consequent to plurality of representers that there be a plurality of persons though of one and the same substance Stud. You surprize me here with such an explication of the Trinity as has not been invented by any Heretick of the unluckiest wit for these sixteen hundred years And now I am guided after the manner of the multitude whose curiosity leads them to see the deformed births and mishapen effects of miscarrying nature rather than to contemplate the Master-pieces of the Creation it is not so much the goodness as the prodigiousness of this novel doctrine which enticeth me to consider it And in truth this conception of a Trinity seems to me more a Monster than the head of Cerberus that is death it self which head would have been call'd four-fold if the fourth part of the world America had been then discover'd but this conception as will by and by appear may multiply it self an hundred fold and be rather a Century than a Trinity There is also in it this inconvenience that before the dayes of Moses you must affirm one only natural person to have been in the divine nature Mr. Hobbes There was but one from whence we may gather the reason why those names Father Son and Holy Spirit in the signification of the Godhead are never used in the Old Testament for they are Persons that is they have their names from representing which could not be till divers men had represented Gods Person in ruling or in directing under him Our Saviour both in teaching and reigning representeth as Moses did the person of God which God from that time forward but not before is called the Father Stud. Where is now your will to pay a reverence to the Law by whose Authority you are taught in the first Article of the Church of England that there be three persons of one substance power and eternity But you will say that your Leviathan was published in those dayes when the King by your doctrine was no King when the Parliament having the supreme strength had for that very reason the reason which you give and I may consider in its assigned place the sovereign Right by which they preferred their own Ordinances and the Constitutions of the Assembly to the Canons and Articles of the Convocation And indeed you have told us in that Book that you submitted in all Questions whereof the determination dependeth on the Scriptures to the interpretation of the Bible authorized by the Commonwealth whose Subject you were that is to say to the Annotations of the Assembly of Divines wherein no doubt you might have read the Doctrine of an eternal Trinity asserted seeing in their shortest Catechism 't is not omitted But Law and Scripture like the servants of an hard and selfish Master are used by you whilest they have strength to serve your purpose but when you cannot work your design by them they are cast off with utter neglect But to proceed you your self together with the Law have affirmed Jesus to be God-man and Arrius granted to him a duration before the world and Eusebius who had some favour for the Arrian Doctrine supposeth him often to have appeared before and under the times of the Law And a very late Writer who has not fear'd in his Rhapsodie of Ecclesiastick Stories to deny the Eternal God-head of Christ hath yet maintained it to he very dangerous to deny his Pre-existence There were then and it follows from the sense of your own confession at least two natural persons of the Father and of Christ before this world was founded Further if every one representing the Person of God in ruling or directing under him addeth a person to the God-head then may it be thence concluded as Enjedinus speaks in relation to Pope Alexander who would infer three persons from the three Attributes of Fecit dixit benedixit at the beginning of Genesis that there are not only three but six hundred For all Civil Powers are Representatives of the King of the Universe and you your self affirm that any Civil Sovereign is Lieu-tenant of God and representeth his person To speak with propriety Moses was rather a Mediator betwixt God and the People who were under a Theocracy and not a Sovereign on earth And Saul who was appointed them in the place of God whom in their unreasonable wishes out of an apish imitation of the Heathen Models they had deposed seems the first Person representing God among the Iews It is also to be noted that the Apostles were Representers not strictly of Gods Person but of Christ God-man from whom they received commission in his name to teach and baptize after all power was given to him Wherefore the Bishop of Rome has presumed to call himself rather falsly than improperly the servant of the servants of God and Vicar of Christ. But if you are not willing to multiply Persons in the Godhead by the number of Vicegerents but chuse to understand this three-fold representation of a three-fold state of People under Moses Christ and the Apostles which yet is an evasion not at all suggested by you even by this artifice you will not find a back