While compiling a new collection of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s seventeenth-century writings on religion and ­theology, I made what felt like a remarkable discovery.

I came across a clutch of manuscripts that I realised all belonged to a single, ambitious, yet largely forgotten project from May and June 1685. There were prefaces, sketches and essays going by several titles: “Apology for the Catholic Faith”, “Rationale of the Catholic Faith” and “Specimen of Catholic Demonstrations”. The longest essay, which Leibniz intended to develop into a “little book”, is titled: “Apology for Catholic Truth”. The book was never ­completed. Some drafts break off mid-­sentence, while others promise discussions of topics that are left un­discussed. But taken together, these writings form a coherent project that reveals Leibniz at his most unexpected.

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