THE ESSENES.
35
Connecting in turn the Essenes with the Soofees of Persia, Krause
still
further lengthens
the Masonic pedigree.
Although the Soofee tenets are involved in mystery, they had secrets and mysteries for
every gradation, which were never revealed to the profane.^ But there seems reason to believe
that their doctrine
"
involved the grand idea of one universal creed which could be secretly
held under any profession of an outward faith and, in fact, took virtually the same view of
religious systems as that in which the ancient philosophers had regarded such matters."
;
"
Traces of the Soofee doctrine," says Sir John IMalcolm, " exist, in some shape or other, in
every region of the world. It is to be found in the most splendid theories of tlie ancient
schools of Greece, and of the modern philosophers of Europe.
It is the dream of the most
ignorant and of the most learned."
remains to be noticed
It
^
that,
by one
writer, the introduction of
Essenism into Britain
has been actually described, and the argumentative grounds on which this speculation is based,
afford, perhaps, not an iinfair specimen of the ordinary reasoning which has linked the
Mr Herbert contends *
principles of this ancient sect with those of more modern institutions.
that St Germanus, on his visits to England, for the purpose of extirpating the Pelagian
heresy,
found that the doctrines which Pelagius had imbibed from the Origenists, we &R