hardly looks like being for him a crucial deliverance from perdition. It is
not the intervention of Mercy, by which alone He possesses himself of [10]
us: it is one of the ways in which supreme Benevolence carries out a cosmic
policy; and God's benevolence is known by pure reason, and apart from
Christian revelation.

In one politically important particular the theological attitude of Leibniz
differed from that of Locke. Both stood for toleration and for the
minimizing of the differences between the sects. This was a serious enough
matter in England, but it was an even more serious matter in Germany. For
Germany was divided between Catholics and Protestants; effective toleration
must embrace them both. English toleration might indulge a harmless
Catholic minority, while rejecting the Catholic régime as the embodiment of
intolerance. But this was not practical politics on the Continent; you must
tolerate Catholicism on an equal footing, and come to terms with Catholic
régimes. Leibniz was not going to damn the Pope with true Protestant
fervour. It was his consistent aim to show that his theological principles
were as serviceable to Catholic thinkers as to the doctors of his own
church. On some points, indeed, he found his most solid support from
Catholics; in other places there are hints of a joint Catholic-Lutheran
front against Calvinism. But on the whole Leibniz's writings suggest that
the important decisions cut across all the Churches, and not between them.

Leibniz was impelled to a compromise with 'popery', not only by the
religious divisions of Germany, but (at one stage) by the political
weakness of the German Protestant States. At the point of Louis XIV's
highest success, the Protestant princes had no hope but in Catholic
Austria, and Austria was distracted by Turkish pressure in the rear.
Leibniz hoped to relieve the situation by preaching a crusade. Could not
the Christian princes sink their differences and unite against the infidel?