During his illness after his return from Leipzig he had, as we
saw, assiduously read Arnold's _History of Heretics_,[174] with the
result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. His two
contributions to the short-lived Review also show that religion,
doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him.
Moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts, there
were external promptings to his choice of the subject which is the
main theme of the fragments in question. The religious world of
Germany at this period was distracted by the controversies of warring
theologians. There were the rationalists, who would bring all
religion, natural and revealed, to the bar of human reason; there were
the dogmatists, who thought religion could never rest on a secure
foundation except it were embodied in an array of definite formulas;
and, lastly, there were the pietists, or mystics, for whom religion
was a matter of pious feeling independent of all dogma. In the
spectacle of these Christians reprobating each others' creeds Goethe
saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its
place with the most powerful efforts of his genius.
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