the Soveraignty by making Tribunes by which Machiavel saies their Government was the more firm and secure and afterwards by introducing other Magistrates into the Soveraignty Nor were the Admissions and Covenants the Senate made in those cases ever declared void but observed with all punctuality which is Argument enough that the Soveraign power may admit limitations without any danger to it self or the People which is all that is contended for As there never was any such Person pag. 88. of whose acts a great multitude by mutual Covenant one with another have made themselves every one the author to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defence which is the definition he gives of his Common-wealth So if it can be supposed that any Nation can concur in such a designation and divesting themselves of all their right and liberty it could only be in reason obligatory to the present contractors nor do's it appear to us that their posterity must be bound by so unthrifty a concession of their Parents For tho Adam by his Rebellion against God forfeited all the privileges which his unborn posterity might have claimed if he had preserved his innocence and tho Parents may alienate their Estates from their Children and thereby leave them Beggars yet we have not the draught of any Contract nor is that which Mr. Hobbes hath put himself to the trouble to prepare valid enough to that purpose by which they have left impositions and penalties upon the Persons of their posterity nor is it probable that they would think themselves bound to submit thereunto And then the Soveraign would neither find himself the more powerful or the more secure for his contâ—â—â—tors having covenanted one with another and made themselves every one the author of all his actions and it is to be doubted that the People would rather look upon him as the Vizier Basha instituted by their Fathers then as Gods Lieutenant appointed to govern them under him It is to no purpose to examine the Prerogatives he grants to his Soveraign because he founds them all upon a supposition of a Contract and Covenant that never was in nature nor ever can reasonably be supposed to be yet he confesses it to be the generation pag. 87. of the great Leviathan and which falling to the ground all his Prerogatives must likewise fall too and so much to the dammage of the Soveraign power to which most of the Prerogatives are due that men will be apt to suppose that they proceed from a ground which is not true and so be the more inclined to dispute them Whereas those Prerogatives are indeed vested in the Soveraign by his being Soveraign but he do's not become Soveraign by vertue of such a Contract and Covenant but are of the Essence of his Soveraignty founded upon a better title then such an accidental convention and their designing a Soveraign by their Covenants with one another and none with or to him who is so absolutely to command them And here he supposes again that whatsoever a Soveraign is possessed of is of his Soveraignty and therefore he will by no means admit that he shall part with any of his power which he calls essential and inseparable Rights and that whatever grant he makes of such power the same is void and he do's believe that this Soveraign right was at the time when he published his Book so well understood that is Cromwel liked his Doctrine so well that it would be generally acknowledged in England at the next return of peace Yet he sees himself deceived it hath pleased God to restore a blessed and a general peace and neither King nor People believe his Doctrine to be true or consistent with peace How and why the most absolute Soveraigns may as they find occasion part with and deprive themselves of many branches of their power will be more at large discovered in another place yet we may observe in this the very complaisant humor of Mr. Hobbes and how great a Courtier he desir'd to appear to the Soveraign power that then govern'd by how odious and horrible a usurpation soever in that he found a way to excuse and justifie what they had already don in the lessening and diminution of their own Soveraign power which it concern'd them to have believ'd was very lawfully and securely don For they having as the most popular and obliging act they could perform taken away Wardships and Tenures he confesses after his enumeration of twelve Prerogatives which he saies pag. 92. are the rights which make the essence of the Soveraignty for these he saies are incommunicable and inseparable I say he confesses the power to coin mony to dispose of the estates and persons of infant heirs and all other Statute Prerogatives may be transferred by the Soveraign whereas he might have bin informed if he had bin so modest as to think he had need of any information that those are no Statute Prerogatives but as inherent and inseparable from the Crown as many of those which he declares to be of the Essence of the Soveraignty But both those were already entred upon and he was to support all their actions which were past as well as to provide for their future proceedings If Mr. Hobbes had known any thing of the constitution of the Monarchy of England supported by as firm principles of Government as any Monarchy in Europe and which enjoied a series of as long prosperity he could never have thought that the late troubles there proceeded from an opinion receiv'd of the greatest part of England that the power was divided between the King and the Lords and the House of Commons which was an opinion never heard of in England till the Rebellion was begun and against which all the Laws of England were most clear and known to be most positive But as he cannot but acknowledg that his own Soveraignty is obnoxious to the Lusts and other irregular passions of the People so the late execrable Rebellion proceeded not from the defect of the Law nor from the defect of the just and ample power of the King but from the power ill men rebelliously possessed themselves of by which they suppressed the strength of the Laws and wrested the power out of the hands of the King against which violence his Soveraign is no otherwise secure then by declaring that his Subjects proceed unjustly of which no body doubts but that all they who took up arms against the King were guilty in the highest degree And there is too much cause to fear that the unhappy publication of this doctrine against the Liberty and propriety of the Subject which others had the honor to declare before Mr. Hobbes tho they had not the good fortune to escape punishment as he hath don I mean Dr. Manwaring and Dr. Sibthorpe contributed too much thereunto For let him take what pains he will to render those
such constitution of his can be repeal'd and made void but in the same manner and with his consent But we say that he may prescribe or consent to such a method in the form and making these Laws that being once made by him he cannot but in the same form repeal or alter them and he is oblig'd by the Law of Justice to observe and perform this contract and he cannot break it or absolve himself from the observation of it without violation of justice and any farther obligation upon him then of justice I discourse not of For the better cleering of this to that kind of reason by which Mr. Hobbes is swai'd let us suppose this Soveraignty to reside and be fix'd in an assembly of men in which kind of Government it is possible to find more marks and foot-steps of such a deputing and assigning of interests as Mr. Hobbes is full of then we can possibly imagine in the original institution of Monarchy If the Soveraign power be deputed into the hands of fifteen and any vacant place to be suppli'd by the same Autority that made choice of the first fifteen may there not at that time of the election certain Rules be prescrib'd I do not say conditions for the better exercise of that Soveraign power and by the accepting the power thus explain'd doth not the Soveraign tho there should be no Oath administred for the observation thereof which is a circumstance admitted by most Monarchs tacitly covenant that he will observe those Rules and if he do's wilfully decline those Rules doth he not break the trust reposed in him I do not say forfeit the trust as if the Soveraignty were at an end but break that trust violate that justice he should observe If the Soveraign power of fifteen should raise an imposition for the defence of the Common-wealth if they should appoint this whole imposition to be paid only by those whose names are Thomas when Thomas was before in no more prejudice with the Common-wealth then any other appellation in Baptism may not this inequality be call'd a violation of Justice and a breach of trust since it cannot be suppos'd that such an irregular autority was ever committed to any man or men by any deputation Of the Prerogative of necessity to swerve from Rules prescrib'd or to violate Laws tho sworn to shall be spoken to in its due time It needs not be suppos'd but must be confess'd that the Laws of every Country contain more in them concerning the rights of the Soveraign and the common administration of Justice to the people then can be known to and understood by the person of the Soveraign and he can as well fight all his Battels with his own hand and sword as determine all causes of right by his own tongue and understanding The consequence of any confusion which Mr. Hobbes can suppose would not be more pernicious then that which would follow the blowing away all these maxims of the Law if the Kings breath were strong enough to do it It is a maxim in the Law as is said before that the eldest Son shall inherit and that if three or four Females are heirs the inheritance shall be equally divided between them Doth Mr. Hobbes believe that the word of the King hath power to change this course and to appoint that all the Sons shall divide the Estate and the Eldest Daughter inherit alone and must not all the confusion imaginable attend such a mutation All Governments subsist and are establish'd by firmness and constancy by every mans knowing what is his right to enjoy and what is his duty to do and it is a wonderful method to make this Government more perfect and more durable by introducing such an incertainty that no man shall know what he is to do nor what he is to suffer but that he who is Soveraign to morrow may cancel and dissolve all that was don or consented to by the Soveraign who was yesterday or by himself as often as he changes his mind It is the Kings Office to cause his Laws to be executed and to compel his Subjects to yield obedience to them and in order thereunto to make choice of Learned Judges to interpret those Laws and to declare the intention of them who pag. 140 by an artificial perfection of reason gotten by long study and experience in the Law must be understood to be more competent for that determination then Mr. Hobbes can be for the alteration of Law and Government by the artificial reason he hath attain'd to by long study of Arithmetic and Geometry No Eminent Lawyer hath ever said that the two Arms of a Common-wealth are Force and Justice the first whereof is in the King the other deposited in the hands of the Parliament but all Lawyers know that they are equally deposited in the hands of the King and that all justice is administred by him and in his name and all men acknowledg that all the Laws are his Laws his consent and autority only giving the power and name of a Law what concurrence or formality soever hath contributed towards it the question only is whether he can repeal or vacate such a Law without the same concurrence and formality And methinks the instance he makes of a Princes pag. 139. subduing another people and consenting that they shall live and be govern'd according to those Laws under which they were born and by which they were formerly govern'd should manifest to him the contrary For tho it be confess'd that those old Laws become new by this consent of his the Laws of the Legislator that is of that Soveraign who indulges the use of them yet he cannot say that he can by his word vacate and repeal those Laws and his own concession without dissolving all the ligaments of Government and without the violation of faith which himself confesses to be against the Law of Nature Notwithstanding that the Law is reason and pag. 139. not the letter but that which is according to the intention of the Legislator that is of the Soveraign is the Law yet when there is any difficulty in the understanding the Law the interpretation thereof may reasonably belong to Learn'd Judges who by their education and the testimony of their known abilities before they are made Judges and by their Oaths to judg according to Right are the most competent to explain those difficulties which no Soveraign as Soveraign can be presum'd to understand or comprehend And the judgments and decisions those Judges make are the judgments of the Soveraigns who have qualified them to be Judges and who are to pronounce their sentence according to the reason of the Law not the reason of the Soveraign And therefore Mr. Hobbes would make a very ignorant Judg when he would not have him versed in the study of the Laws but only a man of good natural reason and of a right understanding of the Law of Nature and yet he saies pag. 154. that
