Reflections on Lessing's Fragments

and would have redounded to your honor before the public.

Because the greatest "know-it-alls" Wißlinge: A derogatory term used for those who claim intellectual superiority or "wiseacres" among the learned—among whom I count You as well—are biased with prejudices against the Book of Revelation, wanting to prove everything solely through the light of reason Vernunft: The capacity for rational thought, which the author argues is being used by his opponents to reject anything they cannot logically explain and demanding that others prove whatever You cannot reconcile with Your reason or accept as credible;

so I step forward as an unlearned man Ungelehrter: A person without formal academic or theological training; the author adopts this persona to contrast his "sensible" truths with the "abstract" theories of scholars, to convince You—not perhaps through grand, bombastic, and abstract philosophical propositions, counter-propositions, and conclusions, but only through such tangible truths that strike the senses, which You will not be able to contradict, unless an abstract philosophical nonsense should lead You into delusion Wahnwiß: Also "Wahnwitz," meaning madness or a state of being crazed by false wisdom,