door open out of which you may escape For besides that the Apostolical times are but the continuation of the state begun by Christ and that the Reign of Christ at his second coming will be a state perfectly new we must remember that there were two states before the dayes of Moses the one to be computed from Adam who in most eminent manner represented God being appointed by him Universal Monarch of the Earth the other from the Revelation made to Abraham who may be said the first person with whom God made a formal Covenant Sealed by the Rite of Circumcision and by Promises guarded from violation Again whereas you have affirmed that the names of Father and Son in the signification of the God-head are never used in the Old-Testament therein you consulted not your Concordance For seeing Christ is called the Son in the second Psalm the cor-relative Father is as directly pointed out as if the very name had in Capital Letters been written down Neither do I here create by my Fancy as is the manner of such who deal in Allegories of Scripture a mystical sense because the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ha's expounded the words of our blessed Lord and not of David Saint Matthew likewise ha's made the same interpretation if Iustin Martyr was not deceived either by his memory or by oral Tradition or a spurious Copy for in stead of those words from Heaven at the baptism of Jesus This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased he ha's in two places affirmed the voice to have been this Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Mr Hobbes Let us not labor any longer in a particular sifting of such mysteries as are not comprehensible nor fall under any rule of natural
leaving the Low-Countries upon the Kings return some of the remonstrant-Ministers coming to take their leaves of this great man and desiring that by his means the Church of England would be kind to them he had reason to grant it because they were learned men and in many things of a most excellent belief yet he reprov'd them and gave them caution against it that they approached too near and gave too much countenance to the great and dangerous errors of the Sociniâ—ns He thus having served God and the King abroad God was pleased to return to the King and to us all As for divers others of them some were imprisoned and others were by reason of Age not so apt for forraign travel and at home they promoted the cause of their Soveraign which if all zealous Loyalists had with-drawn themselves would by degrees have dyed away and because they refused the Oaths imposed at the peril of their lives and of their fortunes which though they were but little were their all they therefore are not to be judged treacherous in undermining the usurped Government or disloyal to the King in enjoying protection under Oliver whom they neither arm'd nor owned in power neither do you here take notice of the great number of loyal Priests of which some fled beyond the Seas and others staying in the Land were for their the sake of Allegiance exposed to as great dangers as the roughest sea could have threatned them with but it is the manner of some men to wound true Loyalty and Religion through the sides of Ecclesiastick Officers Mr. Hobbes I have not said this to upbraid the Bishops nor ever spake I ill of any of them as to their persons and against their Office I never writ any thing I never wrote I say against Episcopacy and it is my private opinion that such an Episcopacy as is now in England is the most commodious that a Christian King can use for the the governing of Christs Flock and if they submitted to Oliver they did justly being then absolved of their obedience to their Soveraign for the obligation of subjects to the Soveraign is understood to last as long and no longer then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them The end of obedience is protection which wheresoever a man seeth it either in his own or in anothers sword Nature applyeth his obedience to it and his endeavors to maintain it Stud. You have here according as the nature of falshood requireth backed one untruth with a second for in your Leviathan you called Episcopacy a Praeterpolitical Church Government and preferred Independencie above all other forms for at that time it was gotten uppermost and seem'd the growing Interest and Presbytery decayed the truth is the latter declin'd before the death of the King to whose fall that Partie was loath to give the last thrust but when your Leviathan came forth the house of Lords had bin voted useless and the members that had voted the Kings concessions a ground for the House to proceed to a settlement were secluded and the dregs of the House were Anabaptists and Independents soon after this you thus libeld that government which was then by right his present Majesties The Analysis of the Pontifical Power is by the same way the Synthesis or construction was but beginneth with the knot that was last