GOETHE

     "General, natural religion, properly speaking, requires no faith, for the persuasion that a great producing, regulating and conducting Being conceals himself, as it were, behind nature, to make himself comprehensible to us. Such a conviction forces itself upon every one. Nay, if we for a moment let drop this thread, which conducts us through life, it may be immediately and everywhere resumed."
(Goethe, 1882, 114)

     "...God, the only, Eternal, Infinite, to whom all the splendid yet limited creatures owe their existence."
(Goethe, 204)

     "Nothing, therefore, remained to me but to part from this society; and as for my love for the Holy Scriptures, as well as of the founder of Christianity and its early professors, could not be taken from me."
(Goethe, 208)

     "English, French, and Germans had attacked the Bible with more or less violence, acuteness, audacity, and wantonness, and just as often had it been taken under the protection of earnest, sound-thinking men of each nation. As for myself, I loved and valued it; for almost to it alone did I owe my moral culture: and the events, the doctrines, the symbols. the similes, had all impressed themselves deeply upon me and had influenced me in one way or another. These unjust, scoffing, and perverting attacks, therefore, disgusted me."
(Goethe, 227)

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Goethe, J. The Autobiography of Goethe Vol. 1. New York: John D. Williams, 1882.

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