Principles against Law least he be obliged to stand or fall according to the rectitude or error thereof Tho every Instance he gives of his Soveraigns absolute power makes it the more unreasonable formidable and odious yet he gives all the support to it he can devise And indeed when he hath made his Soveraigns word a full and enacted Law he hath reason to oblige his Subject to do whatsoever he commands be it right or wrong and to provide for his security when he hath don and therefore he declares pag. 157. That whosoever doth any thing that is contrary to a former Law by the command of his Soveraign he is not guilty of any crime and so cannot be punished because when the Soveraign commands any thing to be don against a former Law the command as to that particular Fact is an abrogation of the Law which would introduce a licence to commit Murder or any other crime most odious and against which Laws are chiefly provided But he hath in another place given his Subject leave to refuse the Soveraigns command when he requires him to do an act or office contrary to his honor so that tho he will not suffer the Law to restrain him from doing what the Soveraign unlawfully commands yea his honor of which he shall be Judg himself may make him refuse that command tho lawfâ—l as if the Soveraign commands him to Prison as no doubt he lawfully may for a crime that deserves death he may in Mr. Hobbes's opinion refuse to obey that command Whereas Government and Justice have not a greater security then that he that executes a verbal command of the King against a known Law shall be punished And the Case which he puts in the following Paragraph that the Kings Will being a Law if he should not obey that there would appear two contradictory Laws which would totally excuse is so contrary to the common Rule of Justice that a man is obliged to believe when the King requires any thing to be don contrary to any Law that he did not know of that Law and so to forbear executing his Command And if this were otherwise Kings of all men would be most miserable and would reverse their most serious Counsels and Deliberations by incogitancy upon the suggestion and importunity of every presumtuous Intruder Kings themselves can never be punished or reprehended publicly that being a reproch not consistent with the reverence due to Majesty for their casual or wilful errors and mistakes let the ill consequence of them be what they will but if they who maliciously lead or advise or obey them in unjust resolutions and commands were to have the same indemnity there must be a dissolution of all Kingdoms and Governments But as Kings must be left to God whose Vice-gerents they are to judg of their breach of Trust so they who offend against the Law must be left to the punishment the Law hath provided for them it being in the Kings power to pardon the execution of the Sentence the Law inflicts except in those cases where the Offence is greater to others then to the King as in the murder of a Husband or a Father the offence is greater to the Wife and to the Son for their relation then to the King for a Subject and therefore upon an Appeal by them the Transgressor may suffer after the King hath pardon'd him It is a great prerogative which Mr. Hobbes doth in this Chapter indulge to his fear his precious bodily fear of corporal hurt that it shall not only extenuate an ill action but totally excuse and annihilate the worst he can commit that if a man by the terror of present death be compelled to do a Fact against the Law he is wholly excused because no Law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation and supposing such a Law were obligatory yet a man would reason pag. 157. If I do it not I die presently if I do it I die afterwards therefore by doing it there is time of life gain'd Nature therefore compels him to the Fact by which a man seems by the Law of Nature to be compell'd even for a short reprieve and to live two or three daies longer to do the most infamous and wicked thing that is imaginable upon which fertile soil he doth hereafter so much enlarge according to his natural method in which he usually plants a stock supposes a principle the malignity whereof is not presently discernable in a precedent Chapter upon which in a subsequent one he grafts new and worse Doctrine which he looks should grow and prosper by such cultivation as he applies to it in Discourse and therefore I shall defer my Considerations to the contrary till I wait upon him in that enlarged disquisition The Survey of Chapter 28. THe eight and twentieth Chapter being a Discourse of Punishments and Rewards it was not possible for him to forget in how weak a condition he had left his Soveraign for want of power to punish since want of power to punish and want of autority to cause his punishment to be inflicted is the same thing especially when the guilty person is not only not oblig'd to submit to the Sentence how just soever but hath a right to resist it and to defend himself by force against the Magistrate and the Law and therefore he thinks it of much importance to enquire by what door the right and autority of punishing in any case came in He is a very ill Architect that in building a House makes not doors to enter into every office of it and it is very strange that he should make his doors large and big enough in his institution to let out all the liberty and propriety of the Subject and the very end of his Institution being to make a Magistrate to compel men to their duty for he confesses they were before obliged by the Law of Nature to perform it one towards another but that there must be a Soveraign Sword to compel men to do that which they ought to do yet that he should forget to leave a door wide enough for this compulsion to enter in at by punishment and bringing the Offender to Justice since the end of making the Soveraign is disappointed and he cannot preserve the peace if guilty persons have a right to preserve themselves from the punishment he inflicts for their guilt It was very improvidently don when he had the draught of the whole Contracts and Covenants that he would not insert one by which every man should transfer from himself the right he had to defend himself against public Justice tho not against private violence And surely reason and Self-preservation that makes a man transfer all his Estate and Interest into the hands of the Soveraign and to be disposed by him that he may be secure against the robbery and rapine of his neighbors companions will as well dispose him to leave his life to his discretion that it may be
any Age or Climate had never read Aristotle or Cicero and I belive had Mr. Hobbes bin of this opinion when he taught Thucydides to speak English which Book contains more of the Science of Mutiny and Sedition and teaches more of that Oratory that contributes thereunto then all that Aristotle and Cicero have publish'd in all their Writings he would not have communicated such materials to his Country-men But if this new Phylosophy and Doctrine of Policy and Religion should be introduc'd taught and believ'd where Aristotle and Cicero have don no harm it would undermine Monarchy more in two months then those two great men have don since their deaths and men would reasonably wish that the Author of it had never bin born in the English Climate nor bin taught to write and read It is a very hard matter for an Architect in State and Policy who doth despise all Precedents and will not observe any Rules of practice to make such a model of Government as will be in any degree pleasant to the Governor or governed or secure for either which Mr. Hobbes finds and tho he takes a liberty to raise his Model upon a supposition of a very formal Contract that never was or ever can be in nature and hath the drawing and preparing his own form of Contract is forc'd to allow such a latitude in obedience to his Subject as shakes the very pillars of his Government And therefore tho he be contented that by the words of his Contract pag. 112. Kill me and my fellow if you please the absolute power of all mens lives shall be submitted to the disposal of the Governors will and pleasure without being oblig'd to observe any rules of Justice and Equity yet he will not admit into his Contract the other words pag. 112. I will kill my self or my fellow and therefore that he is not bound by the command of his Soveraign to execute any dangerous or dishonorable office but in such cases men are not to resort so much to the words of the submission as to the intention which distinction surely may be as applicable to all that monstrous autority which he gives the Governor to take away the Lives and Estates of his Subjects without any cause or reason upon an imaginary Contract which if never so real can never be supposed to be with the intention of the Contractor in such cases And the subtle Distinctions he finds out to excuse Subjects from yielding obedience to their Soveraigns and the Prerogative he grants to fear for a whole Army to run away from the Enemy without the guilt of treachery or injustice leaves us some hope that he will at last allow such a liberty to Subjects that they may not in an instant be swallowed up by the prodigious power which he pleases to grant to his Soveraign And truly he degrades him very dishonorably when he obliges him to be the Hang-man himself of all those Malefactors which by the Law are condemn'd to die for he gives every man autority without the violation of his duty or swerving from the rules of Justice absolutely to refuse to perform that office Nor hath he provided much better for his security then he hath for his honor when he allows it lawful for any number of men pag. 112. who have rebelled against the Soveraign or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expects death then to join together and defend each other because they do but defend their lives which the guilty man he saies may do as well as the innocent And surely no man can legally take his life from him who may lawfully defend it and then the murderer or any other person guilty of a capital Crime is more innocent and in a better condition then the Executioner of Justice who may be justly murdered in the just execution of his office And it is a very childish security that he provides for his Soveraign against this Rebellion and defence of themselves against the power of the Law pag. 113. that he declares it to be lawful only for the dâ—fence of their lives and that upon the offer of pardon for themselves that self-defence is unlawful as if a body that is lawfully drawn together with strength enough to defend their lives against the power of the Law are like to disband and lay down their Arms without other benefit and advantage then only of the saving of their lives But tho he be so cruel as to devest his Subjects of all that liberty which the best and most peaceable men desire to possess yet he liberally and bountifully confers upon them such a liberty as no honest man can pretend to and which is utterly inconsistent with the security of Prince and People which unreasonable Indulgence of his cannot but be thought to proceed from an unlawful affection to those who he saw had power enough to defend the transcendent wickedness they had committed tho they were without an Advocate to make it lawful for them to do so till he took that office upon him in his Leviathan as is evident by the instance he gives in the next Paragraph that he thinks it lawful for every man to have as many wives as he pleases if the King will break the silence of the Law and declare that he may do so which is a Prerogative he vouchsafes to grant to the Soveraign to balance that liberty he gave to the Subject to defend himself and his companion against him and is the only power that may inable him to be too hard for the other If Mr. Hobbes did not believe that the autority of his Name and the pleasantness of his Style would lull men asleep from enquiring into the Logic of his Discourse he could not but very well discern himself that this very liberty which he allows the Subject to have and which he doth without scruple enjoy to sue the Soveraign and to demand the hearing of his Cause and that Sentence be given according to the Law results only from that condescention and contract which the Soveraign hath made with his Subject and which can as well secure many other Liberties to them as their power to sue the King for there could be no Law precedent to that resignation of themselves and all they had at the institution of their supreme Governor and if there had bin it had bin void and invalid it being not possible that any man who hath right to nothing and from whom any thing that he hath may be taken away can sue his Soveraign for a debt which he might take if it were due from any other man but can by no means be due from him to whom all belongs and who hath power to forbid any Judg to proceed upon that complaint or any other person to presume to make that complaint were it not for the subsequent contract which he calls a precedent Law by which the Soveraign promises and obliges himself to appoint Judges to exercise