tyed the Popes Supremacy as we may see in the dissolution of the Praeterpolitical Church-Government in England First the power of the Popes was dissolved totally by Queen Elizabeth and the Bishops who before exercised their Functions in right of the Pope did afterwards exercise the same in the right of the Queen and her successors though by retaining the Phrase of Jure divino they were thought to demand it by immediate right from God and so was untyed the first knot After this the Presbyterians lately in England obtained the putting down of Episcopacy and so was the second knot dissolved and almost at the same time the power was taken also from the Presbyterians and so we are reduced to the Independencie of the Primitive Christians to follow Paul or Cephas or Apollos every man as he liketh best which if it be without contention and without measuring the doctrine of Christ by our affection to the person of his Minister the fault which the Apostle reprehended in the Corinthians is perhaps the best Wherefore speak no more of your reverence for Episcopacy whilst you have cryed hail to it and yet betraid it neither is it for you to pretend to loyalty who when one asked what was the price of a Roman penny amidst a Discourse of our civil Warres whilst his thoughts were guided by a train from our Warres to the delivering of the King from that to the delivering of Christ from that to the thirty pence received by Iudas and from that to the value of the Roman penny call'd this in Print a Malicious question in the daies of the Parliament as if it were malice and not just zeal which occasioned his comparing of the Martyrdom of King Charles to the death of the blessed Jesus It is not for you to pretend to loyalty who place right in force and teach the people to assist the Usurper with active compliance against a dispossessed Prince and not meerly to live at all adventure in his Territories without owning the protection by unlawful oaths or by runing into arms against their dethroned Soveraign Mr. Hobbes I cannot but place the right of government there weresoever the strength shall be whatsoever be the ignominious terms with which you revile me Stud. I say then again and I neither revile nor slander you unless it can be done by the repetition of the truth that you give encouragement to Usurpers and also when civil discords are on foot as it happens too frequently in all States you hereby move such people as are yet on the side of their lawful Prince whose affairs they see declining straitway to adjoyn themselves to the more prospeâ—ous partie and to help to overturn those thrones of Soveraigntie at which a while beâ—ore they prostrated themselves for in your way of reasoning they have a right to preserve or delight themselves by any course of means and can be best protected by the prevailing side which because it hath more degrees of growing power ha's it seemeth therefore more of right The people thus miss-instructed will imitate those idolatrous Heathens who for some years worshipped a presumed Goddess made fast unto an Oake but as soon as the Tree began by Age and Tempest to appear decaying they pay'd no further devotion to their Deity neither would they come within the shaddow of the Oak or Image Mr. Hobbes Against this abuse of what I have taught I have made provision by inserâ—ing this amongst other Laws of Nature that every man is bound by nature as much as in him lies to protect in War the Authority by which he
is himself protected in time of Peace Stud. That Law was forgotten in the body of your Leviathan and cometh late into the review the wound is first made and then you endeavour to skin it over but neither can it so be closed for this and all other Laws of Nature obliging no further as hath been already noted then they promote the first the Law of self-interest it is in the choice of every subject whom you make Judge of the means to preserve himself to apply himself to the stronger side or for a company combin'd in arms and counsel when an Heir and a Traytor are ingag'd in Battle with equal success as was the practice of the Lord Stanley and Sir William Stanley and their adherents in the Engagement at Bosworth-Field to give the day to the side they presume will most favour them by over-poising the power of the other side by their fresh supply Fear will not keep men from such attempts especially fear of outward punishment whilst every one hopes to conquer and to mend his game as you well know by a new shuffle and is by you misperswaded that failing in the enterprize to his temporal peril is his only offence against the Law of Nature There is no tye so strong as that of Religion which eternally bindeth a conscientious subject in allegiance to his Soveraign and Wars arise from mens self-interests and lusts and true goodness is both the Creator and Preserver of Peace unless a man obeyeth for Conscience sake all the cords of outward Pacts â—nd Covenants will not hold him when he â—reameth