[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. [↑]
[163] Stahr, ii, 239; Sime, ii. 189. [↑]
[164] See Sime, ii, 222, 233: Stahr, ii, 254. Hettner, an admirer, calls the early Christianity of Reason a piece of sophistical dialectic. Litteraturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ed. 1872, iii. 588–89. [↑]
[165] Stahr, ii, 243. Lessing said the report to this effect was a lie; but this and other mystifications appear to have been by way of fulfilling his promise of secrecy to the Reimarus family. Cairns, pp. 203, 209. Cp. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, note 29. [↑]