(Dr Carl Friedrich) was so deeply concerned in a combination of philosophers formed; as they said, for the advancement of science and virtue, that an account of his life must be interesting; if it were only to show the effects of this philosophic culture on his own morals. We trust therefore that our readers will be pleased, perhaps improved, by the following narrative, taken from documents the most authentic, by a man* whose communications on other subjects do credit to this volume.

Carl Friedrich Bahrdt was, in 1741, born at Leipzig, where his father, then a parish minister, and afterwards professor of theology, died in 1775. It is natural to suppose that such a parent would be at due pains to infuse into the mind of his son the principles of piety, virtue, and patriotism, which is indeed a branch of virtue; but if so, he lived to see that his labour had been in vain. While yet at college, where the course of his studies was calculated to fit him for the important office of preaching the gospel, the young man enlisted as a hussar in the Prussian service; but being bought off, he returned to the university, where, in 1761, he was admitted to the degree of M. A. Soon afterwards he became catechist in his father's church, was a popular preacher, and in 1765 published sermons, and some controversial writings, which evinced that he possessed both learning and genius. Neither learning nor genius, however, nor both united, could attach him to the cause of virtue, or make him observe even the common rules of decorum; for immediately after this publication he began to indulge in conviviality, and to give scope to his resentments in anonymous satirizes, in the highest degree bitter and offensive. From the shafts of his malice no person was safe. Professors, magistrates, and clergyman, had indeed his chief notice; but he occasionally attacked students, and spared not even his own comrades or his friends.

Whilst he was thus labouring to make enemies of all whom he was known, unfortunately, for his own character, his temperament was what the atomic philosophers (who can explain every thing by ethers and vibrations) call languine; and he was, as he himself acknowledged, a passionate admirer of the ladies. Coming home from his midnight revels, he frequently met in his way a young girl neatly dressed in a rose coloured silk jacket and trim, and a coily fable bonnet; and one evening, after having, as he says, indulged freely in some old Khenifh, he saw her home to her lodgings. Some time after this interview, the mistress of the house (a Madam Godschulky) came into his room, and said that the poor maiden whom he had debauched was pregnant. This was a misfortune which he could not help; but as it would ruin his character if known, he gave to the old lady a bond for 200 dahlers (about £40 sterling); to be paid by instalments of twenty-five, to keep the matter secret. "The girl (he says) was sensible and good; and as her conversation, for which he had already paid, was agreeable, he did not discontinue his acquaintance."

It could not be supposed that such visits, by a clergyman, would pass unobserved, however cautiously made, in the midst of a town, of which the inhabitants had been the indiscriminate objects of his satire; and he could hardly be surprised when told by a friend, that one Bel, a magistrate whom he had lampooned, was acquainted with the whole affair, and would bring it into a court of justice, unless the bond was immediately retired.

This bond was the only evidence which could be produced against Bahrdt, but it was sufficient to blast his character in Leipzig; and must therefore by any means be removed out of the way. To accomplish this, however, was a matter of some difficulty; for neither he nor his friend could raise the money. In this dilemma they fell upon a contrivance worthy of themselves. They invited Madam Godschulky to meet them in another house to receive the 200 dahlers due to her by Bahrdt; but when she was ushered into the room, and found no person waiting for her but Bahrdt's friend, she could not be prevailed upon to produce the bond till the money should be put into her hands, together with a present to herself. The Gentleman tried to intimidate her. He drew his sword; showed her how men fence; made passes at the wall and then at her; but finding that she could not be frightened out of her senses, he threw away his sword, and endeavoured to take the bond from her by force. It was some time before he prevailed; but at last getting the paper out of her pocket, he tore it in pieces, opened the door of a closet in which Bahrdt was concealed, and said, "There, you b——; there is the honourable fellow whom you and your whore have bullied; but it is with me you have now to do, and you know that I can bring you to the gallows."

Bahrdt, from whose memoirs of himself this story is taken, admits that there was a great squabble on the occasion; but he went home, comforting himself with the belief that he should now have no farther trouble from Madam Godschulky or her girl. He chanced, however, to be mistaken. The magistrate Bel had somehow been made acquainted with this nefarious transaction, and brought it into court on the day that our hero was to make some very reverend appearance at church. The case of Bahrdt was now hopeless; for after some unsuccessful attempts of his poor father to save him, he was obliged to give in his gown and bands, and to quit Leipzig.

To a parent the public disgrace of a child is one of the severest calamities to which human nature is liable; but for this calamity the father of Bahrdt must have been long prepared, as his son appears to have been remarkably undutiful. Of this we have one memorable instance recorded by himself. His father, he says, was severe, and his own temperament hasty, so that he sometimes forgot himself. "One day (continues he) I laid a loaded pistol on the table, and told him that he should meet with that if he went on so; but I was then only seventeen!"

