fellow-enthusiast in Germany (Baron Hohendorf) Toland wrote three years later, giving the proofs of Bruno's punishment, with a translation of Schopp's account, and stating his belief as to Bruno's real doctrine (viz. free-thinking).[661] "The author," he wrote, "gives full play to his spirit, which is always diverting, but at the same time very powerful; he is often diffuse, but never wearisome. In a very small space he has expounded a complete system of natural religion, the theory of ancient cosmography, history, comparison and refutation of different opinions, besides many curious observations on diverse subjects. But the author abounds in pleasantries, and in satirical traits: he is impious in a sovereign degree, and does not always keep himself within the limits of allegory." And so Bruno, like Spinoza in this also, went down to posterity as a worthless, impious atheist, one of the reputed authors of the mythical work _De Tribus Impostoribus_, which no one had ever seen, but in which the three founders of the great religions of the world were attacked as conscious cheats! So far was the world as yet from understanding the martyr for truth and for "the religion of thought." It was from Germany that the reaction came. The story of the restoration of Bruno's name (his _Ehrenrettung_) has been told by Bartholmèss, and needs but a very brief sketch here. Heumann[662] repudiated Lacroze's description of him as an atheist and forerunner of Spinoza's pantheism, describing him as a martyr for the Lutheran faith and as an eclectic in philosophy. Brucker[663]--without the historical sense, but a painstaking and learned, if diffuse, analyst, judging all philosophies by the standard of orthodox Protestantism and the Leibnizian philosophy--yet sympathised with Bruno, described him as an "eclectic, combining ideas of the Eleatics with those of Democritus and Epicurus, Copernicus and Pythagoras, not an impostor, but an intellectual enthusiast--_cum ratione insanivit_." Throughout the remaining part of the century a number of monographs appeared, by Jordan, Christiani, Kindervater; with, on the _contra_ side, Lessman and Lauckhard. Adelung thought Bruno worthy of a place in his _History of Human Folly_ (1785). In the same year (1785) appeared F. H. Jacobi's _Letters on Spinoza's Philosophy_, which contained a "restoration" at one stroke of both Bruno and Spinoza to their place among the great names of the history of thought.[664] This fine thinker--if not great thinker--penetrated by the beauty and calm of Spinoza's pantheism, saw in Bruno a true forerunner. Bruno had "taken up the substance of the ancient philosophy, transformed it into flesh and blood, was wholly permeated by its spirit, without ceasing to be himself." Naturally it was in the _Causa_ that Jacobi found the greatest affinity with Spinoza, as in it the starting-point of Bruno is from the One, the Highest, which is at the same time the All--the universe, the unity