or Philosophi per Ignem, a fanatical sect of philosophers who appeared towards the close of the sixteenth century, and made a figure in almost all the countries of Europe. The distinguishing tenet from which they derived this appellation was, that the intimate essences of natural things were only to be known by the trying efforts of fire, directed in a chemical process. They were also called Theosophists, from their declaring against human reason as a dangerous and deceitful guide, and representing a divine and supernatural illumination as the only means of arriving at truth; and Paracelsists, from Paracelsus, the eminent physician and chemist, who was the chief ornament of this extraordinary sect. It was patronized in England by Robert Flood or Fludd, who endeavoured to illustrate the philosophy of Paracelsus in a great number of treatises; in France it was zealously propagated by Rivier; in Denmark, by Severinus; in Germany, by Kunrath, an eminent physician of Dresden; and in other countries by ardent votaries, who assumed an air of piety and devotion, and proposed to themselves no other end than the advancement of the divine glory, and the restoration of peace and concord in a divided church. One of the most celebrated of these was Daniel Hoffman, professor of divinity in the university of Helmstadt, who, availing himself of some unguarded passages in the writings of Luther, maintained that philosophy was the mortal enemy of religion; that truth was divisible into two branches, the philosophical and theological; and that what was true in philosophy was false in theology. But Hoffman was afterwards obliged, by the interposition of Henry Julius, duke of Brunswick, to retract his invectives against philosophy, and to acknowledge in the most open manner the harmony of sound philosophy with genuine theology.