archy. His veneration for the Romish theory of a living infallible authority, supplementary to, and expository of, the written word of Scripture, was indeed coupled with a protest against the existing corruptions of the Church, and an expression of his fear that a formal adherence to Rome on his own part might, from (the practical intolerance of the Romish theologians, cramp the freedom of his philosophical speculations. Though he thus firmly resisted all solicitations to join the outward communion of Rome, yet his heart, and perhaps his conviction, was accorded to the system of the hierarchy. His love for scholastic learning may have biassed his inclinations in this direction, and his comprehensive genius, like that of many other kindred spirits, found gratification in the vast unity and completeness of the ideal Catholic Church, with its ritual, and its organization, apparently so suited for all the various characters and circumstances of those whom it desires to embrace within its ample fold, and all bearing so much the semblance of a fitting picture of that still vaster organization wherein he loved to contemplate the whole universe reclaimed into the harmony of the government of the All-holy and the All-wise. Yet this part of the life of Leibnitz is not one that can be studied with unmixed satisfaction. The source of those oscillations of opinion which are sometimes the consequence, in honest and devout minds, of a many-sided view of an extremely comprehensive subject, seems hardly sufficient to account for the inconsistencies of Leibnitz in his negotiations with the representatives of the Church of Rome.
