  Clarke and Leibniz agreed that human reason can demonstrate that there necessarily exists an essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being who has freely created the world. But their accounts of divine freedom were profoundly different. It is helpful, therefore, to highlight their differences over divine freedom and to consider whether either conception of divine freedom can be reconciled with the absolute perfection of the creator. Thecentral issue is whether either conception of divine freedom can be fully reconciled with the requirement imposed by God's perfect goodness, (in Clarke's words) “the necessity of always doing what is best.”