He [Sebastian Franck] makes a distinction between what he calls the church “visible” and “invisible”. The “invisible church” is constituted by the Holy Spirit, through the loving hearts of all men. This conception of the invisible church, stated here by Franck for perhaps the first time, will later be important for the Risicrucians and Freemasons, and for their intellectual heirs, Schelling, Hölderlin and Hegel.
p. 35
Like the Rosicrucians, the Masons believed in the fundamental identity of all religions. Beneath the superficial differences of religions was supposed to lie a Prisca theologia. According to Schneider, “The aim of the lodges was the creation of a new man through membership in a communion mirroring a rational universe of freedom and love, just as primitive Christianity had once sought to call into being children of God for the Kingdom of God” [Heinrich Schneider, Quest for Mysteries: The Mystical Background for Literature in Eighteenth Century Germany; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1947, p. 57]. Indeed the conception of an invisible church — an idea advanced, as we saw in the last chapter, by the mystic Sebastian Franck — was one of the precepts of Masonry. Edmond Mazet writes that Masonry would lead its members, “each through proper understanding of his own faith, to this transcendental truth” [Edmond Mazet, “Freemasonry and Esotericism”, Modern Esoteric Spirituality; New York: Crossroad, 1995, p. 249]. Indeed, Masonry would come to “incorporate” Rosicrucianism, investing its higher degrees with Rosicrucian imagery.
[…]
In 1778, Lessing published his Ernst and Falk: Dialogues for Freemasons (Freimaürgespräche). Lessing’s Nathan the Wise (1779), a play with some broadly construed Masonic themes was a great influence on Hegel. Among other things, the play presses the Masonic theme of a unity of the world’s religions, and thus of an “invisible church.” In act IV, scene 7, the Christian Friar praises Nathan, a Jew:
Friar: O Nathan, Nathan! You’re a Christian soul! By God a better Christian never lived!
Nathan: And well for us! For what makes me for you a Christian, makes yourself for me a Jew!p. 54-5
Robert Schneider has characterized [Johann Albrecht] Bengel as “the philosopher of history who anticipated the work of Schelling and Hegel” [Robert Schneider, Geistesahnen, 38]. Bengel believed thaat he was the herald of a “final age” of man in which God would achieve perfect self-actualization in the world, history would end, and all reality would be absorbed into God. Specifically, Bengel held that this would occur in 1836. Bengel and his followers, who called themselves “The Free” Die Freien), proclaimed the perennial ideal of the invisible church, which would prepare man for the end of time.
p. 64
In a letter from Hegel to Schelling dated January 1795, Hegel writes: “Reason and Freedom remain our watchword, and our rallying point the Invisible Church.” I have already noted the use of the term invisible cburcb by German mystics and Freemasons. H. S. Harris writes: “It seems to me virtually certain that for Hegel, at any rate, the ‘invisible Church’ originally referred to the cosmopolitan ideal of Freemasonry as envisaged by Lessing in Ernst und Falk” [Harris, Toward the Sunlight, 105]. However, Robert Schneider holds that Hegel’s use of the term invisible church, as well as the phrase “Kingdom of God” (which occurs in the same letter), is evidence of the influence of Pietist theology [Robert Schneider, Geistesahnen, 41]. It may very well be that Hegel and Schelling encountered this terminology in both Masonic and Pietist circles. Harris makes mention of a “secret club” at Tübingen, in which Masonic ideals were discussed (although he thinks that the term invisible church was not much used there) [Harris, Toward the Sunlight, 106]. Hegel was also influenced early on by the millenarian ideas of two French Masonic philosophes, Volney and Rabaut de Saint-Etienne [see D’Hondt, Hegel Secret, 83-153].
p. 73
Bengel and his followers, who called themselves “The Free” (Die Freien), proclaimed the perennial ideal of the “invisible church,” a conception which is similar to Joachim’s informal “community of the faithful,” which was supposed to characterize the third age.” As discussed earlier, the invisible church is a perennial theme of German mysticism, and also an important concept for both the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians (who also spoke of an “invisible college”). […] Dickey argues that the “Protestant civil piety” of Old Württemberg involved, among other things, the goal of establishing the kingdom of God on earth through a transformation of ethics. Robert Schneider, in fact, refers to the “kingdom of God” (Das Königreich Gottes) as the “consummate idea” of Swabian Pietism. In addition to Bengel, P. M. Hahn also preached a doctrine of the invisible church.
p. 244
– Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (2001), p. 30