But he who calleth him perfection it self acknowledgeth that all the perfection of the Creatures is by participation of his infinite perfection Such errours as these formerly recited do deserve another manner of refutation and when he is in his lucide intervalles he himself acknowledgeth what I say to be true That God is incomprehensible and immaterial And he himself proveth so much from this very attribute of God that he is infinite Ci. c. 15. s. 14. Figure is not attributed to God for every figure is finite Neither can he be comprehended by us for whatsoever we conceive is finite nor hath he parts which are attributed only to finite things nor is be more than one there can be but one infinite Whereas I called hell the true Tophet he telleth us gravely That Tophet was a place not far from the walls of Hierusalem and consequently on the earth Adding after his boasting manner That he cannot imagine what I will say to this in my answer to his Leviathan unlesse I say that by the true Tophet in this place is meant a not true Tophet Whosoever answereth his Leviathan will be more troubled with his extravagancies than with his arguments Doth he not know that almost all things happened to them as figures There may be a true mystical Tophet as well as a literal And there is a true mystical Gehenna or Vally of Hinnon as well as a literal He that should say that Christ is the true Paschal Lamb or the Church the true Hierusalem or John Baptist the true Elias may well justifie it without saying That by the true Paschal Lamb is meant no true Paschal Lamb or by the true Hierusalem no true Hierusalem or by the true Elias no true Elias VVhat poor stuff is this And so he concludeth his Animadversion with a rapping Paradox indeed True religion consisteth in obedience to Christs Lieutenants and in giving God such honour both in Attributes and actions as they in their several Lieutenancies shall ordain That Soveraign Princes are Gods Lieutenants upon earth no man doubteth but how come they to be Christs Lieutenants with him who teacheth expressely that the kingdom of Christ is not to begin till the general Resurrection His errours come so thick that it is difficult to take notice of them all yet if he had resolved to maintain his Paradox it had been ingenuously done to take notice of my reasons against it in this place First what if the Soveraign Magistrate shall be no Christian himself Is an Heathen or Mahumetan Prince the Lieutenant of Christ or a fit infallible Judge of the controversies of Christian Religion Are all his Christian subjects obliged to sacrifice to idols or blaspheme Christ upon his command Certainly he giveth the same latitude of power and right to Heathen and Mahumetan Princes that he doth to Christian. There is the same submition to both I authorise and give up my right of governing my self to this man whom he maketh to be a mortal God To him alone he ascribeth the right to allow and disallow of all doctrines all formes of worship all miracles all revelations And most plainly in the 42. and 43. Chapters of his Leviathan where he teacheth obedience to infidel Princes in all things even to the denial of Christ to be necessary by the Law of God and nature My second reason in this place was this What if the Magistrate shall command contrary to the Law of God must we obey him rather than God He confesseth That Christ ought to be obeyed rather than his Lieutenant upon earth This is a plain concession rather than an answer But he further addeth That the question is not who is to be obeyed but what be his commands Most vainly For if true Religion do consist in obedience to the commands of the Soveraign Prince then to be truly religiouâ—… it is not needful to inquire further than what he commandeth Frustra fit per plura quod fierâ—… potest per pauciora Either he must make the Soveraign Prince to be infallible in all his commands concerning Religion which we see by experience to be false and he himself confesseth that they may command their subjects to deny Christ or else the authority of the Soveraign Prince doth justifie to his subjects whatsoever he commands and then they may obey Christs Lieutenant as safely without danger of punishment as himself My third reason was this If true Religion do consist in obedience to the commands of the Soveraign Prince then the Soveraigne Prince is the ground and pillar of truth not the Church But the Church is the ground and pillar of truth not the Soveraign Prince These things write I unto thee c. that thou mayest know how thou oughest to behave thy self in the house of God which is the Church of the living God the power and ground of truth What the Church signifieth in this place may be demonstratively collected both from the words themselves wherein he calleth it the house of God which appellation cannot be applied to a single Soveraign much lesse to a Heathen Prince as their Soveraign then was And likewise by the things written which were directions for the ordering of Ecclesiastical persons The last Argument used by me in this place was ad hominem Why then is T. H. of a different mind from his Soveraign and from the laws of the Land concerning the Attributes of God and the religious worship which is to be given to him The Canons and Constitutions and Articles of the Church of