1 Cp. Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character ... of the Theology of Germany, 1828, p. 79. ↑
2 Bishop Hurst, History of Rationalism, ed. 1867, p. 56. ↑
3 Id. pp. 57–58 (last ed. pp. 74–76), citing Tholuck, Deutsche Universitäten, i, 145–48, and Dowding, Life of Calixtus, pp. 132–33. ↑
6 Cp. Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 303–309. “The result of the Thirty Years’ War was indifference, not only to the Confession, but to religion in general. Ever since that period, secular interests decidedly occupy the foreground” (Kahnis, Internal History of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, p. 21). ↑
7 Quoted by Bishop Hurst, ed. cited, p. 60 (78). ↑
8 Preservatio wider die Pest der heutigen Atheisten. ↑
9 Dated from Rome; but this was a mystification. ↑
10 Kahnis, p. 125; La Croze, Entretiens, 1711, p. 401. ↑
11 Even Knutzen seems to have been influenced by Spinoza. Pünjer, Hist. of the Christ. Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. i, 437. Pünjer, however, seems to have exaggerated the connection. ↑
12 Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 318 (Eng. tr. ii, 35). ↑
13 Epistolæ ad Spinozam et Responsiones, in Gfrörer, liii. ↑
14 Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer’s ed. of the Opera, 1830, pp. lv, lvi. ↑
15 Pünjer, as cited, i, 434–30: Lange, last cit. Lange notes that Genthe’s Compendium de impostura religionum, which has been erroneously assigned to the sixteenth century, must belong to the period of Kortholt’s work. ↑
16 Pünjer, p. 439; Lange, last cit.; Tholuck, Kirch. Leben, 2 Abth. pp. 57–58. ↑
17 It was nominally issued at Amsterdam, really at Berlin. ↑
18 This writer gives (p. 12) a notable list of the forms of atheism: Atheismus directus, indirectus, formalis, virtualis, theoreticus, practicus, inchoatus, consummatus, subtilis, crassus, privativus, negativus, and so on, ad lib. ↑
19 Cp. Buckle and his Critics, pp. 171–72; Pünjer, i, 515. ↑
20 Letter cited by Dr. Latta. Leibniz, 1898, p. 2, note. ↑
21 Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 26; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 77. ↑
22 Letter to Thomas, December 23, 1670. ↑
23 Quoted by Tholuck, as last cited, p. 61. Spener took the same tone. ↑
24 Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 34; ii, 563; Latta, p. 24; Martineau, p. 75. Cp. Refutation of Spinoza by Leibnitz, ed. by Foucher de Careil. Eng. tr. 1855. ↑
25 His notable surmise as to gradation of species (see Latta, pp. 38–39) was taken up among the French materialists, but did not then modify current science. ↑
26 The only lengthy treatise published by him in his lifetime. ↑
27 M. A. Jacques, intr. to Œuvres de Leibniz, 1846, i, 54–57. ↑
28 Cp. Tholuck, Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2 Abth. pp. 52–55. Kahnis, coinciding with Erdmann, pronounces that, although Leibnitz “acknowledges the God of the Christian faith, yet his system assigned to Him a very uncertain position only” (Int. Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 26). ↑
29 Cp. Pünjer, i, 509, as to his attitude on ritual. ↑
30 Latta, as cited, p. 16; Vie de Leibnitz, par De Jaucourt, in ed. 1747 of the Essais de Théodicée, i, 235–39. ↑
31 As to his virtual deism see Pünjer, i, 513–15. But he proposed to send Christian missionaries to the heathen. Tholuck, as last cited, p. 55. ↑
32 Lettres entre Leibnitz et Clarke. ↑
33 Discours de la conformité de la foi avec la raison, §§ 68–70; Essais sur la bonté de Dieu, etc., §§ 50, 61, 164, 180, 292–93. ↑
34 The Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement humain, refuting Locke, appeared posthumously in 1765. Locke had treated his theistic critic with contempt. (Latta, p. 13.) ↑
35 Amand Saintes, Hist. crit. du Rationalisme en Allemagne, 1841, ch. vi; Heinrich Schmid, Die Geschichte des Pietismus, 1863, ch. ii. ↑
36 Saintes, p. 51; cp. Pusey, p. 105, as to “the want of resistance from the school of Pietists to the subsequent invasion of unbelief.” ↑
