Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/231

 that very account cannot sin, but on whose forehead the imaginary brand of Sin is placed that he may thereby be directed to the True God. In the hands of such Ages, however, Christianity was necessarily changed into a means of atonement and expiation, and assumed the form of a New Covenant with God; because these Ages had no need of a Religion, and indeed no capacity for receiving one, except in this shape. And thus that Christian System which, when I formerly spoke of this subject, I called a degenerate form of Christianity, and the authorship of which I ascribed to the Apostle Paul, was also a necessary product of the whole spirit of that Age as directed upon Christianity; and that this man and no other should have first given expression to that spirit was quite accidental; for had he not done so every one who had not risen superior to his Age by the intimate transfusion of his spirit in True Christianity would have done the same; as every one does, even to the present day, who has filled his mind with these pictures, and who dreams of such a mediation between God and men as necessary, and cannot even conceive of the contrary.

After Christianity had assumed this form, and particularly after the external act of initiation—Baptism—had become a mysterious purification from Sin, whereby the disciple was immediately released from the eternal punishment consequent thereon, and without farther effort obtained access to heaven; it could not but follow that the administrators of this rite should acquire the highest reputation among men; that the guardianship of this purity, which they had conferred by means of the sacrament, should likewise devolve upon them; and that thus no human occupation should be exempt from a jurisdiction, criticism, and guidance exercised by them under this pretence. When this superstition at last laid hold of the Roman Emperors themselves and the