“Your Martin Luther has allowed himself to be guided by the Spirit of the world and by his own personal predilections, not by the steadfastness of his soul. And you, poor things, have allowed yourselves to be caught by the allurement of an easy life.
“You have believed the words of your seducer and you left the narrow difficult path ordained by Christ Himself. Martin has shown himself to be an universal fool; the great poison of the serpent of hell is hid in his teaching.”
I have got used to Russian pleasantries and no longer take any notice of them; reasonable proofs avail as much in arguing with such people, as a rapier against a club. But this time I was roused, for some reason or other, and I spoke out all that for a long time I had stored up within my heart.
I began by showing that the Russians, while considering themselves superior to all Christian people, lived in reality worse than heathens; they confess the law of love, and yet practise such cruelties as are met with nowhere else in the world; they fast, and during the fast they drink like beasts; they go to church and use the most shocking expressions there; they are so ignorant that in Germany young children know more about religion than adults and priests in Russia. Hardly one out of a dozen could say the Lord’s Prayer. A pious old woman answered my question, who is the third person in the Trinity? by asserting he was St. Nicholas the wonderworker. And really this Nicholas is a true Russian God, and one might easily believe that they had none other God but he. Not in vain did the Swedish theologian Botivid in 1620, discuss the question in a thesis at the Upsala Academy, “Are the Muscovites Christians?” I know not how much more I would have said had not the Tsarevitch stopped me; he had the whole time listened with perfect calmness, it was this calm that exasperated me.
“I have meant for a long time, to ask you, Fräulein: Do you believe in the Divinity of Christ?”
“What do you mean? Does not your Highness know that all we Lutherans——”
“I do not speak generally now, I am asking you in particular. I had once a talk with your teacher Leibnitz: he shifted and shuffled, avoiding a direct answer, but, nevertheless, I at once saw that he did not truly believe in Christ. And now what about you?”
He steadily looked at me. I cast down my eyes, and for some inexplicable reason suddenly remembered all my doubts, my debates with Leibnitz, the unsolvable contradictions of metaphysics and theology.
“I think,” said I, trying also to shuffle, “that Christ was the best and wisest of the sons of men.”
“And not God’s son?”