Note 240 — Chapter XVIII · GERMAN FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

All the while the book is from beginning to end profoundly divided against itself. It indicates disbelief in every one of the standing Christian dogmas—Creation, Fall, Salvation, Miracles, and the supernatural basis of morals. The first paragraph of the preface insists that morality is founded on the free reason, and that it needs no religion to aid it. Again and again this note is sounded. “The pure religious faith is that alone which can serve as basis for a universal Church; because it is a pure reason-faith, in which everyone can participate.”240 But without the slightest attempt at justification there is thrown in the formula that “no religion is thinkable without belief in a future life.”241 Thus heaven and hell242 and Bible and church are arbitrarily imposed on the “pure religion” for the comfort of unbelieving clergymen and the moralizing of life. Error is to cast out error, and evil, evil.