Essays on Theodicy

two parts of Philosophy which serve to make the mind just and the heart upright. Despite the methods of his century and his country, he had returned to the original sources; and although he perhaps retained a bit too much of the language and dryness of the School This refers to Scholasticism, the traditional method of philosophy and theology taught in medieval and early modern universities, often criticized for being overly rigid or technical., one easily discerns that he had penetrated the sentiments of the ancient Greek and Latin Philosophers. The knowledge he had of Literature original: "Belles-Lettres" — the study of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and classical history, which necessarily bestows grace upon everything written by those who have acquired it, even makes the Scholastic dryness in the writings of Thomasius partially less noticeable. Finally, he possessed to a supreme degree a talent no less rare than vast erudition: that of teaching others what he knew, and bringing the instructions he had to give them within reach of his disciples. To so much merit, Thomasius joined a great simplicity of manners, and a virtue tempered with such gentleness that he attracted the respect and affection of his colleagues, his disciples, and generally of all those who had dealings with him. Posterity preserves for him the rank that his own century gave him, and his Works do not contradict what Mr. Leibniz always said, and what he was heard to repeat at an age when it was no longer feared that old connections might lead him astray; which is that if Thomasius had lived thirty years later, and had witnessed the discoveries made in that span of time, he would have carried the