14.7.06
ad Eruditos Europae
Confessio Fraternitatis
[The original edition of the Confessio Fraternitatis appeared in the year 1615 in a Latin work entitled "Secretioris Philosophiae Consideratio Brevio a Philippo a Gabella, Philosophiae studioso, conscripta; et nunc primum una cum Confessione Fraternitatis R.C." The following translation, taken from A.E. Waite's edition, is accredited to Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) and was made from the later German version of the manifesto.]
Preface
Here, gentle reader, you shall finde incorporated in our Confession thirty-seven reasons of purpose and intention, the which according to thy pleasure thou mayst seek out and compare together, considering within thyself if they be sufficient to allure thee. Verily, it requires no small pains to induce any one to believe what doth not yet appear, but when it shall be revealed in the full blaze of day, I suppose we should be ashamed of such questionings. And as we do now securely call the Pope Antichrist, which was formerly a capital offence in every place, so we know certainly that what we here keep secret we shall in the future thunder forth with uplifted voice, the which, reader, with us desire with all thy heart that it may happen most speedily.
"Fratres R.C."
Confessio Fraternitatis R.C.
ad
Eruditos Europae.
Chapter I.
Whatsoever you have heard, O mortals, concerning our Fraternity by the trumpet sound of the Fama R.C., do not either believe it hastily, or willfully suspect it. It is Jehovah who, seeing how the world is falling to decay, and near its end, doth hasten it again to its beginning, inverting the course of Nature, and so what heretofore hath been sought with great pains and dayly labour He doth lay open now to those thinking of no such thing, offering it to the willing and thrusting it upon the reluctant, that it may become to the good that which will smooth the troubles of human life and break the violence of unexpected blows of Fortune, but to the ungodly that which will augment their sins and their punishments.
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