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ritual and temporal ordinances, in the most barbarous manner: thus behind this rampart, they imagined under false names, to be able to annihilate Christianity itself, for this it was which was hateful to them, not this, or that party. All this was very evident to me, and I lent my aid as much as my limitted power would permit. I arrived at the age of maturity, and my opinions only became still more deeply rooted. I travelled, I saw the world, but only on the side, which confirmed my prejudices. If I met with pious enlightened Christians, they appeared to me only as strange disordered spirits, worthy of remark perhaps, of pity assuredly. In a German town I took out of sheer insolence the book of a German mystic from the library to my own dwelling, that I might for want of better amusement, divert myself in the spirit of derision with the madness of the absurd and the foolish. Unconsciously, I had brought the fire-brand into my house, which soon set in flames all