A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

French deism there were clear signs that rationalism had taken root in German life. On the impulse set up by the establishment of the Grand Lodge at London in 1717, Freemasonic lodges began to spring up in Germany, the first being founded at Hamburg in 1733. [1274] The deism which in the English lodges was later toned down by orthodox reaction was from the first pronounced in the German societies, which ultimately passed on the tradition to the other parts of the Continent. But the new spirit was not confined to secret societies. Wolffianism worked widely. In the so-called Wertheim Bible (1735) Johann Lorenz Schmid, in the spirit of the Leibnitz-Wolffian theology, "undertook to translate the Bible, and to explain it according to the principle that in revelation only that can be accepted as true which does not contradict the reason." [1275] This of course involved no thorough-going criticism; but the spirit of innovation was strong enough in Schmid to make him undermine tradition at many points, and later carried him so far as to translate Tindal's Christianity as old as Creation. So far was he in advance of his time that when his Wertheim Bible was officially condemned throughout Germany he found no defenders. [1276] The Wolffians were in comparison generally orthodox; and another writer of the same school, Martin Knutzen, professor at Königsberg (1715-1751), undertook in a youthful thesis De æternitate mundi impossibili (1735) to rebut the old Averroïst doctrine, revived by modern science, of the indestructibility of the universe. A few years later (1739) he published a treatise entitled The Truth of Christianity Demonstrated by Mathematics, which succeeded as might have been expected.