On his being obliged to leave the place of his nativity, the friends of Bahrdt, and in particular Semler, an eminent theological writer, who had formed a very favourable opinion of his talents, were anxious in their endeavours to procure an establishment for him elsewhere; but his high opinion of himself, his impetuous and precipitant temper, and that satirical habit which he had so freely indulged in his outset in life, made their endeavours long ineffectual. At last he got a professorship at Erlangen, then at Erfurt, and in 1771 at Giessen. But in each of these places he was no sooner settled than he got into disputes with his colleagues and with the established church; for he was a strenuous partisan of the innovations then attempted to be made in the doctrines of Christianity. In his publications, which were generally anonymous, he did not trust to rational discussion alone, but had recourse to ridicule and personal anecdotes, and indulged in the most cutting sarcasms and gross buffoonery.

His love for convivial company continuing, his income was insufficient for the craving demand. Finding therefore that anecdote and slander always procured readers, and possessing a wonderful activity and facility in writing, he never ceased from publishing lampoons and satires, in which he spared neither friends nor foes. But it was impossible to prevent these publications from being traced to their author; and his avowed theological writings being such as could not be suffered in a professor of divinity, the host of enemies which he had been at so much pains to raise against himself, were furnished with sufficient grounds for subjecting his conduct to legal cognizance; even the very students at Giessen were shocked at some of his liberties.

The consequence of all this was, that, after much wrangling in the church judicatories, he was just about to be dismissed from his professorship, when he got an invitation to Marichlins in Switzerland to superintend an academy.

To Marichlins he went about the year 1776, and began his new career by forming the seminary after the model of an academy which had some time before been set up in the principality of Anhalt Dessau by one Baedeker, a man of talents and learning, who gave to it the appellation of PHILANTHROPINE. The plan of this academy was very different from those of the universities; for its author professed to consider languages, sciences, and the ornamental exercises, as mere acco rics, his aim being to form the young mind to the love of mankind and of virtue, by a course of moral education certainly specious, and apparently unexceptionable. To make this novel institution the more extensively useful, the rules by which the education was to be conducted were framed in such a manner as, it was thought, would remove from the minds of Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, all uneasiness respecting the faith of their children, as it related to those particular tenets which separated them into different communions. It was even proposed to banish from the philanthropic all positive religion whatever, and to instruct the youth educated there in the principles only of natural, or, as it was called, philosophical religion.

This plan was peculiarly suited to Bahrdt's taste, because it left him at liberty to introduce into his academy any system of religious or irreligious opinions that he pleased; a liberty of which he resolved to avail himself; and, though now a doctor in theology, to outstrip in licentiousness, even the founder of the philanthropic, who was not in orders. By meditating on the workings of his own mind, he had by this time formed his theory of human nature, which was indeed very simple. "The leading propensities of the human mind (he says) are three; instinctive liberty, instinctive activity, and instinctive love." By these expressions we suppose he means, "innate love of liberty, instinct prompting to action, and the sexual appetite;" and he immediately adds, that "if a man is obstructed in the gratification of any of these propensities, he suffers an injury. The business therefore of a good education is to teach us how they are to be gratified in the highest degree."

That such an education would be approved of by the uncorrupted natives of Switzerland was hardly to be expected; and Bahrdt soon found his situation at Mariblins as uncomfortable as it had been at Gießen. "The Grisons (he says) were a strong influence of the immense importance of education. They knew nothing but their handicrafts; and their minds were as coarse as their persons." He quarrelled with them all, and was obliged to abscond after lying some time in prison.

From Mariblins he went to Durkheim, a town in the palatinate, where his father had been minister, and where his literary talents were well known. After some little time he got an association formed for erecting and supporting a Philanthropic house of education. A large fund was collected; and he was enabled to travel into Holland and England to engage pupils, and was furnished with proper recommendations.

In London he gained the friendship of a clergyman, whom he represents as a person in the highest degree accomplished. "With sound judgment (says Bahrdt), great genius, and correct taste, he was perfectly a man of the world. He was my friend, and the only person who warmly interested himself for my institution. To his earnest and repeated recommendations I owe all the pupils that I got in England, and many most respectable connections; for he was universally esteemed as a man of learning and of the most unblemished character. He was my friend, my conductor, and I may say my preserver; for when I had not bread for two days, he took me to his house, and supplied all my wants."

For so much kindness the reader doubtless supposes that the heart of Bahrdt overflowed with gratitude; but if such be his opinion, he is a stranger to the principles of those who have on the continent of Europe associated for the purpose of enlightening the world. This amiable man, whose character is here so justly drawn, was afterwards depicted by the monster whom he had saved from perishing by hunger, as a wretch left to all sense of shame and decency, as an apostate from the Christian faith, and as a notorious frequenter of the London brothels! Fortunately he was able to vindicate his character completely from this slanderous abuse, and to convict Bahrdt of having published what could not possibly be true.