England and their Discipline and form of Divine Worship were all confirmed by Royal authority And yet Mr. Hobbes made no scruple to assume to himself that which he denieth to all other subjects the knowledge of good and evil or of true and false religion And a judgement of what is consonant to the Law of Nature and Scripture different from the commands of his Soveraign and the judgement of all his fellow Subjects as appeareth by his book De cive printed in the year 1642. Neither can he pretend that he was then a local Subject to another Prince for he differed more from him in Religion than from his own natural Soveraign This Paradox hath been confuted before and some of those grosse absurdities which flow from it represented to the Reader to all which he may adde these folowing reasons First true Religion cannot consist in any thing which is sinful But obedience to Soveraign Princes may be sinful This is proved by the example of Jeroboam who established idolatry in his kingdom And the Text saith this thing became a sin It may be he will say this idolatrous worship was a sin in Jeroboam not in the people who obeyed him But the Text taketh away this evasion branding him ordinarily with this mark of infamy Jeroboam the son of Nebat who made Israel to sin Secondly true Religion cannot consist in obedience to contradictory commands But the commands of
there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
and inconsiderate proceeding or nothing he hath no more mind to meddle with it but quitteth his hands of it in these termes It is no English But let it signifie what it will provided it be intelligible it would make against me Had not this man need to have credulous Readers who before he knoweth what the word signifieth knoweth by instinct that it would make against me Just like that Mountebanck who having made a long Oration to his hearers of the rare virtues of a feather which he affirmed to have dropt from the wing of Michael the Archangel And the feather being stolen from under his sleeve out of drollery and a cinder put in the place of it to try his humour he went on confidently with his discourse telling them that though it was not the feather which he had mentioned yet it was one of the coles which S. Laurence was broiled with and had all those virtues which he had formerly ascribed to the feather So whether Spontaneity be a feather or a cole it hath still the same virtue And if it be any thing it would make against me If it be all one to consider of the fittest means to obtain a desired end or object and consider of the good and evil sequeles of an action to come Why did he change the definition generally received to make a shew of difference where there is none by his own account I was willing to have brought him to his right wits that he might have acknowledged himself a reasonable man but seeing he is so peremtory that all the reason and understanding which man hath is but imagination And weighing his ground that he finds it so in himself by considering his own thoughts and ratiocinations and which worketh with me more than all his confidence finding his writings more full of phantasie than of judgement I begin to relent and am contented to come to an accord with him that he and such as he can gain to be of his mind shall have the priviledge of phantasticks provided that other men may still retain their old reason Moreover I confesse that when I left other businesse to examine his writings I did meet with greater trifles than I did before I would gladly save his credit but he plungeth himself into so many grosse errours that Ipsa si cupi at salus servare prorsus non potest Now he telleth us that deliberation is nothing else but so many wills alternatively changed as if deliberation was but the measuring of a rod by inches with his thumbs alternatively he wills he wills not he wills he wills not c. And as the last thumb-breadth happeneth So the Agent either willeth or nilleth Before he made but one will now he maketh I know not how many alternate wills Before he made deliberation to be a consideration of the good or evil sequeles of an action The will is an appetite not a consideration The will is blind and cannot consider Wise men use to look before they leap and consider before they will But he may have the priviledge to have his will stand for his reason Stat pro ratione voluntas So whilest the byas of his bowle is changing from the one side to the other alternatively by extrinsecal causes the bowle is deliberating I confesse I wondered at his definition of a free Agent He that can do if he will and forbear if he will not that I did not foresee what paradoxical sense he would give it but why he should retain the antient terms I remember well his distinction between freedom to do if a man will and forbeare to do if he will and freedom to will if he will and to nill if he will And have made bold now and then to represent what a vain false uselesse contradictory distinction it is and I believe it lieth at the last gasp But I might have saved my labour I used but one short argument in this place either the Agent can will and forbear to will or he cannot do and forbear to do and it driveth him into a contradiction There is no doubt a man can will one thing or other and forbear to will it If a man can