that the Philistins are upon him and â—hat he can deliver himself by force from the â—ower of his Enemies in which number the Prince himself is reckon'd by ambitious subjects â—ut of favour neither will such Covenants hold the people that pretend unto Religion if â—hey be mis-taught that God is glorified in their private good and that their private good is to â—e valued before the life of a Prince if they can â—afely deprive him of it For it is truely said â—y a Friend of yours That zeal like lead â—s as ready to drop into bullets as to mingle with a composition fit for medicine Mr. Hobbes Covenants being but words and breath have no force to oblige contain constrain or protect any man but what it has from the publick Sword The Laws of Nature as Justice Equity Modesty Mercy and in sum doing to others as we would be done to of themselves without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed are contrary to our natural passions that carry us to partiality pride revenge and the like And Covenants without the Sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all Stud. The matter is much mended by this answer and you who cause or permit for with you they are the same a person of none of the best manners in a Preface to your Book of Destiny to revile the Embassadors of our Lord and to levie against them not the force of argument but of foaming malice and to reproach them by saying that they are ignorant Tinkers and Soderers of Conscience how do you merit the same mock-name by making wide holes and passages for every rebellious spirit instead of stopping an Objection which charged your Doctrine with disloyalty For thus Society is like a State of Nature and all is managed still by force notwithstanding the formalities of transferring Right by Pacts and every man is to stand no longer to his bargain when he can break it to his advantage And thus the Prince is always in a state of danger because he cannot be a day secure of remaining uppermost seeing the people are taught by you to believe that the right of Authority is a deceit and that every one would have as good a title if he had as long a sword For the many-headed Beast will throw the Rider when he burthens and galls them having no check of inward Law For the Prince has but the strength of a single man and the people can't confer irresistible Power unless when they lift up their hands on high they can give up their nerves and muscles and spirits as well as testifie their present approbation Wo to all the Princes upon earth if this doctrine be true and becometh popular if the multitude believe this the Prince not armed with the scales of the Leviathan that is with irresistible power can never be safe from the Spears and Barbed irons which their ambition and presumed interest will provide and their malice will sharpen and their passionate violence throw against him If the Beast we speak of come but to know its own strength it will never be managed Wherefore such as own these pernicious doctrines destructive to all Societies of men may be said to have Wolves heads as the Laws of old were wont to speak concerning excommunicated Persons and are like those ravenous beasts so far from deserving our love and care that they ought to be destroyed at the common charge What you have written three times over in your de cive de corpore politico and Leviathan ought rather to be esteemed seeds of sedition then Elements of government and societie the Principles of the Zelots amongst the Papists who obey a Forrein Power against the King are not consistent with the government of England yet like the Elements in Aristotle they are not burthensome in their proper place of Italy but of such large infection is the doctrine that it will endanger the life of the Common-wealth wheresoever it is entertained in the consequences of it Mr. Hobbes At Paris I wrote my Book de cive in Latine and I know no book more magnified then that beyond the Seas Natural Philosophie is but young but civil Philosophie yet much younger as being no older I say it provoked and that my detractors may know how little they have wrought upon me then my own book de Cive a short sum of that book of mine now publiquely in French done by a Gentleman I never saw carrieth the title of Aethics demonstrated accuse not then such Politics as are though new yet of sure foundation Stud. Your Doctrine is old enough and I wish it had one propertie of Age to be attended with decay Carneades and divers others bottom'd Policy and self-Interest and you have only wire-drawn that which is delivered by them in a lump and for this as is the manner of divers who have an itch of writing you claw your self I could repeat to you divers sayings of the ancient deceivers in Moralitie such as are Armatus leges ut oâ—gitem nec natura potest justo secernere iniquum utilitas justi prope mater aequi and the like but you would then turn all off by deriding me for having made a motly Oration I have somtimes by my self made this conjecture that you being so conversant with Thuâ—ydides the Oration of
