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Source: Manuscript held by G. W. Leibniz Bibliothek, Hanover Shelfmark LH 1, 1, 4 Bl. 73 Date: 1702(?) Translated from the French View this translation in PDF format (172k) Back to home page Search texts by keyword(s): (For search strings, just type the words; don't use quotation marks) |
LEIBNIZ: ON SALVATION OUTSIDE THE VISIBLE CHURCH[LH 1, 1, 4 Bl. 73] On salvation outside the visible church Milletiere1 inappropriately dedicated a book on controversy (entitled La Victoire de la verité pour la paix de l'Église)2 to Charles II, King of England, when he was in exile, in order to invite the King of Great Britain to embrace the Catholic faith. When he did so, an English bishop who was with the King responded to him through a discourse in 8º printed in Geneva in 1655. And as Milletiere appeared to maintain that King Charles I was a true martyr only in the Roman Church, in which he claimed that the King had died, the prelate refuted this fable, and as for Milletiere's maxim that there was no other church than his capable of engendering such a child, the bishop opposed it with a very remarkable dogma that Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon (who had had ordinary authority over the papists in England around 1626 and sometime after) had maintained in two treatises that he published, namely: "if those who live in the communion of the Protestant church endeavour to learn the truth, and cannot attain it on account of their insufficiency, but implicitly embrace it by preparing their hearts to receive it, and are always ready to do so at such time when it shall please God to reveal it to them, they cannot fail the true church, faith, and salvation."3 Having related this in his Dictionnaire, article "Milletiere", p2112, Mr Bayle adds: "Here is a maxim able to furnish many reflections for a supplement to the Philosophical Commentary on Compel them to come in."4 He adds in the margin: "compare what Caramuel says in Nicolle's work on the unity of the church, p. 71." NOTES: 1. Théophile Brachet de La Milletière (1588-1665), a Calvinist theologian. 2. Théophile Brachet de La Milletière, La Victoire de la verité pour la paix de l'Église (Paris, 1651). Leibniz gives the title as La Triomphe de la verité pour la paix de l'Église. 3. Quoted from Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam, 1702, 2ed), 2112: article "Milletiere" note G. 4. A reference to Bayle's Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jesus-Christ: Contrain-les d'entrer (Canterbury [Amsterdam], 1686). © Lloyd Strickland 2016 |