rhaps few persons who
have toiled more than I in this matter. Hardly had I gained some tolerable
understanding of Latin writings when I had an opportunity of turning over
books in a library. I flitted from book to book, and since subjects for
meditation pleased me as much as histories and fables, I was charmed by the
work of Laurentius Valla against Boethius and by that of Luther against
Erasmus, although I was well aware that they had need of some mitigation. I
did not omit books of controversy, and amongst other writings of this
nature the records of the Montbeliard Conversation, which had revived the
dispute, appeared to me instructive. Nor did I neglect the teachings of our
theologians: and the study of their opponents, far from disturbing me,
served to strengthen me in the moderate opinions of the Churches of the
Augsburg Confession. I had opportunity on my journeys to confer with some
excellent men of different parties, for instance with Bishop Peter von
Wallenburg, Suffragan of Mainz, with Herr Johann Ludwig Fabricius, premier
theologian of Heidelberg, and finally with the celebrated M. Arnauld. To
him I even tendered a Latin Dialogue of my own composition upon this
subject, about the year 1673, wherein already I laid it down that God,
having chosen the most perfect of all possible worlds, had been prompted by
his wisdom to permit the evil which was bound up with it, but which still
did not prevent this world from being, all things considered, the best that
could be chosen. I have also since read many and various good authors on
these subjects, and I have endeavoured to make progress in the knowledge
that seems to me proper for banishing all that could have obscured the idea
of supreme perfection which must be acknowledged in God. I have not
neglected to examine the most rigorous authors, who have extended furthest
the doctrine of the necessity of things, as for instance Hobbes and
Spinoza, of whom the former advocated this absolute necessity not only in
his _Physical Elements_ and elsewhere, but also in a special book against
Bishop Bramhall. And Spinoza insists more or less (like an ancient
Peripatetic philosopher named Strato) that all has come from the first
cause or from primitive Nature by a blind and geometrical necessity, with
complete absence of capacity for choice, for goodness and for understanding
in this first source of things.

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