before them if these can promote their private good by Sword or Poyson or Mutiny The people if they believ'd that a company of Delinquents joyning together to defend themselves by Arms do not at all unjustly but may lawfully repel lawful Force by Force they would soon be stirred up and suffer none for whom they have respect to be brought to justice For your last particular concerning the Power of the Civil Soveraign in relation to that for which we have assign'd The Ninth place that is to say the Canon of holy Scripture it seeâ—eth a great indignity offered to the Soveraignty of Christ. Upon this occasion I remember a saying of Dr. Weston which would better have become a man in Buff then a Prolocutor of the Convocation After six days spent in hot dispute about Religion in the Reign of Queen Mary he dismissed those of the Reformed way in these words It is not the Queens pleasure that we should spend any longer time in these debates and ye are well enough already for you have the Word and we have the Sword So little of the obligation of holy Writ is perceived by those whose eyes are dazled with Secular Grandeur But before we come to dispute of the power which maketh the Scripture Canon which is as 't were the Main Battle may we not a little breathe and prepare our selves in some lesser Skirmishes touching the Writings of the Old and New Testament Mr. Hobbes If you like that course I am ready to joyn with you First then I take notice that divers historical Books of the Old Testament were not written by those whose names they bear to wit much of the Pentateuch the Books of Ioshuah and Iudges and Ruth and Samuel and Kings and Chronicles Stud. This hath bin long since said and proved by the places which you cite in your Leviathan by the Frenchman who founded a Systeme of Divinity upon the conceit of men before Adam who also by Recantation unravel'd his own Cobweb spun out of his own fancie rather then the true Records of time But this doth not invalidate the truth of those Histories whose sufficient antiquity is by you granted Mr. Hobbes I observe again concerning the Book of Iob that though it appear sufficiently that he was no feigned person yet the Book it self seemeth not to be an History but a Treatise concerning a question in ancient time disputed why wicked men have often prospered in this world and good men have been afflicted and it is the more probable because the whole dispute is in Verse but Verse is no usual stile of such as either are themselves in great pain as Iob or of such as come to comfort them as his Friends but in Philosophy especially moral Philosophy in ancient time frequent Stud. It is not thought that Iob or his Friends but Moses or some other pen'd the History in the form in which we have it But however you here alledge a Reason which proveth the contrary to the purpose you would have it serve for For Poetry exciting the imagination and affections is fittest for painting out the Scene of Tragedy You have surely forgotten Ovid de Tristibus Mr. Hobbes Please your self in replies I will proceed to observe further that as for the Books of the Old Testament they are derived to us from no other time then that of Esdras who by the direction of Gods Spirit â—etrived them when they were lost Stud. That place in the fourth Book of Esdras wherein it is said in his person Thy Law is burnt therefore no man knoweth the things that thou hast done is a very fable For though the Autographa of Moses and the Prophets have been thought to have perished at the burning of Hierusalem yet it is not true that all the Copies were destroyed For the Prophets in the Captivity read the Law And concerning that whole fourth Book it is said by Bellarmine himself that the Author is a Romancer Of the like nature may they seem who talk of the men of the Synagoga magna making Ezra to be a chief man amongst them and ascribing to them the several divisions and sections of the Old Testament even that wherein the Book of Daniel is most absurdly reckon'd amongst the Hagiographa Of that Synagoga magna there is not one word spoken by Iosephus or St. Hierom though both had very fair occasions in some parts of their writings to have intreated of it And the deficiencie of the Jewish story about that time may move us to believe that this was the fiction of modern Rabbies and Morinus thinks he has demonstrated that so it was Mr. Hobbes I note again that the Septuagint who were seventy Learned men of the Jews sent for by Ptolomy King of Egypt to translate the Jewish Law out of the Hebrew into Greek have left us no other Books for holy Scripture in the Greek Tongue but the same that are received in the Church of England Stud. It is not resolved whether they translated any more then the five Books of Moses and whether they turn'd them out of Hebrew Chaldee or the Samaritan Tongue to which latter Pentateuch the translation of