aim at the welfare of whole nations, in order to encrease the number of their members. Amongst the former, the Rosycrucians, whose order was instituted in Germany in the latter end of the fifteenth century, and pretended to be in possession of the philosophers' stone, and of many more valuable arcana, were, by far, the most famous; and, among the latter, the association known under the name of the Secret Tribunal, acquired the greatest celebrity; if we except the order of the Freemasons, which, probably, was the head source whence all other secret associations derived their origin. However, all these associations, avowedly instituted for the improvement of mankind, either in piety, knowledge, or felicity, generally deceived the sanguine expectations of those thatsuffered

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.