will and forbear to will the same thing then he can will if he will and forbear if he will Where he maketh the state of the question to be Whether a man to day can chuse to morrows will either he feigneth or mistaketh grossely I will never trust him with stating of questions or citing of testimonies Although it be his turn now to prove and mine to defend my self and my cause from his objections yet he is still calling for proofes And which is worse would have me to prove negatives when he himself cannot prove affirmatives How doth it follow saith he that a stone is as free to ascend as descend unlesse he prove there is no outward impediment to its ascent which cannot be proved for the contrary is true Or how proveth he that there is no outward impediment to keep that point of the Loadstone which placeth it self towards the North from turning from the South First for the stone the case is clear there is no other extrinsecal impediment to the stone ascending or descending but the Medium thorough which it passeth Now the Medium is supposed to be the same that is the air equally disposed The air is as easily driven upwards as downwards And therefore though the air give some impediment to the motion upwards yet it giveth the same impediment at least to the motion downwards And therefore the impediment being as vincible upwards as downwards if the cause of motion were the same and the presence or absence of extrinsecal impediments being the same it followeth clearly upon his grounds that the stone is as free to ascend as descend Next for the Loadstone I prove that there is no extrinsecal impediment which holdeth it from turning to the South by sense and reason both mine own and all other mens by the common consent of the World and by his silence who is not able to pretend any impediment that is probable without the stone except it be in some other body far distant which will render the difficulty the same His next passage is ridiculous An Hawke wants liberty to flie when her wings are tyed but it is absurd to say she wants liberty to flie when her wings are plucked So she wanted no liberty to flie when she was naked and newly hatched So he himself wanteth no liberty to flie from hence to China He saith Men that speak English use to say when her wings are plucked that she cannot flie So they use to say likewise when her wings are tyed He demandeth Whether it be not proper language to say a bird or a beast are set at liberty from the cage wherein they were imprisoned What it may be at another time when men are discoursing upon another subject is not mateterial at this time and as
finite and consists of parts and consequently is no God This That there is no incorporal spirit is that main root of Atheisme from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up When they have taken away all incorporal spirits what do they leave God himself to be He who is the fountain of all being from whom and in whom all creatures have their being must needs have a real being of his own And what real being can God have among bodies and accidents for they have left nothing else in the universe Then T. H. may move the same question of God which he did of devils I would gladly know in what classis of entities the Bishop ranketh God Infinite being and participated being are not of the same nature Yet to speak according to humane apprehension apprehension and comprehension differ much T. H. confesseth that natural reason doth dictate to us that God is infinite yet natural reason cannot comprehend the infinitenesse of God I place him among incorporeal substances or spirits because he hath been pleased to place himself in that rank God is a spirit Of which place T. H. giveth his opinion that it is unintelligible and all others of the same nature and fall not under humane understanding They who deny all incorporeal substances can understand nothing by God but either nature not naturam naturantem that is a real authour of nature but naturam naturatam that is the orderly concourse of natural causes as T. H. seemeth to intimate or a fiction of the brain without real being cherished for advantage and politick ends as a profitable error howsoever dignified with the glorious title of the eternal causes of all things We have seen what his principles are concerning the Deity they are full as bad or worse concerning the Trinity Hear himself A person is he that is represented as often as he is represented And therefore God who has been represented that is personated thrice may properly enough be said to be three Persons though neither the word Person nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible And a little after to concludethe doctrine of the Trinity as far as can be gathered directly from the Scripture is in substance this that the God who is alwayes one and the same was he person represented by Moses the person represented by his Son incarnate and the person represented by the Apostles As represented by the Apostles the holy spirit by which they spake is God As represented by his son that was God and Man the Son is that God As represented by Moses and the High Priests the Father that is to say the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ is that God From whence we may gather the reason why those names Father Son and Holy