the seventy is shew'd by Hottinger to agree most exactly in a very great number of places by him produced in order but there is as great question whether that we have be the true Copy of the Seventy for seeing therein the names of places as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for Caphtoâ—im are there rendred not according to the Hebrew but after the manner in which they were call'd in the latter times under the second Temple the antiquity of the Copy of Rome may be suspected Mr. Hobbes Be it also observed that those Books which are called Apocrypha were left out of the Canon not for inconformity of Doctrine with the rest but onely because they are not found in the Hebrew Stud. Here again you erre for by the same Reason some part which is contained in the Canon should have been of old excluded For instance the Book of Daniel is partly written in Hebrew and partly written in Caldee for Daniel had learnt that Tongue in Babylon by the command of the King Neither are all Apocryphal Books to be thought not written in Hebrew for that excellent Book of the Son of Syrach as is manifest by his Preface to it was a translation out of the Hebrew Copy of his Grand-father Iesus The Reason why such Books were not received by the Jews into the Canon was not what you suggest but because they seem'd not written by that kinde of prophesie which they called Ruach Hakkodesh Mr. Hobbes I confess St. Hierom had seen the first of the Maccabees in Hebrew Stud. Neither is that rightly noted For the Book which St. Hierom saw as is thought by Drusius a man profoundly learned in these matters was the first Book of the History of the Hasmonâ—ei whos 's Epoch was of later
much cannot be known as may be sought the question about the beginning of the World is to be determined by those that are lawfully authorized to order the worship of God for as Almighty God when he had brought his People into Iudaea allowed the Priests the First-Fruits reserved to himself so when he had delivered up the World to the disputations of men it was his pleasure that all opinions concerning the nature of infinite and eternal known only to himself should as the First-Fruits of wisdom be judged by those whose ministry they meant to use in the ordering of Religion I cannot therefore commend those that boast they have demonstrated by reasons drawn from natural things that the World had a beginning Stud. Where find you the Supreme Civil Magistrate for him you mean to be constituted a Judge of true and false then would the Truth be as inconstant as the Opinions of those Powers who being thronged with employments have of all men the least room left for speculation The Great Turk who ha's made the Alcaron to be Law ha's there affirmed that two verses in Surata Vaccae were made by God Almighty two thousand years before the World was framed and written by his Finger and all Christian Princes who determine the Bible to be the Word of God have thereby determin'd that such Stories are absurd Fables If you had so stated the Power of Princes as to have ascribed a right to them not as you now have done of determining questions that is of resolving them into true negations or affirmations but of restraining the tongues or pens of men from venting what they esteem inconvenient for Society I know few men of my Order who would with any vehemence have become your opposers provided alwaies that this Power be meant of such Opinions as subvert not natural or Christian Religion for it is as necessary at all times to professe such Articles as it is to make profession that we are not Atheists the necessity of which may hereafter be proved Mr. Hobbes I have so done as you require I should for in my Letter to Dr. Wallis since his Majesties return I have upon second thoughts restrained the decision of Authority to the publication and not the inward belief of Doctrinâ— I say there that these opinions about the Creation are to be judged by those to whom God ha's committed the ordering of Religion that is to the Supreme Governors of the Church that is in England to the King By his Authority I say it ought to be decided not what men shall think but what they shall say in those questions Stud. In this question of the Creation you seem too bountiful to Authority seeing by your own concession the affirmative is a point so very fundamental that all natural Religion if that be taken away will fall to the ground for in the Epistle before mentioned you doubt not to affirm that as for arguments from natural reason no man ha's hitherto brought any one except the Creation to prove a Deity that had not made it more doubtful to many men than it was before Wherefore it follows that whilst you attribute unto the Civil Magistrate a Right of binding men if he shall so please to profess this falshood that the World had no beginning you also ascribe unto the same Magistrate a Right of banishing the Profession of a Deity out of his Dominions Mr. Hobbes Why do you stile