Spinoza was away from Amsterdam, when the ban was hurled against him. He is said to have received the news with indifference, and to have remarked that he was now compelled to do what he would otherwise have done without compulsion. His philosophic nature, which loved solitude, could easily dispense with intercourse with relatives and former friends. Yet the matter did not end for him there. The representative body of the Portuguese community appealed to the municipal authorities to effect his perpetual banishment from Amsterdam. The magistrates referred the question, really a theological one, to the clergy, and the latter are said to have proposed his withdrawal from Amsterdam for some months. Most probably this procedure prompted him to elaborate a justificatory pamphlet to show the civil authorities that he was no violator or transgressor of the laws of the state, but that he had exercised his just rights, when he reflected on the religion of his forefathers and religion generally, and thought out new views. The chain of reasoning suggested to Spinoza in the preparation of his defense caused him doubtless to give wider extension and bearing to this question. It gave him the opportunity to treat of freedom of thought and inquiry generally, and so to lay the foundation of the first of his suggestive writings, which have conferred upon him literary immortality. In the village to which he had withdrawn, 1656-60, and later in Rhynsburg, where he also spent several years, 1660-64, Spinoza occupied himself (while polishing lenses, which handicraft he had learned to secure his moderate subsistence) with the Cartesian philosophy and the elaboration of the work entitled "The Theologico-Political Treatise." His prime object was to spread the conviction that freedom of thought can be permitted without prejudice to religion and the peace of the state; furthermore, that it must be permitted, for if it were forbidden, religion and peace could not exist in the state.