37 Hagenbach, German Rationalism, Eng. tr. 1865, p. 9. ↑
38 Id. p. 39; Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Causes of German Rationalism, 1828, pp. 88, 97; Tholuck, Abriss einer Geschichte des Umwälzung ... seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland, in Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5. ↑
40 Cp. Pusey, pp. 37–38, 45, 48, 49, 53–54, 79, 101–109; Saintes, pp. 28, 79–80; Hagenbach, pp. 41, 72, 105. ↑
41 Pusey, p. 110. Cp. Saintes, ch. vi. ↑
42 Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2 Abth. p. 58. ↑
45 H. Luden, Christian Thomasius nach seinen Schicksalen und Schriften dargestellt, 1805, p. 7. ↑
46 Cp. Schmid, Geschichte des Pietismus, pp. 486–88. ↑
47 Pufendorf’s bulky treatise De Jure Naturæ et Gentium was published at Lund, where he was professor, in 1672. The shorter De Officio hominis et civis (also Lund, 1673) is a condensation and partly a vindication of the other, and this it was that convinced Thomasius. As to Pufendorf’s part in the transition from theological to rational moral philosophy, see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iv, 171–78. He is fairly to be bracketed with Cumberland; but Hallam hardly recognizes that it was the challenge of Hobbes that forced the change. ↑
48 Freimüthige, lustige und ernsthafte, jedoch vernunft- und gesetzmässige Gedanken, oder Monatgespräche über allerhand, vornehmlich über neue Bücher. There had been an earlier Acta Eruditorum, in Latin, published at Leipzig, and a French Ephemerides savantes, Hamburg, 1686. Other German and French periodicals soon followed that of Thomasius. Luden, p. 162. ↑
49 Schmid, pp. 488–92, gives a sketch of some of the contents. ↑
50 Pusey, p. 86, note. It is surprising that Pusey does not make more account of Thomasius’s naturalistic treatment of polygamy and suicide, which he showed to be not criminal in terms of natural law. ↑
51 Compare Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Lit. § 81 (ed. 1880, pp. 90–91); Pusey, as cited, p. 114. note; Enfield’s Hist. of Philos. (abst. of Brucker’s Hist. crit. philos.), 1840. pp. 610–612; Ueberweg, ii, 115; and Schlegel’s note in Reid’s Mosheim, p. 790, with Karl Hillebrand, Six Lect. on the Hist. of German Thought, 1880, pp. 64–65. There is a modern monograph by A. Nicoladoni, Christian Thomasius; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung, 1888. ↑
52 Baron de Bielfeld, Progrès des Allemands, 3e éd. 1767, i, 24. “Before Thomasius,” writes Bielfeld, “an old woman could not have red eyes without running the risk of being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.” ↑
53 Schmid, pp. 493–97. Thomasius’s principal writings on this theme were: Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten in Mitteldingen (1692); Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten in theologischen Streitigkeiten (1696); Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten gegen Ketzer (1697). ↑
54 Ec. Hist. 17 Cent. sect. ii, pt. ii, ch. i, §§ 11, 14. It is noteworthy that the Pietists at Halle did not scruple to ally themselves for a time with Thomasius, he being opposed to the orthodox party. Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 114. ↑
55 Pusey, as cited, p. 121. Cp. p. 113. ↑
56 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrh., 2te Aufl. i, 164. (This matter is not in the abridged translation.) ↑
57 See the furious account of him by Mosheim, 17 C. sec. ii, pt. ii, ch. i, § 33. ↑
58 Hagenbach, last cit. p. 169. ↑
59 Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, Th. iii, Kap. 1; Bruno Bauer, Einfluss des englischen Quäkerthums auf die deutsche Cultur und auf das englisch-russische Projekt einer Weltkirche, 1878, pp. 41–44. ↑
60 Pref. to French tr. of the Meditationes, 1770, pp. xii–xvii. Lau died in 1740. ↑
61 Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 10. ↑
63 Hagenbach, tr. pp. 35–36; Saintes, p. 61; Kahnis, as cited, p. 114. ↑
