The beginning of the seventeenth century was the great epoch of alchemy; it was the period of Philip Muller, John Torneburg, Michael Maier, Ortelius, Poterius, Samuel Norton, Baron de Beausoleil, David Planis Campe, Jean Duchesne, Robert Fludd, Benjamin Mustapha, D’Espagnet, the Cosmopolite—who is in the first rank—de Nuisement, who translated and published the Cosmopolite’s writings, John Baptist van Helmont, Eirenæus Philalethes, Rodolph Glauber, the sublime shoemaker Jacob Böhme.[273] The chief among these initiates were devoted to the researches of Transcendental Magic, but they concealed most carefully that detested name under the veil of Hermetic experiments. The Mercury of the Wise which they desired to discover and hand on to their disciples was the scientific and religious synthesis, the peace which abides in the sovereign unity. The mystics themselves were but blind believers in the true _illuminati_, while illuminism, properly so called, was the universal science of light. In the spring of 1623 the following strange proclamation was placarded through the streets of Paris: “We who are the authorised messengers of the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, making visible and invisible sojourn in this town, by the grace of the Most High, towards Whom the hearts of sages turn, do give instruction, without external means, in speaking the language of the countries wherein we dwell,[274] and do rescue men who are our fellow-workers from terror and from death. If anyone shall seek us out of mere curiosity, he will never communicate with us; but if he be actuated by an earnest desire to be inscribed on the register of our fraternity, we, who are discerners of thoughts, will make manifest to such an one the truth of our promises, so only that we do not disclose the place of our abode, since thought in its union with the firm will of the reader shall be sufficient to make us known to him and him likewise to us.”