A book that
fell into his hands, Gottfried Arnold's _Impartial History of the
Church and of Heretics_,[52] prompted the attempt. From this book, he
tells us, he received a favourable impression of heretics, and the
impression was comforting to one who, like himself, was looked on as a
heretic by all his friends. Moreover, he had often heard it said that
in the long run every man must have his own religion; why, therefore,
should he not essay to think out a creed that would at least satisfy
himself? In brief outline he has described the system which he evolved
from his miscellaneous historical and scientific studies. It is, as he
himself says, a strange composite of Neo-Platonism, and of hermetical,
mystical, and cabbalistical speculations, all leading by a necessary
logic to the dogmas of Redemption and the Incarnation--a conclusion
which at least points to the fact that for Goethe at this time
Christianity was a religion specifically predestined for man's
salvation. "We all become mystics in old age," is a remark of his own
at that period of life; and the conclusion of the Second Part of
Faust, as well as other indications, proves that the remark was at
least true of himself.
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