 In 1798 Fichte published in his Philosophical Journal a brief essay “On the Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Governance of the World,” in which he attempted to sketch some of his preliminary ideas on the topic indicated in the title and simultaneously to give the first clear public hint of the character of a philosophy of religion “in accordance with the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre.” The occasion for this essay was another essay, published in the same issue of the Philosophical Journal, by K. L. Forberg. As it happened, these two essays provoked an anonymous author to publish a pamphlet charging the authors of both essays with atheism and demanding Fichte’s dismissal from his post at Jena. The matter quickly escalated into a major public controversy which eventually led to the official suppression of the offending issue of the journal and to public threats by various German princes to prevent their students from enrolling at the University of Jena. The crisis produced by these actions and the growing number of publications for and against Fichte—which included an intemperate Appeal to the Public by Fichte himself (1799), as well as a more thoughtful response entitled “From a Private Letter” (1799)—eventually provoked F. H. Jacobi to publish his famous “open letter” to Fichte, in which he equated philosophy in general and Fichte’s transcendental philosophy in particular with “nihilism.” As the public controversy unfolded, Fichte badly miscalculated his own position and was finally forced to resign his position at Jena and to flee to Berlin, where he arrived in the summer of 1799.