Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
the manifestos , the young pastor Johann Valentin , it was ultimately only a language and a symbol for defending a theological thesis : reticence before the constitution of a Lutheran orthodoxy and the defense of the spirit of the early Reformation . But under the veil of alchemical allegory , used to avoid the fulmination of the new Lutheran dignitaries , the ludibrium of the Rose-Croix would be first of all a plea for a return to the sources of Christianity . Also , not at the surface of things , but in their very substance , Masonic ritual is really inscribed in the true tradition of the Rose-Croix such as it appears at the beginning of the 17th century . In the middle of the 1780s , in the course of the debates of the Convents of Philalethes , the B . of Gleichen had it noted , on the topic of the customs of the first Christians , that “ sacramental words were secrets : did not real sacramental words experience the fate of the master-word ?” 46 True Masonic science therefore overlaps with the priestly art and thus aims to reestablish the true secrets of primitive worship . In the midst of the century of the Enlightenment , the shadow of Melchisedech hovers behind the closed doors of lodges .
46
Charles Porset , op . cit ., 322 . 24