the King by the name of Magistrate Do you find Magigistrate to signifie any where the person that hath the Sovereign Power and not every where the Sovereigns Officers Stud. Although you are here guilty of an excursion yet I am content to follow you not being ignorant how soon you are out of breath in pursuing any Game started in Philology And first I will grant it to you that if we have regard to the nicest application of the Word at some times amongst the Romans it will not so elegantly agree to the Supreme Power For in the fourth Book of Cicero or rather Cornificius ad Herennium the Magistrate is said to be imployed in the execution of such Decrees as were made Law by the Senate And I have read in Varro that the Officers inferior to the Magister Populi or Dictator and Magister Equitum were by way of diminution call'd Magistratus as from Albus Albatus and yet I am assured that Cicero sometimes us'd the Word Magistrate in such a sense as derogates not at all from the super-eminence of things for in his third Book De Legibus we have this sentence The Magistrate is a speaking Law and the Law is a mute Magistrate and a while after citing the words of the old Roman Law he stileth the Consuls Magistrates and the Office Magistracy and yet he sheweth that the Consuls at first had Regal and Supreme Power But seeing Custome since the dayes of Cicero ha's otherwise applyed divers words and seeing that from a diverse administration of affairs and from new inventions and other causes there have arisen new words also those persons who will precisely speak with Cicero and the old Romans every of whose words and phrases cannot be thought extant in the fragments now in our hands they rather betray their own affectation than declare themselves Masters of Propriety of Language whilst Castalio useth Iova Tinctio Genius Sancte colatur in stead of Iehovah Baptismus Angelus Sanctificetur which word by the favor of so great a Critic is not avoided by Cicero himself he seems to study rather niceness than true cleanness of Latine The word Magistrate is not forced when it is used in expressing the Supreme Power for Magisterare in Festus is glossed by Regerè Your own Champion Terâ—ullian who well knew how to speak with the Laws interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Magistratus and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 denoteth sometimes so great a Power that it is spoken of the very Prince of the Powers of the Air that learned Person had in the above said place an Eye to the Government of the Athenians which after the succession of Kings failed at the death of Codrus was administred by Thirteen Magistrates called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which the first was Medon Cavil not now at the number of these Rulers for how many soever the persons are in such a Senate the Supreme Authority is but one If you require modern Authority the Testimony of Hugo Grotius is beyond just exception for he acknowledgeth that Summus Magistratus is used commonly in denoting the Sovereign Power although he approves not of it for exact Roman and nice Latinity Lastly Magistrate is a word in the sense in which I use it used also in the Law of King and Church with which we Englishmen are to speak rather than with the Twelve Tables or the Prince of Orators Recall then to your mind the thirty seventh Article of the Faith proâ—essed in
England that Article though it consisteth in declaring the Power of the King in affairs both Civil and Ecclesiastical yet bears the Tide Of the Civil Magistrate But I have busied my self too long in a nicety â—f words which improve the memory but give not much advantage to the nobler faculty of reason It is time then that we look back upon our main Subject the Creation of the World If you have any further matter to deliver in relation to that Subject I am ready to attend to you and it Mr. Hobbes Something I have to say but there is little coherence of it with our former discourse I add however seeing you seem to have required something more that upon supposition of the Being of a God it follows not that he created the World Although it were demonstrated that a Being infinite independent omnipotent did exist yet could it not rightly be thence inferred that a Creator do's exist also Unless a maâ— should think that because there is a Being which we believe to have created all things therefore the World was created by Him Stud. Seeing dependent nature is so far removed from a power of making that it cannot so much as move it self but will if once moved be without impediment in perpetual motion and arreâ— alwayes if once at rest without fresh impulse froâ— some neighboring body we must of necessity have recourse to a Creator and because we suppose already in the Idea of God such infinitâ—â—ower as excludes the like power from all things else it cannot but follow that there being a World He was the Maker of it Seeing by the Hypothesis the impotent World