never break the peâ—ce but only sometimes awake the War which to use his own commendable expression is pag. 8. like â—anding of things from one to another with many words making nothing understood The Survey of Chapter 22. I Should pass over his two and twentieth Chapter of Systemes Subject Political and Private which is a title as difficult to be understood by a literal translation as most of those to any Chapter in Suarez as few Congregations when they meet in a Church to pay their devotions to God Almighty do know that they are an irregular systeme in which besides vulgar notions well worded every man will discover much of that which he calls signs of error and misreckoning to which he saies page 116. all mankind is too prone and with which that Chapter abounds and will require no confutation but that I find and wonder to find mention of Laws and Letters Patents Bodies Politic and Corporations as necessary Institutions for the carrying on and advancement of Trade which are so many limitations and restraints of the Soveraign power and so many entanglements under Covenants and Promises which as they are all declar'd to be void it is in vain to mention I did not think Mr. Hobbes had desir'd to establish trade or any industry for the private accumulation of riches in his Common-wealth For is it possible to imagine that any Merchant will send out Ships to Sea or make such a discovery of his Estate if it may be either seized upon before it go's out or together with the benefit of the return when it comes home If trade be necessary to the good of a Nation it must be founded upon the known right of Propriety not as against other Subjects only but against the Soveraign himself otherwise trade is but a trap to take the collected wealth of particular men in a heap and when it is brought into less room to have it seized on and confiscated by the omnipotent word of the King with less trouble and more profit And if any Laws Letters Patents Charters or any other obligations or promises can oblige the Soveraign power in these cases which refer to trade and foreign adventures why should they not be equally valid for the securing all the other parts and relations of Propriety However whatsoever rigor Mr. Hobbes thinks fit to exercise upon the Nobility and Gentry of the Nation he must give over all thoughts of trade if he doth not better provide to secure his Merchants both of their liberty and propriety It is a good observation and an argument for the preference of Monarchy before any other form of Government in that where the Government is popular and the depressing the interest and reputation of particular Subjects is an essential policy of that Government yet in the managing the affairs of their Colonies and Provinces at a distance from them they chuse to commit the same to a single person as they do the Government and conduct of their Armies which are to defend their Government which is a tacite implication if not confession that in their own judgment they think the Monarchical the best form of Government But he might have observ'd likewise that in all those Monarchical Commissions at what distance soever there are limits and bounds set by referring to instructions for the punctual observation and performance of what that State or Government hath bin bound by promise and contract to perform which hath the same force to evince that the performance of promises and conditions is very consistent with Monarchical Government for the hazards that may arrive from thence may be as dangerous to that Government if it be at a great distance as upon any supposition whatsoever yet is never left to the discretion of a Governor It is a wonderful latitude that Mr. Hobbes leaves to all his Subjects and contradictory to all the moral precepts given to the World and to all the notions of Justice that he who hath his private interest depending and to be debated and judg'd before any Judicatory may make as many Friends as he can amongst those Judges even by giving them mony as if tho it be a crime in a Judg to be corrupt the person who corrupts him may be innocent because he thinks his own cause just and desires to buy justice for mony which cannot be got without it and so the grossest and most powerful Bribery shall be introduc'd to work upon the weakness and poverty and corruption of a Judg because the party thinks his cause to be just and chuses rather to depend upon the affection of his Judg whom he hath corrupted then upon the integrity of his cause and the justice of the Law But he doth not profess to be a strict Casuist nor can be a good observer of the Rules of moral honesty who believes that he may induce another to commit a great Sin and remain innocent himself Nor is he in truth a competent Judg of the most enormous crimes when he reckons pag. 56. Theft Adultery Sodomy and any other vice that may be taken for an effect of power or a cause of pleasure to be of such a Nature as amongst men are taken to be against Law rather then against Honor. The Survey of Chapter 23. I Should with as little trouble have passed by his twenty third Chapter of his Public Ministers and the fanciful Similies contain'd therein not thinking it of much importance what public or private Ministers he makes for such a Soveraignty as he hath instituted but that I observe him in this place as most luxurious Fancies use to do demolishing and pulling down what he had with great care and vigilance erected and establish'd as undeniable truth before And whereas he hath in his eighteenth Chapter pag. 91. pronounced the right of Iudicatory of hearing and deciding all Controversies which concern Law either Civil or Natural or concerning Fact to be inseparably annexed to the Soveraignty and incapable of being aliened and transferred by him and afterwards declares That the judgments given by Iudges qualified and commission'd by him to that purpose are his own proper Iudgments and to be regarded as such which is a truth generally confess'd in this Chapter against all practice and all reason he degrades him from at least half that Power and fancies a Judg to be such a party that if the Litigant be not pleased with the opinion of his Judg in matter of Law or matter of Fact he may therefore pag. 125. because they are both Subjects to the Soveraign appeal from his Judg and ought to be tried before another for tho the Soveraign may hear and determine the Cause himself if he please yet if he will appoint another to be Judg it must be such a one as they shall both agree upon for as the Complainant hath already made choice of his own Judg so the Defendant must be allow'd to except against such of his Judges whose interest maketh him suspect them
own and will value it accordingly And he is much a better Counsellor who by his experience and observation of the nature and humor of the People who are to be govern'd and by his knowledg of the Laws and Rules by which they ought to be govern'd gives advice what ought to be don then he who from his speculative knowledg of man-kind and of the Rights of Government and of the nature of Equity and Honor attain'd with much study would erect an Engine of Government by the rules of Geometry more infallible then Experience can ever find out I am not willing now or at any time to accompany him in his sallies which he makes into the Scripture and which he alwaies handles as if his Soveraign power had not yet declared it to be the word of God and to illustrate now his Distinctions and the difference between Command and Counsel he thinks fit to fetch instances from thence Have no other Gods but me Make to thy self no graven Image c. he saies pag. 133. are commands because the reason for which we are to obey them is drawn from the will of God our King whom we are obliged to obey but these words Repent and be baptized in the name of Iesus arc Counsel because the reason why we should do so tendeth not to any benefit of God Almighty who shall be still King in what manner soever we rebel but of our selves who have no other means of avoiding the punishment hanging over us for our sins as if the latter were not drawn from the will of God as much as the former or as if the former tended more to the benefit of God then the latter An ordinary Grammarian without any insight in Geometry would have thought them equally to be commands But Mr. Hobbes will have his Readers of another talent in their understanding and another subjection to his dictates The Survey of Chapter 26. HOwever Mr. Hobbes enjoins other Judges to etract the judgments they have given when contrary to reason upon what autority or president soever they have pronounced them yet he holds himself obliged still tueâ—i opus to justify all he hath said therefore we have reason to expect that to support his own notions of Liberty and Propriety contrary to the notions of all other men he must introduce a notion of Law contrary to what the world hath ever yet had of it And it would be answer enough and it may be the fittest that can be given to this Chapter to say that he hath ere ed a Law contrary and destructive to all the Law that is acknowledg'd and establish'd in any Monarchy or Republic that is Christian and in this he hopes to secure himseâ—f by his accustomed method of definition and dâ—fiâ—es that Civil Law which is a term we do not dislike is to every Subject those Rules which the Common wealth hath commanded him by word writing or other sufficient sign of the Wâ—â—l to make use of for the distinction of right in whâ—ch he saies there is nothing that is not at first sight evident that is to say of what is contrary and what is noâ— contrary to the Rule From which definition his first deduction is that the Soveraign is the sole Legislator and that himself is not subject to Laws because he can make and repeal them which in truth is no necessary deduction from his own definition for it doth not follow from thence tho he makes them Rules only for Subjects that the Soveraign hath the sole power to repeal them but the true definition of a Law is that it is to every Subject the rule which the Common-wealth hath commanded him by word writing or other sufficient sign of the Will made and publish'd in that form and manner as is accustomed in that Common-wealth to make use of for the distinction of right that is to say of what is contrary and what is not to the Rule and from this definition no such deduction can be made since the form of making and repealing Laws is stated and agreed upon in all Common-wealths The opinions and judgments which are found in the Books of eminent Lawyers cannot be answer'd and controuled by Mr. Hobbes his wonder since the men who know least are apt to wonder most and men will with more justice wonder whence he comes by the Prerogative to controul the Laws and Government establish'd in this and that Kingdom without so much as considering what is Law here or there but by the general notions he hath of Law and what it is by his long study and much cogitation And it is a strange definition of Law to make it like his propriety to be of concernment only between Subject and Subject without any relation of security as to the Soveraign whom he exemts from any observation of them and invests with autority by repealing those which trouble him when he thinks fit to free himself from the observation thereof and by making new and consequently he saies he was free before for he is free that can be free when he will The instance he gives for his wonder and displeasure against the Books of the Eminent Lawyers is that they say that the Common Law hath no controuler but the Parliament that is that the Common Law cannot be chang'd or alter'd but by Act of Parliament which is the Municipal Law of the Kingdom Now methinks if that be the judgment of Eminent Lawyers Mr. Hobbes should be so modest as to believe it to be true till he hears others as Eminent Lawyers declare the contrary for by his instance he hath brought it now only to relate to the Law of England and then methinks he should be easily perswaded that the Eminent Lawyers of England do know best whether the Law be so or no. I do not wish that Mr. Hobbes should be convinc'd by a judgment of that Law upon himself which would be very severe if he should be accused for declaring that the King alone hath power to alter the descents and inheritances of the Kingdom and whereas the Common Law saies the Eldest shall inherit the King by his own Edict may declare and order that the younger Son shall inherit or for averring and publishing that the King by his own autority can repeal and dissolve all Laws and justly take away all they have from his Subjects I say if the judgment of Law was pronounc'd upon him for this Seditious discourse he would hardly perswade the World that he understood what the Law of England is better then the Judges who condemn'd him or that he was wary enough to set up a jus vagum and incognitum of his own to controul the establish'd Government of his own Country He saies the Soveraign is the only Legislator and I will not contradict him in that It is the Soveraign stamp and Royal consent and that alone that gives life and being and title of Laws to that which was before but counsel and advice and no
their own hands and it is a marvellous thing that any man can believe that he can be as vigorously assisted by people who have nothing to lose as by men who defending him defend their own Goods and Estates which if they do not believe their own they will never care into what hands they fall Nor is the Soveraign power divided by the Soveraigns consenting that he will not exercise such a part of it but in such and such a manner and with such circumstances for he hath not parted with any of his Soveraignty since no other man can exercise that which he forbears to exercise himself which could be don if he had divided it And it is much a greater crime in those who are totally ignorant of the laws to endeavour by their wit and presumtion to undermine them then that they who are learn'd in the study and profession of the Law do all they can to support that which only supports the Government Much less is the Soveraign power divided by the Soveraigns own communicating part of it to be executed in his name to those who by their education and experience are qualified to do it much better then he himself can be presumed to be able to do as to appoint Judges to administer Justice to his people upon all the pretences of right which may arise between themselves or between him and them according to the Rules of the Law which are manifest to them and must be unknown to him who yet keeps the Soveraign power in his hands to punish those Deputies if they swerve from their duty To the mischiefs which have proceeded from the reading the Histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans I shall say no more in this place then that if Mr. Hobbes hath bin alwaies of this opinion he was very much to blame to take the pains to translate Thucydâ—des into English in which there is so much of the Policy of the Greeks discovered and much more of that Oratory that disposes Men to Sedition then in all Tullies or Aristotles works But I suppose he had then and might still have more reason to believe that very few who have taken delight in reading the Books of Policy and Histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans have ever fallen into Rebellion and there is much more fear that the reading this and other Books writ by him and the glosses he makes upon them in his conversation may introduce thoughts of Rebellion into young men by weakning and laughing at all obligations of conscience which only can dispose men to obedience and by perswading Princes that they may safely and justly follow the extent of their own inclinations and appetites in the Government of their Subjects which must tire and wear out all Subjection at least the cheerfulness which is the strength of it by lessening the reverence to God Almighty which is the foundation of reverence to the King and undervaluing all Religion as no otherwise known and no otherwise coustituted then by the arbitriment of the Soveraign Prince whom he makes a God of Heaven as well as upon the Earth since he is upon the matter the only author of the Scripture it self the swallowing of all which opinions must be the destruction of