We have left ourselves no room to speak as we would of Leibnitz as theosopher. It was in this character that he obtained, in the last century, his widest fame. The work by which he is most commonly known, by which alone he is known to many, is the "Théodicée,"--an attempt to vindicate the goodness of God against the cavils of unbelievers. He was one of the first to apply to this end the cardinal principle of the Lutheran Reformation,--the liberty of reason. He was one of the first to treat unbelief, from the side of religion, as an error of judgment, not as rebellion against rightful authority. The latter was and is the Romanist view. The former is the Protestant theory, but was not then, and is not always now, the Protestant practice. Theology then was not concerned to vindicate the reason or the goodness of God. It gloried in his physical strength by which he would finally crush dissenters from orthodoxy. Leibnitz knew no authority independent of Reason, and no God but the Supreme Reason directing Almighty Good-will. The philosophic conclusion justly deducible from this view of God, let cavillers say what they will, is Optimism. Accordingly, Optimism, or the doctrine of the best possible world, is the theory of the "Théodicée." Our limits will not permit us to analyze the argument of this remarkable work. Bunsen says, "It necessarily failed because it was a not quite honest compound of speculation and divinity." [31] [Footnote 31: _Outlines of the Philos. of Univ. Hist_. Vol. I. Chap. 6.]