This, Monsieur, is what has come into my mind regarding the proposition which troubled me and regarding the explanation which you have given. I do not know if I have wholly grasped your thought but such has been at least my intention. The subject is so abstract that a mistake is very easy. I should, however, be very sorry if you had of me as poor an opinion as those who represent me as a hot-headed writer who refutes others only in calumniating them and in purposely misrepresenting their opinions. This is most assuredly not my character. At times I may express my thoughts too frankly. At times also I may fail to grasp the thoughts of others (for I certainly do not consider myself infallible, and such one would have to be in order never to be mistaken), but even if this should be through self-confidence, never would it be that I misstated them purposely; for I find nothing to be so low as the using of chicanery and artifice in differences which may arise regarding matters of doctrine. This even if it should be with persons whom we have no reason otherwise to love, and still more if the difference is between friends. I believe, Monsieur, that you wish indeed that I place you in this latter class. I can not doubt that you do me the honor to love me. You have given me too many marks of it. And, in my behalf, I protest that the very fault for which I beg you once more to pardon me, was only the result of the affection which God has given me for you and of a zeal for your salvation, a zeal which has been by no means moderate. I am, etc.,

VII: Arnauld to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels

May 13, 1686.

I am very sorry, Monseigneur, to have given to Mr. Leibniz cause to become so angry at me. If I had foreseen it, I should have been on my guard against saying so frankly what I thought of one of his metaphysical propositions. But I ought to have foreseen it and I did wrong in employing such severe terms, not against him personally but against his position. Therefore, I have felt myself compelled to beg his pardon for it and I have done it very sincerely in the letter which I have written him and am sending open to Your Highness. It is also from my heart that I pray you to make peace for me and to reconcile me with a former friend of whom I should be very sorry to have made an enemy by my imprudence.

I shall be very glad, however, if the matter rests there and if I shall not be obliged to tell him what I think of his positions, because I am so overwhelmed with so many other occupations that I should have difficulty in convincing him and these abstract subjects require a great deal of application which I can not devote to them on account of the time which it consumes.

I do not know but that I have forgotten to send you an addition to the Apology for the Catholics. I fear lest I may have, because Your Highness has not mentioned it to me. I am accordingly sending it to you to-day with two Memoirs. The Bishop of Namur, whom the Internuncio has appointed judge, has had difficulty in deciding to accept this post, so great is the fear of the Jesuits. But if their power is so great that justice can not be obtained against them in this world, they have reason to fear that God will punish them with so much the more severity in the next. It is a terrible history and a long one, that of this Canon, whose wickedness apparently would be unpunished if he had not rendered himself odious by his conspiracies and his cabals.

This Lutheran minister of whom Your Highness speaks must have good qualities, but it is something incomprehensible and marking an extremely blind prejudice that he can regard Luther as a man destined by God for the Reformation of the Christian religion. He must have a very low idea of true piety to find it in a man like him, imprudent in his speech and so gluttonous in his manner of living. I am not surprised at what this minister has said to you against those who are called Jansenists, since Luther at first put forward extreme propositions against the co-operation of grace and against the freedom of will so far as to give to one of his books the title De servo arbitrio, Necessitated Will. Melancthon, some time after, mitigated these propositions a great deal and since then the Lutherans have gone over to the opposite extreme so that the Arminians have nothing stronger to oppose to the Gummarists than the doctrines of the Lutheran Church. There is no cause then for astonishment that the Lutherans of to-day, who occupy the same positions as the Arminians, are opposed to the disciples of Saint Augustine. For the Arminians are more sincere than are the Jesuits. They grant that Saint Augustine is opposed to them in the opinions which they have in common with the Jesuits but they do not think themselves obliged to follow him.

What Father Jobert is requiring from new converts gives grounds for hope that those who are converts only in name may return, little by little, provided that instruction is given them, that they are edified by good examples, and that the curacies are filled with good men. But it would be spoiling everything to take from them the vernacular translations of what is said at Mass. It is only such leniency that can cure them from the aversion that has been given to them regarding it. Yet we have not yet been informed of what has been the outcome of the storm aroused against the Annee Chretienne, about which I wrote to Your Highness some time ago.