all Government and the ruine of all obedience Tho most of his reflexions are reproches upon the Government of his own Country which he thinks is imperfectly instituted yet he cannot impute the doctrine of killing Kings whether Regicide or Tyrannicide to that Government nor the unreasonable distinction of Spiritual and Temporal jurisdiction to rob the Soveraign of any part of his Supremacy and divide one part of his Subjects from a dependance upon his justice and autority God be thanked the Laws of that Kingdom admit none of that doctrine or such distinctions to that pernicious purpose Nor do the Bishops or Clergy of that Kingdom however they are fallen from Mr. Hobbes his grace use any style or title but what is given or permitted to them by the Soveraign power And therefore this Controversy must be defended by those who justly lie under the reproch of the Church of Rome who it may be consider him the less because tho they know him not to be of theirs they think him not to be of any Religion The power of levying Mony which depending upon any general assembly he saies pag. 172. endangereth the Common-wealth for want of such nurishment as is necessary to life and motion shall be more properly enlarg'd upon in the next Chapter when I doubt not very wholsome remedies will be found for all those diseases which he will suppose may proceed from thence but t is to be hoped none will chuse his desperate prescriptions which will cure the diâ—ease by killing the Patient He concludes this Chapter after all his bountiful donatives to his Soveraign with his old wicked doctrine that would indeed irreparably destroy and dissolve all Common-wealths That when by a powerful invasion from a foreign Enemy or a prosperous Rebellion by Subjects his Soveraign is so far oppressed that he can keep the field no longer his Subjects owe him no farther assistance and may lawfully put themselves under the Conqueror of what condition soever for tho he saies pag. 174. The right of the Soveraign is not extinguished yet the obligation of the members is and so the Soveraign is left to look to himself There are few Empires of the World which at some time have not bin reduc'd by the strength and power of an outragious Enemy to that extremity that their forces have not bin able to keep the field any longer which Mr. Hobbes makes the period of their Subjects Loyalty and the dissolution of the Common wealth yet of these at last many Princes have recover'd and redeem'd themselves from that period and arrived again at their full height and glory by the constancy and vertue of their Subjects and their firmly believing that their obligations could not be extinguish'd as long as the right of their Soveraign Monarch was not So that there is great reason to believe that the old Rules which Soveraignty allwaies prescribed to it self are much better and more like to preserve it then the new ones which he would plant in their stead because it is very evident that the old subjection is much more faithful and necessary to the support and defence of the Soveraignty then that new one which he is contented with and prescribes which he will not only have determin'd as to any assistance of his natural Soveraign tho he confesses pag. 174. his right remains still in him but that he is obliged so strictly obliged that no pretâ—nce of having submitted hâ—mself out of fear can absolve him to protect and assist the Vsurper as long as he is able So that the entire loss of one Battel according to his judgment of subjection and the duty of Subjects shall or may put an end to the Soveraignty of any Prince in Europe And this
is one of the grounds and principles which he concludes to be against the express duty of Princes to let the People be ignorant of If Mr. Hobbes had a Conscience made and instructed like other mens and had not carefully provided that whilst his judgment is fix'd under Philosophical and Metaphysical notions his Conscience shall never be disturb'd by Religious speculations and apprehensions it might possibly smite him with the remembrance that these excellent principles were industriously insinuated divulged and publish'd within less then two years after Cromwels Usurpation of the Government of the three Nations upon the Murder of his Soveraign and that he then declar'd in this Book pag. 165. that against such Subjects who deliberately deny the autority of the Common wealth then and so established which God be thanked much the major part of the three Nations then did the vengeance might lawfully be extended not only to the Fathers but also to the third and fourth generation not yet in being and consequently innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted because the nature of this offence consists in renouncing of subjection which is a relapse into the condition of War commonly called Rebellion and they that so offend suffer not as Subjects but as Enemies And truly he may very reasonably believe surely more then many things which he doth believe that the veneme of this Book wrought upon the hearts of men to retard the return of their Allegiance for so many years and was the cause of so many cruel and bloody persecutions against those who still retain'd their duty and Allegiance for the King And methinks no man should be an Enemy to the renewing war in such cases but he who thinks all kind of war upon what occasion soever to be unlawful which Mr. Hobbes is so far from thinking that he is very well contented and believes it very lawful for his Soveraign in this Paragraph of cruelty to make war against any whom he judges capable to do him hurt The Survey of Chapter 30. MR. Hobbes having invested his Soveraign with so absolute Power and Omnipotence we have reason to expect that in this Chapter of his Office he will enjoin him to use all thâ— autority he hath given him and he gives him faiâ— warning that if any of the essential Rights of Soveraignty specified in his eighteenth Chapter which in a word is to do any thing he hath a mind to do and take any thing he likes from any of his Subjects be taken away the Common-wealth is dissolv'd and therefore that it is his office to preserve those Rights entire and against his duty to transfer any of them from himself And least he should forget the Rights and Power he hath bestowed upon him he recollects them all in three or four lines amongst which he puts him in mind that he hath power to leavy mony when and as much as in his own conscience he shall judg necessary and then tells him that it is agaist his duty to let the People be ignorant or mis-informed of the grounds and reasons of those his essential Rights that is that he is oblig'd to make his Leviathan Canonical Scripture there being no other Book ever yet printed that can inform them of those rights and the grounds and reason of them And how worthy they are to receive that countenance and autority will best appear by a farther examination of the Particulars and yet a man might have reasonably expected from the first Paragraph of this Chapter another kind of tenderness indeed as great as he can wish of the good and welfare of the Subject when he declares pag. 175. That the office of the Monarch consists in the end for which he was trusted with the Soveraign power namely the procuration of the safety of the People to which he is obliged by the Law of Nature and to render an account thereof to God the Author of that Law But by safety he saies is not meaâ—â— a bare preservation but also all other contentments of life which every man by lawful industry without danger or hurt to the Common-wealth can acquire to hâ—mself Who can expect a more blessed condition Who can desire a more gracious Soveraign No man would have thought this specious Building should have its Foundation after the manner of the foolish Indians upon sand that assoon as you come to rest upon it molders away to nothing that this safety safety improv'd with all the other contentments of life should consist in nothing else but in a mans being instructed and prepar'd to know that he hath nothing of his own and that when he hath by his lawful industry acquir'd to himself all the contentments of life which he can set his heart upon one touch of his Soveraigns hand one breath of his mouth can take all this from him without doing him any injury This is the Doctrine to be propagated and which he is confident will easily be receiv'd and consented to since if it were not according the principles of Reason he is sure it is a principle from autority of Scripture and will be so acknowledg'd if the Peoples minds be not tainted with dependance upon the Potent or scribled over with the opinions of their Doctors One of the reasons which he gives why his grounds of the rights of his Soveraign should be diligently and truly taught is a very good reason to believe that the grounds are not good because he confesses pag. 175. that they cannot be maintain'd by any Civil Law or terror of legal punishment And as few men agree with Mr. Hobbes in the essential Rights of Soveraignty so none allows nor doth he agree with himself that all resistance to the rights of the Soveraignty be they never so essential is Rebellion He allows it to be a priviledg of the Subject that he may sue the King so there is no doubt but that the Soveraign may sue the Subject who may as lawfully defend as sue and every such defence is a resistance to the Soveraign right of demanding and yet I suppose Mr. Hobbes will not say it is Rebellion He that doth positively refuse to pay mony to the King which he doth justly owe to him and which he shall be compell'd to pay doth resist an essential Right of the King yet is not guilty of Rebellion which is constituted in having a force to support his resistance and a purpose to apply it that way And as the Law of Nature is not so easily taught because not so easily understood as the Civil Law so I cannot comprehend why Mr. Hobbes should imagine the Soveraign power to be more secure by the Law of Nature then by the Civil Law when he confesses That the Law of Nature is made Law only by being made part of the Civil Law and if the Civil Law did not provide a restraint from the violation of Faith by the terror of the punishment that must attend it the obligation from the Law
of Nature wonld be a very faint security to Princes for the obedience of their Subjects But he chuses to appeal only to the Law of Nature which is a Text so few men have read and understand to support an imaginary Faith that was never given upon which Soveraignty was founded For which he hath another reason likewise for his Law of Nature is always at hand to serve him when no other Law will For when you tell him that the Law of Nature forbiddeth the violation of Faith and therefore that Kings and Princes are obliged to observe the Promises they make and the Oaths they take he answers you with great confidence and great cleerness that that rule is only obligatory to Subjects for that by the Law of Nature such Promises and Oaths taken by Princes are ipso facto void invalid anâ— bind not at all So that by this omnipotent Law of Nature which is indispensable and eternal the Sacred Word of a King which ought to be as fix'd and unmoveable as the center of the Earth is made as changeable as the Moon and the breach of Faith which is so odious to God and man is made lawful for Kings who are the only Persons in the World who cannot be perjur'd because the indispensable Law of Nature will not permit them to perform what they promise And now we see the reason why the Law of Nature must only be able to support that Government which no Civil Law will be able to do it remains that tho there may be a very innocent and lawful resistance of some essential Rights of the Soveraign for recovery whereof he may be put to sue at Law as hath bin said before his Soveraign by his right of Interpreting Law may as his Institutor here hath don interpret such resistance to be Treason and so confiâ—cate the Estate of the greatest Subject he hath who hath an Estate that he hath a mind to have He would be glad to find some answer to the want of President which he sees will alwaies lie in his way that there hath not bin hitherto any Common-wealth where those Rights have bin acknowledg'd or challeng'd but he hath alwaies the ill luck to leave the Objection as strong as he found it and if he could find no Artificers to assist in the erecting such a Building as may last as long as the Materials notwithstanding his skill in Architecture from the principles of Reason his long study of the nature of Materials and the divers effects of Figure and Proportion men would rather chuse to dwell in the Houses they have then to pull them down and exspect till he set up better in the place He must give a better evidence then his non-reason that his Government will be everlasting before men believe it and when his Principles from autority of Scripture come to be examin'd they will be found to have no more solidity then those which he hath produc'd from his long study and observation In the mean time he shall do well to get his Doctrine planted in those Countries and among that People who are made believe that the same Body may be in innumerable places at one and the same time where possibly things equally unreasonably may be believ'd And since men are to be taught that they ought not to be in love with any Form of Government more then with their own nor to desire change which he saies pag. 177. is like the breach of the first of Gods Commandments he hath himself raised one unanswerable Argument against the reception and doctrine of his Lâ—viathan His unskilful reproches upon the Universities are sufficiently refuted in the last Chapter A man would hardly believe that the same Person should think it to be of the office of the Soveraign to take care for the making of good Laws and should so frankly declare That no Law can be conceiv'd to be good tho it be for the benefit of the Soveraign if it be not necessary for the People for the good of the Soveraign and the People cannot be separated and yet at the same time determine that all Laws which establish any Propriety to and in the People are invalid and void and that it is an essential and inseparable Right in the Soveraign to levy as much