64 Hagenbach, pp. 37–39. It is to be observed (Tholuck, Abriss, p. 23) that the Wolffian philosophy was reinstated in Prussia by royal mandate in 1739, a year before the accession of Frederick the Great. But we know that Frederick championed him. ↑
65 Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 5. ↑
66 Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 6. ↑
68 Pünjer, i, 544. Cp. Tholuck, Abriss, pp. 19–22. ↑
69 Tholuck, Abriss, p. 22. Schmid was for a time supposed to be the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments of Reimarus (below, p. 327). ↑
70 Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, 1699–1700, 2 tom. fol.—fuller ed. 3 tom. fol. 1740. Compare Mosheim’s angry account of it with Murdock’s note in defence: Reid’s ed. p. 804. Bruno Bauer describes it as epoch-making (Einfluss des englischen Quäkerthums, p. 42). This history had a great influence on Goethe in his teens, leading him, he says, to the conviction that he, like so many other men, should have a religion of his own, which he goes on to describe. It was a re-hash of Gnosticism. (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 344 sq.) ↑
71 Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 171: Pünjer, i, 279. ↑
72 Die Göttlichkeit der Vernunft. ↑
73 Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 2: Saintes, pp. 85–86; Pünjer, p. 442. It is interesting to find Edelmann supplying a formula latterly utilized by the so-called “New Theology” in England—the thesis that “the reality of everything which exists is God,” and that there can therefore be no atheists, since he who recognizes the universe recognizes God. ↑
74 Naigeon, by altering the words of Diderot, caused him to appear one of the exceptions; but he was not. See Rosenkranz, Diderot’s Leben und Werke. Vorb. p. vii. ↑
75 Kahnis, pp. 128–29. Edelmann’s Life was written by Pratje. Historische Nachrichten von Edelmann’s Leben, 1755. It gives a list of replies to his writings (p. 205 sq.). Apropos of the first issue of Strauss’s Leben Jesu, a volume of Erinnerungen of Edelmann was published at Clausthal in 1839 by W. Elster; and Strauss in his Dogmatik avowed the pleasure with which he had made the acquaintance of so interesting a writer. A collection of extracts from Edelmann’s works, entitled Der neu eröffnete Edelmann, was published at Bern in 1847; and the Unschuldige Wahrheiten was reprinted in 1846. His Autobiography, written in 1752, was published in 1849. ↑
76 Betrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion. Another apologetic work of the period marked by rational moderation and tolerance was the Vertheidigten Glauben der Christen of the Berlin court-preacher A. W. F. Sack (1754). ↑
77 Art. by Wagenmann in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. ↑
78 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 355. ↑
80 Kurz, Hist. of the Christian Church from the Reformation, Eng. tr. ii, 274. A Jesuit, A. Merz, wrote four replies to Jerusalem. One was entitled Frag ob durch die biblische Simplicität allein ein Freydenker oder Deist bekehret ... werden könne (“Can a Freethinker or Deist be converted by Biblical Simplicity alone?”), 1775. ↑
81 Cp. Hagenbach, i, 353; tr. p. 120. Jerusalem was the father of the gifted youth whose suicide (1775) moved Goethe to write The Sorrows of Werther, a false presentment of the real personality, which stirred Lessing (his affectionate friend) to publish a volume of the dead youth’s essays, in vindication of his character. The father had considerable influence in purifying German style. Cp. Goethe, Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. ii, B. vii; Werke, ed. 1866. xi, 272; and Hagenbach, i, 354. ↑
82 Goethe, as last cited, pp. 268–69. ↑
83 Lechler, Gesch. des englischen Deismus, pp. 447–52. The translations began with that of Tindal (1741), which made a great sensation. ↑
84 Pusey, pp. 125, 127, citing Twesten; Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, p. 36, citing Ernesti. Thorschmid’s Freidenker Bibliothek, issued in 1765–67, collected both translations and refutations. Lechler, p. 451. ↑