This ungrateful liar returned from England, and carried into execution his plan of the Philanthropic. The castle of Count Leining Hartzburgh at Heidelberg, having gardens, park, and every handsome accommodation, had been fitted up for it; and in 1778 it was consecrated by a solemn religious festival. But his old misfortunes pursued him. He had indeed no colleagues with whom he could quarrel; but his anonymous publications became every day more obnoxious; and when any of his anonymous pieces had a great run, he could not far little his vanity as to conceal that he was the author. Of these pieces some were shocking to decency, and others so horribly injurious to the characters of the most respectable men in the state, that he was continually under the correction of the courts of justice. It was hardly possible for a man of letters to be in his company, and not suffer by it; for it was his constant practice to attribute every step which he took towards atheism, to the force of the arguments urged by some of his friends.

To be his friend, or to obtain his applause, was indeed so great a misfortune, that when the tender fees any person celebrated by Dr. Bahrdt, in the beginning of a book, for sound sense, profound judgment, accurate reasoning, or praised for acts of friendship to himself, he may be assured, that before the close of the book this man shall be represented as having in private conversation convinced the author, that some doctrine, cherished and venerated by all Christians, is a piece of knavish superstition.

Dr. Bahrdt had married, while at Gießen, a woman with a small fortune; but such a stranger was he to the delicacies of wedded love, so lost indeed to all sense of decency, that he contrived one day to entice his wife naked into the bath in the garden of his Philanthropine, where, in the water, he, being also naked, toyed with her in the sight of all his pupils. It was his boast that he held his opinions independent of all mankind, and was indifferent whether they procured him praise or reproach; but it appears from this fact, that he was equally regardless of the praise or censure which might be attached to his actions; nor surely the grossest hog that ever before him batten in the Epicurean sty would have preferred such an exhibition to boys.

The consequence of all this was, that he was obliged to fly from Heidelberg, leaving his firesides in the Philanthropine to pay about 14,000 dalers, besides debts without number to his friends. He was imprisoned at Dinsheim; but being soon released, he settled at Halle, where he sunk to be the keeper of a tavern and billiard-table. His house became of course the resort and the bane of the students in the university, and he was obliged to leave the city. He had somehow got money sufficient to purchase a little vineyard, pleasantly situated... BAH

BAH

ted in the neighbourhood. This he fitted up with every accommodation that could invite the students, and called it Bahrdt's Rube (Bahrdt's repose); where he lived for two years, directing the operations of a secret society called the German Union, for rooting out superstition and prejudices, and for advancing true Christianity.

With Bahrdt's qualifications for advancing the interests of genuine Christianity, the Christian reader is already sufficiently acquainted; but he will not wonder at his appointment to this high office, when he is informed that the German Union is nothing more than a spawn of the secret society of Illuminati (see Illuminati in this Supplement); and that its object is to abolish the religion of the gospel, and to teach in its stead the fatalism of the Stoics. With this view Christianity is considered in the union as a mystical society, and its Divine Founder as the grand master of a lodge! The apostles Peter, James, John, and Andrew, were the elect, brethren of the third degree, and initiated into all the mysteries. The remaining apostles were only of the second degree; and the twenty-two, of the first: a degree into which ordinary Christians may be admitted, and prepared for farther advancement. The great mystery is, that J——C—— was a naturalist, and taught the doctrine of a supreme mind, the spectator but not the governor of the world.

To propagate these impious and absurd notions, Bahrdt published many books of the most antichristian tendency, and some of them calculated to make their readers shake off all moral obligation. But the labours of the society were not confined to religion: it inculcated on its members the most dangerous maxims of civil conduct: for, as we learn from Bahrdt himself, the objects at which the Union aimed were—Advancement of science—a general interest and concern for arts and learning—excitement of talents—check of scribbling—good education—liberty—equality—hospitality—delivery of many from misfortunes—union of the learned—and at last—perhaps—Amen.

What the meaning of this enigmatical conclusion is we can only guess; and we agree with the real philosopher from whom we have taken this account, that our conjectures cannot be favourable. Bahrdt was a villain, and could be associated only with villains, whose affairs he managed with the help of an old man, who lived at bed and board in his house for about six shillings a week, and discharged the office of secretary to the Union.

When he had toiled in this cause near two years, some of the secrets of the Union transpired; his former conduct and his constant imprudence made him suspected; his associated friends lodged informations against him; his papers were seized; and he himself was sent to prison, first at Halle and then at Magdeburg. After something more than a year's confinement, he was set at liberty, and returned to his Rube, not, alas! to live at ease, or to exhibit symptoms of repentance, but to lie down on a sick-bed, where, after many months suffering of increasing pain, he died on the 23d of April 1792, the most wretched and loathsome victim of unbridled sensuality.