Ghost 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 diverse men had represented Gods person in ruling or in directing under him Who is so bold as blind Bayard The emblime of a little boy attempting to lade all the water out of the sea with a Coccleshel doth fit T. H. as exactly as if it had been shaped for him who thinketh to measure the profound and inscrutable mysteries of religion by his own silly shallow conceits What is now become of the great adorable mysterie of the blessed undivided Trinity it is shrunk into nothing Upon his grounds there was a time when there was no Trinity And we must blot these words out of our Creed The Father eternal the Son eternal the Holy Ghost eternal And these other words out of our Bibles Let us make man after our image Unlesse we mean that this was a consultation of God with Moses and the Apostles What is now become of the eternal generation of the Son of God if this Sonship did not begin until about four thousand years after the creation were expired Upon these grounds every King hath as many persons as there be Justices of Peace and petty Constables in his kingdom Upon this account God Almighty hath as many persons as there have been Soveraign Princes in the World since Adam According to this reckoning each one of us like so many Gerious may have as many persons as we please to make procurations Such bold presumption requireth another manner of confutation Concerning God the Son forgetting what he had said elsewhere where he calleth him God and man and the Son of God incarnate he doubteth not to say that the word hypostatical is canting As if the same person could be both God and man without a personal that is an hypostatical union of the two natures of God and man He alloweth every man who is commanded by his lawful Soveraign to deny Christ with his tongue before men He deposeth Christ from his true kingly office making his kingdom not to commence or begin before the day of judgement And the regiment wherewith Christ governeth his faithful in this life is not properly a kingdom but a pastoral office or a right to teach And a little after Christ had not kingly authority committed to him by his Father in this World but onely consiliary and doctrinall He taketh away his Priestly or propitiatory office And although this act of our redemption be not alwayes in Scripture called a Sacrifice and oblation but sometimes a price yet by price we are not to understand any thing by the value whereof he could claim right to a pardon for us from his offended father but that price which God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand And again Not that the death of one man though without sin can satisfie for the offences of all men in the rigour of iustice but in the mercy of God that ordained such Sacrifices for sin as he was pleased in mercy to accept He knoweth no difference between one who is meer man and one who was both God and man between a Levitical Sacrifice and the all-sufficient Sacrifice of the Crosse between the blood of a Calf and the precious blood of the Son of God And touching the Prophetical Office of Christ I do much doubt whether he do believe in earnest that there is any such thing as prophecy in the World He maketh very little difference between a Prophet and a mad-man and a demoniack And if there were nothing else saith he that bewrayed their madnesse yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is argument enough He maketh the pretence of inspiration in any man to be and alwayes to have been an opinion pernicious to peace and tending to the dissolution of all civil government He subjecteth all Prophetical Revelations from God to the sole pleasure and censure of the Soveraign Prince either to authorize them or to exauctorate them So as two Prophets prophesying the same thing at the same time in the dominions of two different Princes
the reward which is then to be given to breach of faith but onely a belief grounded upon other mens saying that they know it supernaturally or that they know those that knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally 14. Davids killing of Uriah was no injury to Uriah because the right to do what he pleased was given him by Uriah himself 15. To whom it belongeth to determine controversies which may arise from the divers interpretation of Scripture he hath an imperial power over all men which acknowledge the Scriptures to be the word of God 16. What is theft what is murder what is adultry and universally what is an injury is known by the civil law that is the commands of the Soveraign 17. He admitteth the incestuous copulations of the Heathens according to their heathenish lawes to have been lawful marriages Though the Scripture teach us expressely that for those abominations the land of Canaan spewed out her inhabitants Exod. 18. 28. 