.
.BACON'S "SECRET SOCIETY": THE EPHRATA CONNECTION
by Linda S. Schrigner, et al
SECTION III — SLIDES AND RESEARCH ON BACON AND
AMERICA
by Linda S. Schrigner
57
SECTION III — SLIDES AND RESEARCH ON BACON AND
AMERICA
by Linda S. Schrigner
57
![William Penn, Age 38 [1644-1718]](57_William_Penn_38y.jpg)
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Aside from "the Woman in the Wilderness" Chapter of Perfection,
what of the Rosicrucian Americans involved in the politics leading to and
carrying out the American Revolution? What of those who helped to
set out the framework of the Democratic Republic of America?
In Europe there was still more in connection with the perfecti that further explains another famous Early American's role in the colonies. William Penn [1644-1718] was known publicly as a Quaker. However he had his own Rosicrucian purposes, also. In New World Mystics, Dr. John Palo has a footnote indicating that William Penn visited Pietist conventicles in Europe. They were initiatic collegiums for Rosicrucians: ". . . he visited Pietist conventicles which were held in an air of great secrecy and danger of exposure. He invited the Rosae Crucis to settle on his land [in America]. . . . These Pietists or Rosicrucians were thought unorthodox and hence undesirable in the eye of the politico-religious powers of Europe. They were accused of mixing Christian tenets with the practices of Ancient Egypt and some of the doctrines of Zoroaster."As explained by Dr. Palo, after Penn's first trip to America in 1681, on several trips he made back to Europe, he had come into contact with individuals in England, Holland and Germany, who were playing an important part in executing a plan to establish a Rosicrucian colony in America by 1694. Notable among them were William Markham of The Philadelphic Society in London, who would serve later as Penn's Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania; and Jacob Isaac Van Bebber, a German Rosicrucian, who later purchased 1000 acres of land from Penn for the Rosicrucian purpose of establishing a colony in America. As a youth at Oxford University, William Penn had become a Quaker, who believed that no man was above another in the eyes of God, that every person has a direct, divine communication with the voice of conscience. According to Early Days in the New World, a primary basis of the Quaker beliefs, as founded by George Fox, was: "... that the ways of the world were sinful, and that all men should live together in perfect friendship.... The Friends believed that all men were equal.... that every man has a conscience, or 'inner voice' as they called it, should be his guide, and not the teachings of the ministers. Because the Bible says, 'Swear not at all,' they would take no oath, not even the oath of loyalty to the king. . . . |
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