380] Whether
the antiquity attributed to these degrees can be proved or not, it
certainly appears probable that the legend of the Royal Order of
Scotland had some foundation in fact, and therefore that the ideas
embodied in the eighteenth-century Rose-Croix degree may have been drawn
from the store of that Order and brought by the Jacobites to France. At
the same time there is no evidence in support of the statement made by
certain Continental writers that Ramsay actually instituted this or any
of the upper degrees. On the contrary, in his Oration he expressly
states that Freemasonry is composed of the Craft degrees only:

We have amongst us three kinds of brothers: Novices or Apprentices,
Fellows or Professed Brothers, Masters or Perfected Brethren. To
the first are explained the moral virtues; to the second the heroic
virtues; to the last the Christian virtues....

It might be said then that the Rose-Croix degree was here foreshadowed
in the Masters' degree, in that the latter definitely inculcated
Christianity. This would be perfectly in accord with Ramsay's point of
view as set forth in his account of his conversion by Fenelon. When he
first met the Archbishop of Cambrai in 1710, Ramsay relates that he had
lost faith in all Christian sects and had resolved to "take refuge in a
wise Deism limited to respect for the Divinity and for the immutable
ideas of pure virtue," but that his conversation with Fenelon led him to
accept the Catholic faith. And he goes on to show that "Monsieur de
Cambrai turned Atheists into Deists, Deists into Christians, and
Christians into Catholics by a sequence of ideas full of enlightenment
and feeling."[381]

Might not this be the process which Ramsay aimed at introducing into
Freemasonry--the process which in fact does form part of the masonic
system in England to-day, where the Atheist must become, at least by
profession, a Deist before he can be admitted to the Craft Degrees,
whilst the Rose-Croix degree is reserved solely for those who profess
the Christian faith? Such was undoubtedly the idea of the men who
introduced the Rose-Croix degree into France; and Ragon, who gives an
account of this "Ancien Rose-Croix Francais"--which is almost identical
with the degree now worked in England, but long since abandoned in
France--objects to it on the very score of its Christian character.[382]

In this respect the Rose-Croix amongst all the upper degrees introduced
to Fr