mony at any time as he in his own conscience shall judg necessary And therefore tho I think I have in several places of this Discourse sufficiently evinc'd the unreasonableness of this Proposition and the inconsistency of the good and security of the Soveraign with such a Power I shall here enlarge upon the Disquisition thereof and of the reasons which induce him to believe that any kind of restraint of his power of raising mony by what consent of his own soever is no less then the dissolution of the Common-wealth for this power of taking every mans mony from him and his goods that will yield mony is his principal contention throughout his Book besides his liberty to lay asleep alter and repeal all Laws according to his will and pleasure The expence and charge of the preservation and maintenance of the Government being uncertain and contingent and so not to be provided for by any constant provision or revenue if by any emergent occasion upon a suddain Rebellion or foreign Invasion the Soveraign hath not power to raise what mony he thinks necessary to suppress the one and resist the other the Kingdom must be lost and if he may do it in either of those cases he may do it to prevent either and it ought to be suppos'd that he will not take more tho he may take all then is absolutely necessary for the occasion and this is the strongest case and yet is not so strong in relation to an Island as it is in relation to an In-land Kingdom he hath or can suppose for the support of this power to every part of which this answer may be applied As there is no Soveraign in Europe who pretends to this right of Soveraignty so there was never any Kingdom or considerable Country lost by want of it or preserv'd by the actual exercise of it and the Laws themselves permit and allow many things to be don when the mischief and necessity are in view which may not warrantably be don upon the pretence of preventing it The Law of necessity is pleadable in any Court and hath not only its pardon but justification as when not only a Magistrate but a private man pulls down a house or more which are next to that house which is on fire to prevent the farther mischief the Law justifies him because the necessity and benefit is as visible as the fire yet it would not be justice in the Soveraign himself to cause a mans house to be pulled down that is seven miles distant upon a fore-sight that the fire may come thither I am not averse from Mr. Hobbes's opinion that a man who is upon the point of starving and is not able
to buy meat may take as much of the meat he first sees as will serve for that meal and this not only by the Law of Nature but for ought I know without punishment by any Municipal Law which seldom cancels the unquestionable Law of Nature but this necessity will not justifie him in the stealing or taking by force an Ox from any man to prevent starving for a month together how poor soever the man is or to rob a Poulterers shop that he may have a second course Necessity is not a word unknown or unconsider'd by the Law No Subject who will obey the Law and submit to that power and autority which he confâ—sses to be unquestionable in the King can run into Rebellion and if he doth all other Subjects are bound by the Laws to assist to suppress it in that manner and with that force and under such conduct and command as the Soveraign directs If this Rebellion prospers let the Soveraigns right be what Mr. Hobbes assigns him to levy mony he will never be able to levy it in the Rebels Quarters and if they extend their Quarters far they share the Soveraignty with him for he appoints those who live in those Quarters and enjoy protection to assist and defend their Protectors The case is the same in an actual Invasion where the Invaders right grows at least as fast as the Rebels and the power of the Soveraign be it never so cheerfully submitted to can levy mony only where he is obeied and upon those whose hands must fight for him or give him other assistance and then the question is Whether he be not like to be stronger by accepting what they are willing to give then by letting them know that they have nothing to give because all they have is his And yet in both these cases of an actual Rebellion or actual Invasion if the King takes any mans mony that he finds and if he cannot find it his right to take it will do him little good not as his own but as that mans to be laid out for his own and public defence and to be repaid by the public which ought not to be defended at the charge of any private man there will be little complaint of the violation of the Law and the right of Property will be still unshaken But all these mischiefs are to be prevented by the Soveraigns sagacity and fore-sight and if he may not levy what mony he pleases and thinks requisite to make preparations to disappoint all such designs of both kinds it will be too late indeed to do it after and the Common-wealth cannot but suffer by the defect of power If the mischief be only in apprehension there is time to raise mony in that way which is provided and agreed upon for those extraordinary occasions by asking their consent who can without any complaint or murmur that can prove inconvenient give present directions for the paiment thereof But what if they refuse to give must the Common-wealth perish and every man in it whose defence the Soveraign hath undertaken and is bound to If the Soveraign hath taken all they have before as he may when he will they may have nothing left to be taken in those necessary seasons and then what will his obligation to defend them do good and how are they like to assist him when they have nothing to defend but his power to make them miserable It is not good to suspect that Princes will extend their power how absolute soever it is to undo their Subjects wantonly and unnecessarily nor is it reasonable to imagine that Subjects who enjoy Peace and Plenty will obstinately refuse to contribute towards their own preservation when both are in danger But since it is necessary to suppose a case that never yet fell out to introduce a Government that was never before thought of let us admit that it is possible that such an obstinate Spirit may rule in that Assembly which have the power to raise mony that they may peremtorily refuse to give any and by the want thereof the Common-wealth is really like to be dissolv'd I say admit this tho the same kind of obstinacy that is an obstinacy as natural as this to perform no function they ought to do will and must dissolve the Soveraignty of his own institution the question shall be Whether this very disease be worthy of such a cure whether the confess'd possibility of such a danger be fit to be secur'd and prevented by such a remedy and I think most wise and dispassioned men will believe that the perpetual inquietude and vexation that must attend men who are in daily fear to have all they have taken from them and believe that they have nothing their own to leave to their Children and Family is too disproportion'd a provision to prevent a mischief that is possible to fall out and that the hazard of that is more reasonably to be submitted to then the danger of a more probable revolution from the other distemper And when he hath heightened the danger his Soveraignty may be in by all the desperate imaginations his melancholy or fancy can suggest to him he will find that no defect of power can ever make a Prince so weak so impotent and so completely miserable as his being Soveraign over such Subjects as have nothing to give because they have nothing that is their own nor will the conscience of their Soveraign that he will not do all he may bring any substantial Cordial to them but as he saies that his Soveraign may command any thing to be don against Law because his command amounts to a repeal of that Law for he that can make himself free is free so they will think that he that can be undon at the pleasure of another man is undon already and that every day is but the Eve of his destruction and therefore will think of all ways to prevent it and he knows the effect of fear too well to think that a man who is in a continual fright can be fix'd in a firm obedience His Commentary upon the ten Commandments which in his judgment comprehends and exacts all his Injunctions contain'd in his Leviathan and his other Theological Speculations I refer to the consideration and examination of his Friends the Divines who no doubt will be well pleased to find him a better Casuist now he comes to revolve the tenth Commandment in this his thirtieth Chapter then he was in his twenty seventh Chapter in his gloss upon the same Text for there he determines clearly pag. 151. that to be delighted in the imagination only of being possessed of an other mans goods or wife without intention to take them from him by force or fraud is no breach of this Law Thou shalt not covet nor the pleasure a man hath in imagining the death of a man from whose life he expects nothing but dammage and displeasure any sin The business he then had was to find
what must be don to him and that all that was don and suffered by him which was fore told His admirable Life and Doctrine was well known to them all they had bin present at his trial and at his death and had with their eies seen the terrible circumstances of it they had seen him buried and the Jews had providently appointed a guard of Soldier who had without remorse beheld his Passion to watch his Tomb and yet after all this vigilance the Body was not found but as he had promised himself and what had bin by the Prophets fore-told of him the third day he was risen of which there were so many eie-witnesses who had seen and conferr'd with him for many daies and had at last beheld with their bodily eies his Body ascend in the air towards Heaven And besides that the greatest part of all this was seen and known by all the People the Preachers and Declarers of it appear'd to be very extraordinary men by the daily Mâ—racles they wrought by which such multitudes were compell'd could not reâ—ist believing all they said and promis'd to observe the Precepts they enjoin'd But all this is nothing others and much greater numbers did and lawfully might refuse to do either for Mr. Hobbes saies positively pag. 281. that the people had liberty to interpret the Scriptures to themselves till such time as there should be Pastors that could autorize an Interpreter whose interpretation should be geneâ—ally stood to but that could not be till Kings were Pastors or Pastors Kings So that what the Apostles or our Saviour himself had said laid no obligation upon those who heard them We have now the reason why he was concern'd so much to extend those plain words of the Children of Israel in their fright to Moses Speak thou to us and we will hear thâ—e to such an absolute obligation of their obedience since without it he saies pag. 283. they had not bin obliged to have receiv'd the ten Commandments since they were forbid to approach the mountain by which they might have heard what God said to Moses but that obligation that they would hear Moses made all sure again and so they came to receive them Yet he confesses pag. 282. that they could not but acknowledg the second Table for Gods Laws because they were all the Laws of Nature but for those of the first Table that were peculiar to the Israelites which gives him occasion to enlarge his Commentary upon the third Commandment in which he saies the meaning of those words They shall not take the name of God in vain is that they should not speak rashly of their King nor dâ—spute his râ—ght nor the Commissions of Moles and Aaron his Lieutenants it was their own obligation Speak thou to us and we will hear c. by which they were to receive them as Laws and pag. 283. the Iudicial Law which Godprescrib'd to the Magistrates of Israel for the rule of the administration of Iustice and the Levitical Law the rule prescrib'd touching the rites and ceremonies of the Priests and Leviâ—es because Laws he saies only by virtue of the same promise of obâ—dience to Moses And so he proceeds to a new enquiâ—y into the authenticalness of the Old and New Testament in which chase I am weary of following him and concludes pag. 284. that whoever offers us any other rules which the Soveraign rule hath not prâ—scrâ—b'd they are but counsel and advice which whether good or bad he that is counsel'd may without injustice refuse to observe And pag. 285. that the Scripture of the New Testament is there only Law where the lawful Civil Powâ—r hath made it so Since the reception of the New Testament as a Law that is within the Canon of Scripture depends wholly upon the word of the Soveraign and by that word is receiv'd and acknowledg'd to be the word of God and from thence is obeied as such it must likewise by his rule still subsist by the sole autority of the Soveraign for he can by his word to morrow abrogate that which this day he made a Law So that if a Christian Soveraign be succeeded by a Soveraign who is a Jew or an evil Christian he may abrogate that Law by which the New Testament was declar'd to be within the Canon of Scripture and then the Subjects must neither pag. 285. in their actions or discourse observe the same and can only privatly wish that they had liberty to practice them by which the confessed word of God must be made void and controul'd by the commandments of man And he hath the confidence to aver that the very Council held by the Apostles in which they use this style It seem'd good to the Holy Ghost and to us c. hath no autority to oblige any body pag. 286. since the Apostles could have no other power then that of our Saviour who could only perswade not command for they who have no Kingdom can make no Laws And so I hope Leviathan hath now laid about him and perform'd his full function which makes him worthy to receive a more reasonable answer then is in the power of any private Person or of the Universities to give him and is very fit for the State it self to reward him for to the full extent of his desert Mr. Hobbes hath invested the Soveraign with his absolute independent power by the example of Moses and David and Solomon both in Church and State and being obliged to confess that for some hundred of years after the preaching of the Gospelâ— there was no Civil Soveraign to meddle with it but that the direction of all Ecclesiastical Affairs appertain'd to the Apostles and their successors and those who were ordain'd by them he finds a way to invest his Christian Monarch with that Jurisdiction and Supremacy by the right all Heathen Soveraigns had who had the name of Pastors of the People because there was no Subject that could lawfully teach the People but by their permission and autority and that no body can think that the right of Heathen Kings is taken away by their conversion to the Faith of Christ who never ordain'd that Kings for believing in him should be deposed that is subjected to any but himself And therefore Christian Princes are still the supreme Pastors of their People and have power to ordain what Pastors they please to teach the Church But to make their title the more unquestionable he resorts to the title he found out for his Soveraign by institution that from the paâ—t and covenant which the people made to and with each other he becomes the Representative of the people which he confesses that he that makes himself Soveraign by his irresistible Power without any election pact or covenant likewise is the Representative of the people and so hath the same power and authority as if he were by their election He finds now that the Christian Soveraign assoon as he is Christian becomes the
