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.