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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY... Truths of Natural Religion) Hermann Samuel Reimarus depicted the natural religion of reason and the worship of God it involved in glowing terms. He professed himself a believer in natural religion in which “healthy reason and natural law ... are the real source of all duties and virtues”, in which God is “honoured most humbly, in accordance with rational knowledge.” According to him, any belief that “is not built upon the rudiments of a rational religion” is blind.’”° Enlightened theologians repeatedly professed the congruence of reason and revelation. Spalding left behind the “barren, dark passages of formalistic religion," and he called for “a rational notion of the way in which God acts. ... Above all else I should like to see reason receive its crucial rights, undiminished and in full, in inquiry and investigation”? In Jerusalem’s view, it was not only through revelation that human reason gained a certain degree of insight into the relationship with God. At the same time, he measured the extent and substance of human knowledge of revelation in terms of the development of human reason. Thus he tried to combine his view of the dependence of reason on revelation with his developmental scheme of religion. “Up, up my soul!”, Sack exhorted himself in his Apologie des Christentums “in order to investigate whether the foundations upon which you have so far built your faith and hopes are true or false.” 1 Jerusalem’s term “simplicity” summed up the idea that religious statements require no special understanding of dogma and applied to all human beings." He justified his call for “simplicity” in religion by pointing out that people needed comprehensible instructions in order to practice virtue and attain righteousness. For Jerusalem, the religion of Jesus was at the highest stage of “simplicity”; it was “universal” in that it could lead all humans “to a true and rational knowledge of God”.’*° Consequently, in his view, “religion” was “the most reliable rational doctrine.” All doctrines which “are accepted as essential elements of religion without knowledge and examination” now came under 99 « the heading of "superstition", "because they have no essential bearing on our 120 REIMARUS, Hermann Samuel, Die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion in zehn Abhandlungen auf eine begreifliche Art erkläret und gerettet, 2nd. corrected edition, Hamburg, Piscator, 1755, 720f. SPALDING, Johann Joachim, Vertraute Briefe die Religion betreffend, 3rd edition with an addition, Breslau, Lowe, 1788, 189. 122 SPALDING, Johann Joachim, Gedanken über den Werth der Gefühle in den Christentum, 5th newly revised and corrected edition, Leipzig, Weidmann, 1784, xiii. 13 Cf. JERUSALEM, Betrachtungen (note 58), vol. 3,. 801., on this cf. MÜLLER, Jerusalem (note 36), ITE. 124 Sack, Vertheidigter Glaube (note 61), Part 1, 76. 125 Cf. JERUSALEM, Betrachtungen,(note 58), vol. 5, 801. 126 Tbid., vol. 1, 412. 121 e 113"
