A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

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.) ↑

89Id. B. iv, end. ↑

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). ↑

91Rettung der Offenbarung gegen die Einwürfe der Freigeister. Haller wrote under a similar title, 1775–76. ↑

92 Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, iv, 599. ↑

93 Gostwick, p. 15. ↑

94Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, xi, 329. ↑

95 Schlosser, Hist. of Eighteenth Cent., Eng. tr. 1843. i, 150; Hagenbach, tr. p. 66. ↑

96 Hagenbach, tr. p. 63. ↑

97Id., 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. ↑

102Examen 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. ↑

104Zur 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. ↑

108Id. p. 546. ↑

109 Hagenbach, tr. pp. 100–103; Saintes, pp. 91–92; Pünjer, p. 536; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 7. ↑

110 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 298, 351. ↑

111Id. i, 294 sq. ↑

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. ↑

113 Hagenbach, tr. p. 109. ↑

114 Eberhard, however, is respectfully treated by Lessing in his discussion on Leibnitz’s view as to eternal punishment. ↑

115 Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 8. ↑

116 Saintes, pp. 92–93. ↑

117 Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 348, 363. ↑

118Id. 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). ↑