85 Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i. 405 (Eng. tr. ii, 146–47). ↑
86 Lange, i, 347, 399 (Eng. tr. ii, 76, 137). ↑
87 Lange, i, 396–97 (ii, 134–35). ↑
88 Goethe tells of having seen in his boyhood, at Frankfort, an irreligious French romance publicly burned, and of having his interest in the book thereby awakened. But this seems to have been during the French occupation. (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. iv; Werke, xi, 146.) ↑
90 Translated into English 1780; 2nd ed. 1793. The translator claims for Haller great learning (2nd ed. p. xix). He seems in reality to have had very little, as he represents that Jesus in his day “was the only teacher who recommended chastity to men” (p. 82). ↑
91 Rettung der Offenbarung gegen die Einwürfe der Freigeister. Haller wrote under a similar title, 1775–76. ↑
92 Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, iv, 599. ↑
94 Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, xi, 329. ↑
95 Schlosser, Hist. of Eighteenth Cent., Eng. tr. 1843. i, 150; Hagenbach, tr. p. 66. ↑
97 Id., Kirchengeschichte, i, 232. ↑
98 Kahnis, p. 43; Tholuck, Abriss, p. 34. ↑
99 See the extracts of Büchner, Zwei gekrönte Freidenker, 1890, pp. 45–47. ↑
100 Thiébault, Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de Séjour à Berlin, 2e édit. 1805, i, 126–28. See i, 355–56, ii, 78–82, as to the baselessness of the stories (e.g., Pusey, Histor. Inq. into Ger. Rationalism, p. 123) that Frederick changed his views in old age. Thiébault, a strict Catholic, is emphatic in his negation: “The persons who assert that [his principles] became more religious ... have either lied or been themselves mistaken.” Carlyle naturally detests Thiébault. The rumour may have arisen out of the fact that in his Examen critique du Système de la Nature Frederick counter-argues d’Holbach’s impeachment of Christianity. The attack on kings gave him a fellow-feeling with the Church. ↑
101 Cp. the argument of Faure, Hist. de Saint Louis, 1866, i, 242–43; ii, 597. ↑
102 Examen de l’Essai sur les préjugés, 1769. See the passage in Lévy-Bruhl, L’Allemagne depuis Leibniz, p. 89). ↑
103 G. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 99. ↑
104 Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Deutschland—Werke, ed. 1876, iii, 63–64. Goethe’s blame (W. und D., B. vii) is passed on purely literary grounds. ↑
105 Hagenbach, tr. pp. 103–104; Cairns, p. 177. ↑
106 This post he left to become secretary of the Academy of Painting. ↑
107 Cited by Pünjer, i, 545–46. ↑
109 Hagenbach, tr. pp. 100–103; Saintes, pp. 91–92; Pünjer, p. 536; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 7. ↑
110 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 298, 351. ↑
112 The book is remembered in France by reason of Eberhard’s amusing mistake of treating as a serious production of the Sorbonne the skit in which Turgot derided the Sorbonne’s findings against Marmontel’s Bélisaire. ↑
114 Eberhard, however, is respectfully treated by Lessing in his discussion on Leibnitz’s view as to eternal punishment. ↑
117 Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 348, 363. ↑
118 Id. i, 367; tr. pp. 124–25; Saintes, p. 94; Kahnis, p. 45. Pusey (150–51, note) speaks of Teller and Spalding as belonging, with Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and others, to a “secret institute, whose object was to remodel religion and alter the form of government.” This seems to be a fantasy. ↑
119 So Steffens, cited by Hagenbach, tr. p. 124. ↑
120 P. Gastrow, Joh. Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 45. See Pusey, 140–41, note, for Semler’s account of the rigid and unreasoning orthodoxy against which he reacted. (Citing Semler’s Lebenschreibung, ii, 121–61.) Semler, however, records that Baumgarten, one of the theological professors at Halle, would in expansive moods defend theism and make light of theology (Lebenschreibung, i, 103). Cp. Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, pp. 12, 18. Pusey notes that “many of the principal innovators had been pupils of Baumgarten” (p. 132, citing Niemeyer). ↑
