I may add that milord has now gone to Rome and apparently will not return to Germany so soon as was thought. One of these days I am going to Wolfenbutel and will do my best to recover Your Highness's book. It is said that M. Varillas has written a History of Modern Heresies.

Mastrich's letter which Your Highness communicated to me regarding the conversions of Sedan seems quite reasonable. M. Maimburg, they say, reports that St. Gregory the Great also approved of this principle, namely that one should not trouble himself even if the conversion of Heretics was feigned, provided that thus their children were really gained over. But it is not permitted to kill some persons in order to gain others, although Charlemagne used almost exactly this method against the Saxons, forcing them to accept Religion with the sword at their throats. We have now here a Monsieur Leti who has brought us his History of Geneva in five volumes dedicated to the House of Brunswick. I do not know what relationship he finds between the two. He says quite good things at times and is a good conversationalist.

I am, etc.

V: Leibniz to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels

5/15 April, 1686.

Your Serene Highness will have received the letter which I sent by the preceding post, to which I joined, in the form of a letter to Your Highness, a communication of which a copy could be sent to M. A. I have since thought it would be better to change those words toward the end, beginning "Nevertheless, if the church in which he is be so prompt to censure, such a procedure ought to serve as a notice," etc., as far as the words, "above all, when one has no means of support," lest M. A. may take the opportunity from them to enter into controversial disputes as if the church were being attacked, which is not at all the intention.

In the copy could be put in their place, "least of all in the communion to which M. A. belongs, where the Council of Trent as well as the Popes have been very wisely satisfied with censuring opinions in which there are points manifestly against the faith and against the customs. They have not gone into the philosophic consequences. If it were necessary to listen to these, then in matters of censure Thomists would pass for Calvinists according to the Jesuits, and the Jesuits would be classed as Semipelagians according to the Thomists. Both would destroy freedom according to Durandus and Father Louys de Dole, and in general every absurdity would pass for atheism because it could be shown to destroy the nature of God."

VI: Arnauld to Leibniz

May 13, 1686.

I thought that I ought to address myself to you personally to ask pardon for having given you cause to become angry against me, in that I employed too severe terms when I indicated what I thought of one of your positions. But I protest before God that the fault which I committed was not at all the result of prejudice against you, for I have never had cause to have of you other than a most favorable opinion save in the matter of Religion, in which you found yourself fixed through your birth; neither was I in an ill humor when I wrote the letter which has wounded you, nothing being further from my character than the evil disposition which it pleases many people to attribute to me; neither by a too great attachment to my own opinions was I shocked in seeing you hold contrary opinions, for I can assure you that I have meditated so little on these kinds of subjects that I am able to say that my opinions are not at all fully made up.

I beg you, sir, to believe nothing like that about me but to be convinced that what caused my indiscretion was simply that, having been accustomed to write off-hand to His Highness because he is so good as to readily excuse all my faults, I imagined that I could tell him frankly what I was unable to approve of in one of your opinions because I was very sure it would not pass muster and if I had misunderstood your meaning you would be able to correct me without its going any further.

But I hope, sir, that the Prince will be willing to make peace for me and I may engage him in this by using the words which Saint Augustine used on a similar occasion. He had written very harshly against those who thought that God could be seen with the physical eyes, and a Bishop in Africa who held this opinion, having seen this letter which was not at all addressed to him, was seriously offended by it. This necessitated Saint Augustine's employing a common friend to appease the Prelate and I beg you to imagine that I am saying to the Prince for your ears what Saint Augustine wrote to this friend, to be said to the Bishop: Dum essem in admonendo sollicitus, in corripiendo nimius atque improvidus fui. Hoc non defendo sed reprehendo: hoc non excuso, sed accuso. Ignoscatur, peto; recordetur nostram dilectionem pristinem et obliviscatur offensionem novam. Faciat certe quod me non fecisse succensuit: habeat lenitatem in dandi venia, quam non habui in illa epistola conscribenda.

I was in doubt whether I ought not to stop here without going again into the question which was the occasion for our falling out, lest there might again escape me some word which could wound you. But I fear, however, that that would be not to have a sufficiently good opinion of your fairness. I will tell you, therefore, in a few words the difficulties which I still have with this proposition: "The individual concept of each person involves, once for all, all that will ever happen to him."