I have used inverted commas, because I do not wish to imply that these thinkers belonged to a Rosicrucian Society or that there was such a society.
2.
Bacon (De augmentis scientiarum, III, ii) defends the legitimacy of investigating the nature of good and bad angels, though he thinks that much that has been written on the subject is vain and superstitious.
3.
Cf. Mersenne, Correspondance, i, 286, and Walker, Ancient theology, 190.
4.
Mersenne, Correspondance, ii, 440–2 (letter to Nicolas de Baugy, then Ambassador at the Hague, printed in Gassendi, Epistolica exercitatio (1630)); cf. ibid., ii, 139.