Representative of the Church and so the Teachers he elects are elected by the Church which was all the title they had from the time of the Apostles to the time of the Soveraigns becoming Christian from which time he is the true Representative of the Church as well as of the State pag. 299. and from this consolidation of the right Politic and Ecclesiastic in Christian Soveraigns he saies it is evident that they have all manner of power over their Subjects that can be given to man and may make such Laws as themselves shall judg fittest for the government of their own Subjects both as they are the Common-wealth and as they are the Church But as his Civil Soveraign rejects his Institution and knows he hath much a better title to his power then he could have by pretending to be the Representative of the People so his Christian Soveraign will as much reject the being Representative of the Church knowing that he hath a better title by being Soveraign to govern his Clery and all Ecclesiastical persons in his own Dominions and for suppressing all seditious and erroneous Doctrines which may disturb the Peace or discredit the Integrity of the Church then such a Representation would give him And they are little beholding to him for deriving their Supremacy Ecclesiastical from the Heathen Princes since few Heathen Soveraigns ever pretended to have the supreme or indeed any power or autority in what concern'd the service and worship of their God the direction and government whereof appertain'd to Magistrates and Ministers assigned for that Sacred Province as the Great Turk himself as hath bin said before doth not give Laws but receives advice and the interpretation of the Mufty in whatsoever Mahomet hath enjoin'd to be don But let the title be what it will he will be sure that his Soveraign shall have a power as unlimitted in all Ecclesiastical affairs as in Civil and not only to give what Religion he thinks fit and to allow what Book he pleases for Scripture to his Subjects but that he may himself if he pleases perform all the Functions himself in Religion pag. 287. as to baptize administer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper consecrate Temples and Pastors to Gods service And he saies the reason is evident why they do it not which is no other but that they have somwhat else to do However he is sure they may be literal Pastors of their own Subjects in their own persons and have autority to Preach to Baptize to administer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and to consecrate both Temples and Persons to Gods service which he doth not grant out of the high qualifications which he believes to be inherent in the power and person of a King but from the low esteem he hath of those Offices and Mysteries of Religion For fore-seeing the objection that those administrations by the testimony of all Antiquity require the imposition of such mens hands as by the like imposition successively from the time of the Apostles have bin ordain'd to the like Ministry he removes that difficulty by offering a prospect of the original and use of the Imposition of Hands and instructs us from the perpetual custom and usage in all Nations of Imposition of Hands as well in Civil as in Sacred occasions as well in inflicting punishment as in conferring Honors and Dignities as in the condemnation of him who blasphemes the Lord all that heard him shall lay their hands upon his head and that all the Congregation should stone him And when Iairus his daughter was sick he did not desire our Saviour to heal her but to lay his hands upon her that she might be healed And they brought little Children up to him that he might lay his hands upon them c. And the reason is he saies pag. 298. as in the case of the Blasphemer where the witnesses laid their hands upon the guilty persons rather then a Priest or Levite or other Minister of Iustice because none else were able to design or demonstrate to the eies of the Congregation who it was that had blasphemed and ought to die so in other things it is natural to design any individual thing rather by the hand to assure the eies then by words to inform the ear in matters of Gods public service All which and many other Texts of which he never finds want to any purpose must signifie if they signifie any thing that the Imposition of hands that venerable circumstance that hath bin from the beginning of Christianity and where ever it is professed applied to all Ecclesiastical Functions is to no other purpose but to point out the person that all the people may know who is the person that is ordained but the person of every Soveraign Prince is too notorious and perspicuous to need any such demonstration and therefore he may Baptize Preach and Consecrate and do all other Offices without it To all which I shall suspend any farther answer until he can prevail with one Christian Prince to assume and exercise the power he so frankly confers upon him or one Christian Subject willing to receive those Honors and Graces from their Royal Hands I have waited upon Mr. Hobbes into Cardinal Bellarmine's Quarters and I will not interpose and disturb him there in the Controversie he hath with him which takes up the remainder of his forty second Chapter more then to say that he takes upon him to answer that Book of Bellarmine which of all that ever he writ is most easie to be answer'd having less of Reason and Learning in it and having few Assertors and being generally condemn'd among the Papists themselves and particularly by the Colledg of Sorbone the fairest Representers of the Doctrine of the Church of Rome and in answering of which he hath said nothing new nor so substantially as many others have don as he must confess if he reads William Berkeley the Father of Iohn He contends with â—ellarmineâ—or â—or some Texts of Scripture which he saies conclude for his Soveraign upon which the other would establish the supreme autority of the Pope and which in truth cannot be applied with any colour to either of them And he cannot take it ill that I have and shall take the same method in answering many of his Arguments which he himself thought fit to do before he would enter upon any particular disquisition of those of the Cardinals by laying open the consequences of his Doctrine pag. 314. that Princes and States that have the Civil Soveraignty in their several Common-wealths may bethink themselves whether it be convenient for them and conducing to the good of their Subjects of whom they are to give an account at the day of Iudgment to admit the same which way of exposing his whole Book is without doubt the best way of answering it I shall only add that as it was unreasonably undertaken by Bellarmine to establish a title that depends upon matter of Fact by arguments from
word countenance or gesture declare hatred or contemt of another If all men are bound by the Law of Nature pag. 78. That they that are at controversie submit their right to the judgment of an arbitrator as he saies they are If Nature hath thus providently provided for the Peace and Tranquillity of her Children by Laws immutable and eternal that are written in their hearts how come they to fall into that condition of war as to be every one against every one and to be without any other cardinal Virtues but of force and fraud It is a wonderful thing that a man should be so sharp-sighted as to discern mankind so well inclosed and fortified by the wisdom of Nature and so blind as to think him in a more secure estate by his transferring of right to another man which yet he confesses is impossible intirely to transfer and by Covenants and Contracts of his own devising and which he acknowledges to be void in part and in other parts impossibe to be perform'd But I say if in truth Nature hath dictated all those excellent Conclusions to every man without which they cannot be called the Laws of Nature and if it hath farther instituted all those duties which are contain'd in the Second Table all which he saies were the Laws of Nature I know not what temtation or autority he could have to pronounce mankind to be left by Nature in that distracted condition of war except he prefer the autority of Ovids Metamorphosis of the sowing of Cadmus's teeth before any other Scripture Divine or Humane And it is as strange that by his Covenants and Contracts which he is so wary in wording as if he were the Secretary of Nature that they may bind that man fast enough whom he pleases to assign to those Bonds and as if he were the Pleâ—potentiary of Nature too to bind and to loose all he thinks fit he hath so ill provided for the Peace he would establish that he hath left a door open for all the Confusion he would avoid when notwithstanding that he hath made them divest themselves of the liberty they have by Nature and transfer all this into the hands of a single Person who thereby is so absolute Soveraign that he may take their Lives and their Estates from them without any act of Injustice yet after all this transferring and divesting every man reserves a right as unalienable to defend his own life even against the sentence of Justice What greater contradiction can there be to the Peace which he would establish upon those unreasonable conditions then this Liberty which he saies can never be abandoned and which yet may dissolve that peace every day and yet he saies pag. 70. This is granted to be true by all men in that they lead Criminals to execution and prison with armed men notwithstanding such Criminals have consented to the Law by which they are condemned Which indeed in an Argument that men had rather escape then be hanged but no more an Argument that they have a right to rescue themselves then the fashion of wearing Sword is an argument that men are afraid of having their throats cuâ— by the malice of their neighbors both which are Arguments no man would urge to men whose understandings he did not much undervalue But upon many of these Particulars there is a more proper occasion hereafter for enlargement And so we pass through his Prospect of the Laws of Nature and many other Definitions and Descriptions with liberty to take review of them upon occasion that we may make hast to his Second Part for which he thinks he hath made a good preparation to impose upon us in this First and he will often tell us when he should prove what he affirms that he hath evinc'd that Point and made it evident in such a Chapter in his First Part where in truth he hath said very much and proved very little I shall only conclude this with an observation which the place seems to require of the defect in Mr. Hobbes's Logic which is a great presumtion that from very true Propositions he deduces very erroneous and absurd Conclusions That no man hath power to transfer the right over his own life to the disposal of another man is a very true Proposition from whence he infers that he hath reserved the power and disposal of it to himself and therefore that he may defend it by force even against the judgment of Law and Justice whereas the natural consequence of that Proposition is That therefore such transferring and covenanting being void cannot provide for the peace and security of a Common-wealth Without doubt no man is Dominus vitae suae and therefore cannot give that to another which he hath not in himself God only hath reserv'd that absolute Dominion and Power of life and death to himself and by his putting the Sword into the hand of the Supreme Magistrate hath qualified and enabled him to execute that justice which is necessary for the peace and preservation of his People which may seem in a manner to be provided for by Mr. Hobbes's Law of Nature if what he saies be true pag. 68. That right to the end containeth right to the means And this sole Proposition that men cannot dispose of their own lives hath bin alwaies held as a manifest and undeniable Argument that Soveraigns never had nor can have their Power from the People Second Part. The Survey of Chapters 17 18. MR. Hobbes having taken upon him to imitate God and created Man after his own likeness given him all the passions and affections which he finds in himself and no other he prescribes him to judg of all things and words according to the definitions he sets down with the Autority of a Creator After he hath delighted himself in a commendable method and very witty and pleasant description of the nature and humor of the World as far as he is acquainted with it upon many particulars whereof which he calls Definitions there will be frequent occasion of reflexions in this discourse without breaking the thred of it by entring upon impertinent exceptions to matters positively averred without any apparent reason when it is no great matter whether it be true or no He comes at last to institute such a Common-wealth as never was in nature or ever heard of from the beginning of the World till this structure of his and like a bountiful Creator gives the Man he hath made the Soveraign command and Government of it with such an extent of power and autority as the Great Turk hath not yet appear'd to affect In which it is probable he hath follow'd his first method and for the Man after his own likeness hath created a Government that he would himself like to be trusted with having determined Liberty and Propriety and Religion to be only emty words and to have no other existence then in the Will and Breast of his Soveraign Governor and all this in
