r, although not probably as a degree in
Masonry, for it existed as a cabalistic science from the earliest
times in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as amongst the Jews and
Moors in times more recent, and in our own country the names of
Roger Bacon, Fludd, Ashmole, and many others are found in its list
of adepts.[376]

Dr. Mackey, quoting this passage, observes that "Oliver confounds the
masonic Rose-Croix with the alchemical Rosicrucians," and proceeds to
give an account of the Rose-Croix degree as worked in England and
America, which he truly describes as "in the strictest sense a Christian
degree."[377] But the point Dr. Mackey overlooks is that this is only
one version of the degree, which, as we shall see later, has been and
still is worked in a very different manner on the Continent.

It is, however, certain that the version of the Rose-Croix degree first
adopted by the Freemasons of France in about 1741 was not only so
Christian but so Catholic in character as to have given rise to the
belief that it was devised by the Jesuits in order to counteract the
attacks of which Catholicism was the object.[378] In a paper on the
Additional Degrees Mr. J.S. Tuckett writes:

There is undeniable evidence that in their _earliest forms_ the
Ecossais or Scots Degrees were Roman Catholic; I have a MS. Ritual
in French of what I believe to be the _original_ Chev. de l'Aigle
or S.'.P.'.D.'.R.'.C.'. (Souverain Prince de Rose-Croix) and in it the
New Law is declared to be "la foy Catholique," and the Baron Tschoudy
in his _L'Etoile Flamboyante_ of 1766 describes the same Degree as
"le Catholicisme mis en grade" (Vol. I. p. 114). I suggest that
Ecossais or Scots Masonry was intended to be a Roman Catholic as
well as a Stuart form of Freemasonry, in which none but those
devoted to both Restorations were to be admitted.[379]

But is it necessary to read this political intention into the degree? If
the tradition of the Royal Order of Scotland is to be believed, the idea
of the Rose-Croix degree was far older than the Stuart cause, and dated
back to Bannockburn, when the degree of Heredom with which it was
coupled was instituted in order "to correct the errors and reform the
abuses which had crept in among the three degrees of St. John's
Masonry," and to provide a "Christianized form of the Third Degree,"
"purified of the dross of paganism and even of Judaism."[