In 1778 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was in a public dispute with Johann Melchior Goeze, the chief pastor of Hamburg. That year Lessing published 15 polemical writings against him. The duke then withdrew Lessing’s exemption from censorship and banned him from publishing on religion. In the same controversy, in Eine Duplik, a reply to the theologian Johann Heinrich Reß, Lessing wrote: Nicht die Wahrheit, in deren Besitz irgendein Mensch ist oder zu sein vermeinet, sondern die aufrichtige Mühe, die er angewandt hat, hinter die Wahrheit zu kommen, macht den Wert des Menschen. Not the truth that a person possesses, or believes he possesses, but the honest effort he has made to get to the truth makes the worth of a person.