of the Soveraignty tho by Election pag. 98. is obliged by the Law of nature to provide by establishing his Successor to keep those that had trusted him with the Goveâ—â—ment from relapsing into the miserable condition of Civil War and consequently he was when elected a Soveraign absolute And then he declares positively contrary to the opinion of all the world that pag. 100. by the institution of Monarchy the disposing of the Successor is alwaies left to the judgment and the will of the present possessor and that if he declares expresly that such a man shall be his heir either by word or writing then is that man immediately after the decease of his predecessor invested in the right of being Monarch Mr. Hobbes was too modest a man to hope that his Leviathan would have power to perswade those of Poland to change their form of Government and what Denmark hath gotten by having don it since cannot in so short a time be determin'd or that the Emperor would dissolve and cancel the Golden Bull and invest his Posterity in the Empire in spight of the Electors or that the Papacy should be made Hereditary since Cesar Borgia was so long since dead and he had carried that spirit with him and therefore I must appeal to all dispassion'd men what Mr. Hobbes could have in his purpose in the year One thousand six hundred fifty one when this Book was printed but by this new Doctrine scarcely heard of till then to induce Cromwell to break all the Laws of his Country and to perpetuate their slavery under his Progeny in which he follow'd his advice to the utmost of his power tho his Doctrine proved false and most detested And tho Mr. Hobbes by his presence of mind and velocity of thought which had inabled him to fore-see the purpose of rebelling and taking the King Prisoner and delivering him up from that question proposed to him concerning the value of a Roman penny might at that time discern so little possibility of his own Soveraigns recovery that it might appear to him a kind of absurdity to wish it yet methinks his own natural fear of danger which made him fly out of France assoon as his Leviathan was publish'd and brought into that Kingdom should have terrified him from invading the right of all Hereditary Monarchies in the World by declaring that by the Law of Nature which is immutable it is in the power of the present Soveraign to dispose of the succession and to appoint who shall succed him in the Government and that the word Heir doth not of it self imply the Children or nearest Kindred of a man but whomsoever a man shall any way declare he would have succeed him contrary to the known right and establishment throughout the World and which would shake if not dissolve the Peace of all Kingdoms Nor is there any danger of the dissolution of a Common-wealth by the not nominating of a Successor since it is a known maxime in all Hereditary Monarchies That the King never dies because in the minute of the exspiration of the present his Heir succeeds him and is in the instant invested in all the dignities and preheminences of which the other had bin possessed and if there were no other error or false doctrine in the Leviathan as there are very many of a very pernicious nature that would be cause enough to suppress it in all Kingdoms The Survey of Chapter 20. IT is modestly don of Mr. Hobbes at last after so many Magisterial determinations of the institution of Soveraignty and the rights and autority of it and what is not it to confess that all these Discourses pag. 105. are only what he finds by speculation and deduction of Soveraign Rights from the nature need and designs of man in erecting of Common-wealths and putting themselves under Monarchs c. and therefore if he finds that all his speculation is positively contradicted by constant and uncontroverted practice he will believe that his speculation is not nor ought to be of autority enough to introduce new Laws and Rules of Government into the World And it is high time for the Soveraign Power to declare That it doth not approve those Doctrines which may lessen the affections and tenderness of Princes towards their Subjects and even their reverence to God himself if they thought that they could change Religion and suppress the Scripture it self and that their power over their Subjects is so absolute that they give them all that they do not take from them and that Property is but a word of no signification and lessens the duty and obedience of Subjects and makes them less love the constitution of the Government they live under which may prove so destructive to them if they have temtation from their passions or their appetite to exercise the autority they justly have It is fit therefore that all men know that these are only his speculations and not the claim of Soveraign Power It had bin to be wished that Mr. Hobbes had first taken the pains to have inform'd himself of the pâ—wer and autority exercised by Elective Princes over their Subjects and their submission rendred to them by their subjects before he had so positively determin'd that Elective Kings are not Soveraigns at least that he had given a better reason for his assertion He that hath supreme autority over all and against whom there is no Appeal may very justly and lawfully be called a Soveraign And if he would enquire into the autority of the Emperor in the proper Dominion of the Empire he would find that he hath as Soveraign a power as any Prince in Christendom claims and yet he is Elective And it is a more extravagant speculation to conclude That because the Electors have the absolute power to chuse the Emperor that the Soveraignty is in them before they chuse him and that they may keep it to themselves if they think good because none have a right to give that which they have no right to possess when it is known to all the World that the Electors have a right to chuse the Emperor and yet that till they have chosen him the Soveraignty is not in them nor that they can possess it them selves and chuse whether they will give it to another and that when they have chosen him he is a Soveraign Prince and superior to all those who have chosen him by all the marks of Soveraignty which are known in practice tho not possibly in speculation And he knows well there is another Soveraign Prince greater then the Emperor and almost as great as he would have his Soveraign to be in the extent of his power who is likewise Elâ—ctive and that is the Pope and that the Conclave cannot retain that Soveraignty to themselves but having by their Election conferr'd â—t upon him he is thereby become as absolute a Monarch as Mr. Hobbes can wish And truly if he would rectifie his speculations that is his
Justice even where himself is party and that he will be sued before those Judges if he doth not pay what he ow's to his Subjects This is the Contract which gives that capacity of suing and which by his own consent and condescention lessens his Soveraignty that his Subjects may require Justice from him And yet all these promises and lessenings he pronounces as void and to amount to contradictions that must dissolve the whole Soveraign power and leave the people in confusion and war Whereas the truth is these condescentions and voluntary abatements of some of that original power that was in them have drawn a cheerful submission and bin attended by a ready obedience to Soveraignty from the time that Subjects have bin at so great a distance from being consider'd as Children and that Soveraigns have bin without those natural tendernesses in the exercise of their power and which in the rigor of it could never have bin supported And where these obligations are best observ'd Soveraignty flourishes with the most lustre and security Kings having still all the power remaining in them that they have not themselves parted with and releas'd to their Subjects and theiâ— Subjects having no pretence to more liberty or power then the King hath granted and given to them and both their happiness and security consists in containing themselves within their own limits that is King not to affect the recovery of that exorbitant power which their Ancestors wisely parted with as well for their own as the peoples benefit and Subjects to rejoice in those liberties which have bin granted to them and not to wish to lessen the power of the King which is not greater then is necessary for their own perservation And to such a wholsom division and communication of power as this is that place of Scripture with which Mr. Hobbes is still too bold a Kingdom dâ—vided in it self cannot stand cannot be applied But that this Supreme Soveraign whom he hath invested with the whole property and liberty of all his Subjects and so invested him in it that he hath not power to part with any of it by promise or donation or release may not be too much exalted with his own greatness he hath humbled him sufficiently by giving his Subjects leave to withdraw their obedience from him when he hath most need of their assistance for the pag. 114. obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood he saies to last as long and no longer then the power lasts to protect them So that assoon as any Town City or Province of any Princes Dominions is invaded by a Foreign Enemy or possessed by a Rebellious Subject that the Prince for the present cannot suppress the Power of the one or the other the people may lawfully resort to those who are over them and for their Protection perform all the Offices and duties of good Subjects to them pag 114. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them can by no covenant be relinquish'd and the end of obedience is protection which wherever a man seeth it either in his own or in an others sword nature applieth his obedience to it and his endeavours to maintain it And truly it is no wonder if they do so and that Subjects take the first opportunity to free themselves from such a Soveraign as he hath given them and chuse a better for themselves Whereas the duty of Subjects is and all good Subjects believe they owe another kind of duty and obedience to their Soveraign then to withdraw their subjection because he is oppress'd and will prefer poverty and death it self before they will renounce their obedience to their natural Prince or do any thing that may advance the service of his Enemies And since Mr. Hobbes gives so ill a testimony of his Government which by the severe conditions he would oblige mankind to submit to for the support of it ought to be firm and not to be shaken pag. 114. that it is in its own nature not only subject to violent death by foreign war but also from the ignorance and passion of men that it hath in it from the very institution many seeds of natural mortality by intestine discord worse then which he cannot say of any Government we may very reasonably prefer the Government we have and under which we have enjoi'd much happiness before his which we do not know nor any body hath had experience of and which by his own confession is liable to all the accidents of mortality which any others have bin and reject his that promises so ill and exercises all the action of War in Peace and when War comes is liable to all the misfortunes which can possibly attend or invade it Whether the relation of Subjects be extinguisht in all those cases which Mr. Hobbes takes upon him to prescribe as Imprisonment Banishment and the like I leave to those who can instruct him better in the Law of Nations by which they must be judged notwithstanding all his Appeals to the Law of Nature and I presume if a banish'd Person p. 114 during which he saies he is not subject shall join in an action under a Foreign power against his Country wherein he shall with others be taken prisoner the others shall be proceeded against as Prisoners of War when he shall be judg'd as a Traitor and Rebel which he could not be if he were not a Subject and this not only in the case of an hostile action and open attemt but of the most secret conspiracy that comes to be discover'd And if this be true we may conclude it would be very unsafe to conduct our selves by what Mr. Hobbes p. 105. finds by speculation and deduction of Soveraign rights from the nature need and designs of men Surely this woful desertion and defection in the cases above mention'd which hath bin alwaies held criminal by all Law that hath bin current in any part of the World receiv'd so much countenance and justifications by Mr. Hobbes his Book and more by his conversation that Cromwel found the submission to those principles produc'd a submission to him and the imaginary relation between Protection and Allegiance so positively proclam'd by him prevail'd for many years to extinguish all visible fidelity to the King whilst he perswaded many to take the Engagement as a thing lawful and to become Subjects to the Usurper as to their legitimate Soveraign of which great service he could not abstain from bragging in a Pamphlet set forth in that time that he alone and his doctrine had prevail'd with many to submit to the Government who would otherwise have disturb'd the public Peace that is to renounce their fidelity to their true Soveraign and to be faithful to the Usurper It appears at last why by his institution he would have the power and security of his Soveraign wholly and only to depend upon the Contracts and Covenants which the people make one with