121 Cp. Dr. G. Karo, Johann Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 25; Saintes, pp. 129–31. ↑
122 Cp. Gostwick, p. 51; Pünjer, i, 561. ↑
125 Cp. Karo, pp. 3, 8, 16, 28. ↑
126 Over a hundred and seventy in all. Pünjer, i, 560; Gastrow, p. 637. ↑
129 Pusey, p. 142; A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 313. ↑
130 Cp. Karo, p. 5 sq.; Stäudlin, cited by Tholuck, Abriss, p. 39. ↑
132 Wahre Gründe wanum Gott die Offenbarung nicht mit augenscheinlichen Beweisen versehen hat. ↑
133 Die Göttliche Eingebung, 1771. ↑
134 Beweis das Gott die Menschen bereits durch seine Offenbarung in der Natur zur Seligkeit fuhre. ↑
135 Gostwick, p. 53; Pünjer, i, 546, note. ↑
136 Cp. Kahnis, pp. 132–36, as to Bahrdt’s early morals. ↑
137 Geschichte seines Lebens, etc. 1700–91, iv, 119. ↑
139 Geschichte seines Lebens, Kap. 22; ii, 223 sq. ↑
140 Baur, Gesch. der chr. Kirche, iv. 597. ↑
141 Translated into English in 1789. ↑
142 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Abschn. I—Werke, 1838 p. 239 (Eng. tr. 1838, pp. 50–51); Rousseau, Contrat Social, liv, iv, ch. viii, near end; Locke, as cited above, p. 117. Cp. Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 145; Baur, as last cited. ↑
143 See his Werke, ed. 1866, v, 317—Aus dem Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend, 49ter Brief. ↑
144 If Lessing’s life were sketched in the spirit in which orthodoxy has handled that of Bahrdt, it could be made unedifying enough. Even Goethe remarks that Lessing “enjoyed himself in a disorderly tavern life” (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. vii); and all that Hagenbach maliciously charges against Basedow in the way of irregularity of study is true of him. On that and other points, usually glossed over, see the sketch in Taylor’s Historic Survey of German Poetry, 1830, i, 332–37. All the while, Lessing is an essentially sound-hearted and estimable personality; and he would probably have been the last man to echo the tone of the orthodox towards the personal life of the freethinkers who went further in unbelief than he. ↑
145 E.g. his fable The Bull and the Calf (Fabeln, ii, 5), à propos of the clergy and Bayle. ↑
146 Sime, Life of Lessing, 1877, i, 102. ↑
147 E.g. his early notice of Diderot’s Lettre sur les Aveugles. Sime, i, 94. ↑
150 Sime, i, 73, 107; ii, 253. ↑
151 In his Gedanke über die Herrnhuter, written in 1750. See Adolf Stahr’s Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke, 7te Aufl. ii, 183 sq. ↑
152 Julian Schmidt puts the case sympathetically: “He had learned in his father’s house what value the pastoral function may have for the culture of the people. He was bibelfest, instructed in the history of his church, Protestant in spirit, full of genuine reverence for Luther, full of high respect for historical Christianity, though on reading the Fathers he could say hard things of the Church.” Gesch. der deutschen Litteratur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit, ii (1886), 326. ↑
153 Taylor, as cited, p. 361. ↑
155 See Lessing’s rather crude comedy, Der Freigeist, and Sime’s Life, i, 41–42, 72, 77. ↑
156 Cp. his letters to his brother of which extracts are given by Sime, ii, 191–92. ↑
158 As to the authorship see Saintes, pp. 101–102; and Sime’s Life of Lessing, i, 261–62, where the counter-claim is rejected. ↑
159 Zur Geschichte und Literatur, aus dem 4ten Beitr.—Werke, vi. 142 sq. See also in his Theologische Streitschriften the Axiomata written against Pastor Goeze. Cp. Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe, 1854, pp. 146, 151; and Pusey, as cited, p. 51. note. ↑
160 Compare the regrets of Pusey (pp. 51, 153), Cairns (p. 195), Hagenbach (pp. 89–97), and Saintes (p. 100). ↑
161 Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. Lachmann, 1857, xi (2), 248. Sime (ii, 190) mistranslates this passage; and Schmidt (ii, 326) mutilates it by omissions. Fontanes (Le Christianisme moderne: Étude sur Lessing, 1867, p. 171) paraphrases it very loosely. ↑