18. I say that no other Article of faith besides this that Iesus is Christ is necessary to a Christian man for salvation 19. Because Christs kingdom is not of this world therefore neither can his Ministers unlesse they be Kings require obedience in his name They had no right of commanding no power to make lawes 20. I passe by his errours about oathes about vows about the resurrections about the kingdom of Christ about the power of the keyes binding loosing excommunication c. His ignorant mistakes of meritum congrui and condigni active and passive obedience and many more for fear of being tedious to the Reader His whole works are an heape of mishapen errours and absurd paradoxes vented with the confidence of a Jugler the brags of a Mountebanck and the authority of some Pythagoras or third Cato lately dropped down from heaven Thus we have seen how the Hobbian principles do destroy the existence the simplicity the ubiquity the eternity and infinitenesse of God the doctrine of the blessed Trinity the Hypostatical union the Kingly Sacerdotal and Prophetical Offices of Christ the being and operation of the Holy Ghost Heaven Hell Angels Devils the immortality of the Soul the Catholick and all National Churches the holy Scriptures holy Orders the holy Sacraments the whole frame of Religion and the Worship of God the laws of Nature the reality of Goodnesse Justice Piety Honesty Conscience and all that is Sacred If his Disciples have such an implicite faith that they can digest all these things they may feed with Oestriches CHAP. 2. That the Hobbian Principles do destroy all relations between man and man and the whole frame of a Common wealth THe first Harping-iron is thrown at the heart of this great Whale that is his Religion for with the heart a man believeth unto righteousnesse Now let him look to his chine that is his Compage or Common-wealth My next task is to shew that he destroyeth all relations between man and man Prince and subject Parent and child Husband and wife Master and servant and generally all Society It is enough to dash the whole frame of his Leviathan or common-wealth in pieces That he confesseth it is without example as if the molding of a Common-wealth were no more than the making of gun-powder which was not found out by long experience but by meer accident The greatest objection saith T. H. is that of practice when men ask when and where such power has by subjects been acknowledged It is a great objection indeed Experience the Mistrisse of fooles is the best and almost the onely proof of the goodnesse or badnesse of any form of government No man knoweth where a shooe wringeth so well as he that weareth it A new Physitian must have a new Church-yard wherein to bury those whom he killeth And a new unexperienced Polititian commonly putteth all into a combustion Men rise by degrees from common souldiers to be decurions from decurions to be Centurions from Centurions to be Tribunes and from Tribunes to be Generals by experience not by speculation Alexander did but laugh at that Oratour who discoursed to him of Military affairs The Locrian law was well grounded that whosoever moved for any alteration in the tried policy of their Common-wealth should make the proposition at his own perill with an halter about his neck New Statesmen promise golden mountains but like fresh flies they bite deeper than those which were chased away before them It were a strange thing to hear a man discourse of the Philosophers Stone who never bestowed a groatsworth of charcole in the inquiry It is as strange to hear a man dictate so magisterially in Politicks who was never Officer nor Counsellor in his life nor had any opportunity to know the intrigues of any one state If his form of government had had any true worth or weight in it among so many Nations and so many succeeding Generations from the Creation to this day some one or other would have light upon it His Leviathan is but an idol of his own brain Neither is it sufficient to say That in long-lived Common-wealths the subjects never did dispute of the Soveraigns power Power may be moderated where it is not disputed of And even in those kingdomes where it was least disputed of as in Persia they had their fundamental laws which were not alterable at the pleasure of the present Prince Whereof one was as we find in the story of Esther and the book of Daniel that the law of the Medes and Persians altered not much lesse was it alterable by the onely breath of the Princes mouth according to T. H. his Principles He urgeth That though in all places of the World men should lay the foundations of their houses on the sand it could not thence be inferred that so it ought to be He was a ashamed to make the application So suppose all the world should be out of their wits and he onely have his right understanding His supposition is a supposition of an impossibility which maketh an affirmative proposition to turn negative much like this other supposition If the skie fall we shall have larkes that is in plain English We shall have no larkes His argument had held much more strongly thus All the world lay the foundation of their houses upon firm ground and not upon the sand Therefore he who crosseth the practice of the whole world out of an over-weening opinion that he seeth further into a mill-stone than they all is he that builds upon the sand and deserveth well to be laught out of his humour But he persisteth still like one that knows better how to hold a Paradox than a Fort. The skill of making and maintaining Common-wealths consisteth in certain rules as doth Arethmatick and Geometry and not as Tennis-play on practice onely which rules neither poor men had the leisure nor men that have had the leisure have hitherto had the curiosity or the method