There has already been so much said about Enlightening, that the reader must be almost tired of it. He is assured in this performance that the Illumination proposed by the Union is not that of the Wolfenbuttle Fragments, nor that of Horus, nor that of Bahrdt. The Fragments and Horus are books which aim directly, and without any concealment, to destroy the authority of our Scriptures, either as historical narrations or as revelations of the intentions of providence and of the future prospects of man. The Theological writings of Bahrdt are gross perversions, both of the sense of the text, and of the moral instructions contained in it, and are perhaps the most exceptionable performances on the subject. They are stigmatised as absurd, and coarse, and indecent, even by the writers on the same side; yet the work recommended so often as containing the elements of that Illumination which the world has to expect from the Union, not only coincides in its general principles with these performances, but is almost an abstract of some of them, particularly of his Popular Religion, his Paraphrase on the Sermon on the Mount, and his Morality of Religion. We have also seen that the book on the Liberty of the Press is quoted and recommended as an elementary book. Nay both the work on Instruction and that on the Liberty of the Press are now known to be Bahrdt's.
But these principles, exceptionable as they may be, are probably not the worst of the institution. We see that the outside alone of the Union is to be shewn to the public. Barthels felicitates the public that there is no subordination and blind obedience to unknown Superiors; yet, in the