Such were the fruits of the German Union, and of that illumination which was to refine the heart of man, and bring to maturity the seeds of native virtue, which are choked in the heart by superstition and despotism.

Dr Bahrdt affected to be the enlightener and reformer of the world; and affirmed, that all the evils of life originated from despotism and superstition. "In vain (says he) do we complain of the inefficacy of religion. All positive religion is founded on injustice. No prince has a right to prescribe or sanction any such system; nor would he do it, were not the priests the firmest pillars of his tyranny, and superstition the strongest fetters for his subjects. He dares not show Religion as she is, pure and undefiled—he would charm the eyes and the hearts of mankind, would immediately produce true morality, would open the eyes of freeborn man, would teach him what are his rights and who are his oppressors, and princes would vanish from the face of the earth."

Therefore, without troubling ourselves with the truth or falsehood of his religion of nature, and affirming it as an indisputable point, that Dr Bahrdt has seen it in this natural and so effective purity, it is surely a very pertinent question, "Whether has the flight produced on his mind an effect so far superior to the acknowledged sanctity of the imposition of Christianity on the bulk of mankind, that it will be prudent to adopt the plan of the German Union, and at once put an end to the divisions which so unfortunately alienate the minds of professing Christians from each other?" The account here given of Dr Bahrdt's life seems to decide the question.

But it will be said that we have only related to many instances of the quarrels of priests and their flaxen adherents with Dr Bahrdt. Let us view him in his ordinary conduct, not as the champion and martyr of illumination, but as an ordinary citizen, a husband, a father, a friend, a teacher of youth, a clergyman.

When Dr Bahrdt was a parish minister, and president of some inferior ecclesiastical district, he was empowered to take off the censures of the church from a young woman who had born a bastard child. By violence he again reduced her to the same condition, and escaped censure by the poor girl's dying of a fever before her pregnancy was far advanced, or even legally documented. On the night of the solemn rite of consecrating his Philanthropine, he debauched the maid-tenant, who bore twins, and gave him up for the father. The thing was not judicially proved, but was afterwards made sufficiently evident by letters found among his papers, and published by one of his friends in the Union.

Having supported these infants, in a pitiful manner, for little more than a year, he caused them to be taken away from their mother, during night, some time in the month of February 1780; and they were found exposed, the one at Ufstein, and the other at Worms, many miles distant from each other, and almost frozen to death.

So much for the purity of his morals and his religion, as he appears in the character of a father and of a clergyman. His decency as a husband, and his gratitude to his friend, we have already seen; and we shall now see his kindness and fidelity. After waiting the greatest part of his wife's little fortune, he was provoked because her brother would not give him up the remainder, amounting to about L 110, that he ever afterwards treated her with the greatest cruelty, and exhibited her to contempt and ridicule in two infamous novels. At Halle he brought a mistress into the house, and committed to her the care of his family, confining his wife and daughter to their own apartment; apartment; and the last thing which he did was to send for a bookseller, who had published some of his vilest pieces, and, without a thought of his injured wife, recommend his trumpet and her children to his protection.

"Think not, indignant reader (says Arbuthnot), that this man's life is useless to mortals." It shows in a strong light the falsity of all his declamations in favour of his so much praised natural religion and universal kindness and humanity. No man of the party writes with more persuasive energy, and, though his petulance and precipitant self-conceit lead him frequently astray, no man has occasionally put all the arguments of these philosophers in a clearer light; yet we see that all is false and hollow. He is a vile hypocrite, and the real aim of all his writings is to make money, by fostering the sensual propensities of human nature, although he sees and feels that the completion of the plan of the German Union would be an event more destructive and lamentable than any that can be pointed out in the annals of superstition. We will not say that all the partisans of illumination are hogs of the sty of Epicurus like this wretch; and it would be extremely unjust to consider his vices as the effects of his illumination. He was sensual, ungrateful, and profane, before he was admitted into the order of the Illuminati; but had the views of that order been such as were held out to the world at large, its sagacious founder would not have initiated a wretch so notoriously profligate as Dr. Bahrdt. Their views, however, being to govern mankind through the medium of their sensual appetites, and to reign in hell, rather than serve in heaven, they could not have employed a better instrument. Dr. Bahrdt was a true disciple of illumination; and though his torch was made of the coarsest materials, and served only to discover sights of woe, the horrid glare darted into every corner, rousing hundreds of filthy vermin, and directing their flight to the rotten carrion, where they could best deposit their poison and their eggs. Whilst the more decent members of the Union laboured to pervert the refined part of mankind by declamations on the rights of man and the blessings of liberty, Bahrdt addressed himself to readers of all descriptions, and affixed at once the imagination and the appetites. He taught them, that religion is an imposture; that morality is convenience; and, with blasphemy peculiar to himself, that he and his order, by their licentious doctrines, were to complete the plan and aim of J—— C——.