[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. [↑]