exists and an infinite power also who else can be imagined this Omnipotent Architect This absurd Assertion puts me in mind of Heraclitus who having denied that any of the Gods were Creators subjoyned also that neither had any man created the world fearing sayes Plutarch in a dry jest lest after he had overthrown the power of the Deities we might suspect some mortal man had been the Author of such a Master-piece The like consequence is natural from the attribute of divine wisdome which being infinite can appertain but to one Essence If then the world be mâ—de in number and weight and measure it is demonstrable from thence both that there is an eternal Geometer as also that if such a one existeth the world which could not so frame it self was his Artifice And doubtless the disposition of the parts of the greater world and even the oeconomy of the parts of the lesser that of man implying most wise designs do necessarily inferr Gassendus himself confessing it the Being of a Creator We need not search further than to some one particular Note in the situation of the heart which is a kind of Box containing many wonders one within another It is to be observed that in man and in almost all such Animals as live of flesh that the situation of the heart is not in the center but in the superior part of the Body that it may the more readily convey to the head a due portion of bloud For seeing that the trajection and distribution of the bloud dependeth wholly upon the Systole of the heart and that the liquor cast forth does not so easily ascend as it flows into vessels paralel or inferior if the seat of the heart were more removed from the head the head would be rendred impotent for want of bloud unless the heart were framed with a far greater strength whereby it might with more potent violence force up its liquor But in such Animals whose neck is extended by nature as it were on purpose to meet their provisions the heart is placed without any prejudice in the center because the head being frequently pendulous the bloud runs to it in a wide and daily supplyed Channel Go now that I may bespeak you in the way of Gassendus and applaud your wit in saying that that was done by chance which could not have been more wisely contrived Mr. Hobbes In this Argument I my self in my Book de Homine have not denied the frame of nature to argue design and I have there spoken to this purpose Stud. Please to spare the Translation of the place for there is as I remember a conceit in the words which will be lost in English Mr. Hobbes Mock on I am not ashamed of the words and they are these Ad sensus procedo satis habens si hujusmodi res attigero tantùm planiùs autem tract andas aliis reliquero qui si machinas omnes tum Generationis tum Nutritionis satis perspexerint nec tamen eas à Mente aliqui conditas ordinatasque ad sua quasque officia viderine ipsi profecto sine Mente esse censendi sunt Stud. Seeing thus much is acknowledged from you in reference to the Body how great may that conviction be of the existence of a Creator which ariseth from the consideration of Souls and Angels whilest Thought is much more admirable than motion and incorporeal spirit than matter Mr. Hobbes Incorporeal Substance is a note which you shake too too often and here with much absurdity For to say an Angel or Spirit is an incorporeal substance is to say in effect there is no Angel or Spirit at all The Universe being the aggregate of all bodies there is no real part thereof that is not also body The substance of invisible Agents is by some conceived to be the same with that which appeareth in a dream or in a looking-glass to them that are awake But the opinion that such Spirits were incorporeal could never enter into the mind of any man by nature However that name will serve our purpose for the Introduction of the Fourth Head of our Discourse The Nature of Angels Stud. To requite your Quibble that Note of Incorporeal Angel ought not to have offended your purged â—ars seeing the old Philosophers thence derived the harmony of the celestial Orbs. But to be in good earnest you seem by denying Intelligencies or Incorporeal Angels not only to contend with those despised Philosophers but to encounter almost the whole world Mr. Hobbes It is true that the Heathens and all Nations of the World have acknowledged that there be Spirits which for the most part they hold to be Incorporeal whereby it might be thought that a man by natural reason may arrive without the Scriptures to the knowledge of this that Spirits are but the erroneous collection thereof by the Heathens may proceed from the ignorance of the Causes of Ghosts and Phantasms and such other apparitions that is to say from the ignorance of what those things are which are called Spectra Images that appeâ—r in the dark to children and such as have strong fears and other strange imaginations By the name of Angel is signified generally a Messenger and most often a Messenger of God and by a Messenger