The title of his book gave a fair idea of its tendency. It sought to prove the destructive effect of an institution which claimed for itself unerring authority in its teaching, and demanded unquestioning obedience thereto. "Were it needful to recognise such an authority," he asked, "of what use would reason be to man?"
Dryden could have told him, had he chosen to be taught, that
"Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, Is reason to the soul: and as on high Those rolling fires discover but the sky, Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day. And as those mighty tapers disappear When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere, So pale grows reason at religion's sight, So dies and so dissolves in supernatural light."
But he listened only to the promptings of his proud will, and strove to deny the Divine light enlightening the world by authoritative teaching.
He was too well schooled a thinker not to know that the fact of a formal divine revelation being once recognised it naturally followed that it should be transmitted in an unerring manner, and not be left to the changeableness of human opinion. He struck, therefore, directly at the basis of all positive revelation by endeavouring to show that the only authority which claimed to speak exclusively in the name of God, sacrificed to its own thirst for domination all the best and highest powers of mankind. In thus losing sight of the distinction between what is human and what is divine in religion--branding St. Peter as an unworthy teacher because he was "a sinful man"--and therewith of the holy precepts of charity, he condemned alike God and man, by seeking the divine guide in the human and--without an unerring teacher--unenlightened conscience. In so doing he flattered pride and self-sufficiency--those two great sources of error in the world--and hence he obtained the erring world's applause.
When his book was finished he left Gottingen and crossed the Alps into Italy; there he joined in the more active struggle between authority and its antagonists. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with himself, nor could he bring himself entirely to sympathise with the persons and actions of those whose cause he had espoused and so ardently endeavoured to defend.