alone and when it is once found to be in him alone he will not be long able to defend his own Propriety or his own Soveraignty It is Machiavels exception against the entertaining of foreign Forces that they are only mercenary and therefore indifferent in their affections which party wins or loses and no doubt those Soldiers fight most resolutely who fight to defend their own And surely they who have nothing of their own to lose but their lives are as apt to throw those away where they should not as where they should be exposed and it is the usual Artifice in all Seditions for the Leaders and Promoters of them to perswade the People that the tendency and consequence of such and such actions don by the Magistrate extends to the depriving them of all their propriety the jealousie of which hurries them into all those acts of rage and despair which prove so fatal to Kingdoms And there was never yet a wise and fortunate prince who hath not enervated those Machinations by all the professions and all the vindications of that Propriety which they are so vigilant to preserve and defend And therefore it is a wonderful propesterous foundation to support a Government to declare that the Subject hath no propriety in any thing that excludes the Soveraign from a right of disposing it and it may be easily believ'd that there is not one Prince in Europe I mean that is civiliz'd for of the absolute power of the Great Turk from whence Mr. Hobbes hath borrowed his Model we shall have occasion to discourse in another place would be able to retain his Soveraignty one whole year after he should declare as Mr. Hobbes doth that his Subjects have no propriety in any thing they possess but that he may dispose of all they have For tho they do too often invade that propriety and take somwhat from them that is not their own they bear it better under the notion of oppression and rapine and as they look upon it as the effect of some powerful Subjects evil advice which will in time be discover'd and reform'd by the justice of the Prince as hath often fallen out then they would ever do under a claim of right that could justly take away all they have because it is not the Subjects but their own And if Mr. Hobbes had taken the pains and known where to have bin inform'd of the Proceedings and Transactions of Wâ—lliam the Conqueror he would have found cause to believe that that great King did ever dexterously endeavor from the time that he was assured that his Possession would not be disturb'd to divest himself of the Title of a Conqueror and made his Legal Claim to what he had got by the Will of Edward the Confessor whose Name was precious to the Nation and who was known to have a great Friendship for that Prince who had now recover'd what had bin his And he knew so well the ill consequence which must attend the very imagination that the Nation had lost its Propriety that he made hast to grant them an assurance that they should still enjoy all the benefits and priviledges which were due to them by their own Laws and Customs by which they should be still govern'd as they were during that Kings whole Reign who had enough of the unquestionable Demesnes and Lands belonging to the Crown of which he was then possessed without a Rival and belonging to those great men who had perish'd with their Posterity in the Battel with Harold to distribute to those who had born such shares and run such hazards in his prosperous adventure And those Laws and Customs which were before the Conquest are the same which the Nation and Kingdom have bin since govern'd by to this day with the addition of those Statutes and Acts of Parliament which are the Laws of the successive Kings with which they have gratifi'd their Subjects in providing such new security for them and advantages to the public as upon the experience and observation of the Ages and Times when they were made contributed to the honor and glory of the King as well as the happiness of the People many of which are but the Copies and Transcripts of ancient Land-marks making the Characters more plain the legible of what had bin practic'd and understood in the preceding Ages and the observation whereof are of the same profit and convenience to King and People Such were the Laws in Tullies time which Mr. Hobbes wonderfully cites to prove that which Tully never heard of and which indeed is quite contrary to the end of his Discourse Pag. 127. Is it possible that Tully could ever have said Let the Civil Law be once abandoned or but negligently guarded not to say oppressed and there is nothing that any man can be sure to receive from his Ancestor or to leave to his Children and again take away the Civil Law and no man knows what is his own and what another mans I say he could never have mention'd and insisted upon this grand security of man-kind if he had understood the Law to be nothing but the breath of the Soveraign who could grant and dissolve or repeal this Law with the speaking a word that his will or fancy dictates to him How can any man receive from his Ancestor or leave to his Children if he ben oâ— sure that his Ancestor had and that his Children shall have a propriety It was the importance of and delight in this propriety that produc'd that happy and beneficial agreement between the Soveraign power and the naked Subject which is mention'd before that introduc'd the beauty of Building and the cultivating the Earth by Art as well as Industry by securing men that they and their Children should dwell in the Houses they were at the charge to build and that they should reap the harvest of those Lands which they had taken the pains to sow Whatsoever is of Civility and good Manners all that is of Art and Beauty or of real and solid Wealth in the World is the product of this paction and the child of beloved Propriety and they who would strangle this Issue desire to demolish all Buildings eradicate all Plantations to make the Earth barren and man-kind to live again in Tents and nurish his Cattle by successive marches into those Fields where the grass grows Nothing but the joy in Propriety reduc'd us from this barbarity and nothing but security in the same can preserve us from returning into it again Nor will any man receive so great prejudice and damage by this return as the Kings and Princes themselves who had a very ample recompence which they still enjoy by dividing their unprofitable propriety with their Subjects having ever since receiv'd much more profit from the propriety in the hands of the Subjects then they did when it was in their own or then they do from that which they reserv'd to themselves and they continue to have the more or less
no man will pretend to the knowledg of right and wrong without much study And if that power of interpretation of Law be vested in the Person of the Soveraign he may in a moment overthrow all the Law which is evident enough by his own instances if to use his own expressions his understanding were not dazled by the flame of his passions For to what purpose is all the distinction and division of Laws into human and divine into natural and moral into distributive and penal when they may be all vacated and made null by the word or perverted by the interpretation of the Soveraign to what purpose is a penalty of five shillings put upon such an action if the Soveraign may make him who doth that action by his interpretation or omnipotence to pay five hundred pounds Nor by his rule is his ador'd Law of Nature of any force which he saies pag. 144 is the Law of God immutable and eternal nay Heaven and Earth shall pass away but not one title of the Law of Nature shall pass for it is the eternal Law of God He I say hath as much subjected that to the arbitrary power and discretion of his Soveraign as he hath don the Liberty and property of the Subject for he saies pag. 138. the Law of Nature is a part of the Civil Law in all Common-wealths in the World and that tho it be naturally reasonable yet it is by the Soveraign powâ—r that it is Law and he saies likewise that all Laws written and unwritten and the Law of Nature it seâ—f have need of interpretation and then he makes his supreme Soveraign the only legitimate interpreter So that he hath the Law of Nature as much in his power and under his jurisdiction as any other part of the Civil Law and yet he confesses his subject is not bound to pay obedience to any thing that his Soveraign enjoins against the Law of nature In such Labyrinths men entangle themselves who obstinately engage in opinions relating to a science they do not understand nor was it possible for him to extend the Prerogative of his Soveraign to such an illimited greatness without making some invasion upon the Prerogative of God himself I believe every man who reads Mr. Hobbes observes that when he entangles himself in the Laws of England and affects to be more learned in them then the Chief Justice Cook the natural sharpness and vigor of his reason is more flat and insipid then upon other Arguments and he makes deductions which have no coherence involves himself in the terms without comprehending the matter concludes the Law saies that which it do's not say and that the Law hath made no provision in cases which are amply provided for and in a word loses himself in a mist of words that render him less intelligible then at other times Nor hath he better luck when out of Iustinians Institutions he would make a parallel between the Imperial Laws and the Laws of England and resolves that the Decrees of the Common People which were put to the question by the Tribune and had the force of Laws were like the Orders of the House of Commons in England whereas no Orders made by a House of Commons in England are of any validity or force or receive any submission longer then that House of Commons continues and if any order made by them be against any Law or Statute it is void when it is made and receives no obedience Indeed when Mr. Hobbes publish'd his Leviathan he might have said that it had the autority and power of the Emperor or of the whole People of Rome and which would have lasted till this time if he had bin believ'd and his doctrine could have bin supported by him or them for whom it was provided Probably Mr. Mobbes did take delight in being thought to confute a great Lawyer in the Common Law of England 't is certain he hath bin transported to slight usage of him by that delight or some like passion more then by the defect of reason in that which he would contradict He saies 't is against the Law of Nature to punish the innocent that he is innocent that acquits himself judicially is acknowledg'd for innocent by the Judg and yet he saies when a man is accus'd of a Capital crime and seeing the power of the Enemy and the frequent corruption of Judges runs away for fear of the effect yet being taken and brought to Tryal maketh it appear that he was not guilty of the crime and is acquitted thereof however is condemn'd to lose his goods this he saies is a manifest condemnation of the innocent He confesses afterwards that the Law may forbid an innocent man to fly and that he may be punished for flying but he thinks it very unreasonable that flying for fear of injury should be taken for presumtion of guilt whereas it is taken only for the guilt of flying when he is declar'd innocent for the other And methinks he confesseth that a man who must know his own innocence better then any body else and knows that he must lose his Goods if he flies his trial hath no reason to complain if after he be cleer'd from the crime he be condemned to lose his goods which he knew he must lose when he fled and therefore tho he be judicially acquitted for the crime he is not innocent but as judicially condemned to lose his goods for his guilt in flying the Law and penalty of flying being known to him whether written or not written as well as the Law against the crime was To his other dictates of the Office of a Judg that he needs not be learn'd in the Laws because he shall be told by the Soveraign what judgment he shall give and of the Laws of England that the Jury is Judg of the Law as well as of the fact there needs no more be said then that he is not inform'd nor understands what he delivers and whether his notions of the divine positive Law be more agreeable to truth will be examin'd hereafter The Survey of Chapter 27. Pag. 151. THat to be delighted in the imagination of being possessed of another mans Wife or Goods is no breach of the Law that saies Thou shalt not covet That the pleasure a man may have in imagining the death of him from whose life he expects nothing but dammage and displeasure is no sin That to be pleas'd in the fiction of that which would please a man if it were real is a passion so adherent to the nature of man and every other living creature as to make it a sin were to make a sin of being a man is a Body of Mr. Hobbes's Divinity so contrary to that of our Saviour and his Apostles that I shall without any enlargement leave it to all men to consider which of them they think most fit to believe and follow Yet methinks he gives some encouragement to those who might expect Justice
against him by his own judgment pag. 152. upon the man that comes from the Indies hither and perswades men here to receive a new Religion or teach them any thing that tends to disobedience to the Laws of this Country tho he be never so well perswaded of the truth of what he teacheth he commits a crime and may be justly punished not only because his Doctrine is false but because he do's that which he would not approve in another that coming from hence should endeavor to alter Religion there And how far this Declaration of his own judgment may operate to his own condemnation and to the condemnation of most of his Doctrines in his Leviathan which are so contrary to all the Laws established in his Country he should have don well to have consider'd before he committed the transgression for he doth acknowledg that in a Common-wealth where by the negligence or unskilfulness of Governors and Teachers false Doctrines are by time generally receiv'd the contrary truths may be generally offensive and prudent men are seldom guilty of doing any thing at least when it is in their own election to do it or not to do it which they foresee will be offensive to the Government or Governors whom they are subject to and must live under especially when he confesses pag. 91. that tho the most suddain and rough bustling in of a new truth that can be do's never break the peace yet it doth somtimes wake the war and if the secure and sound sleep of Peace be once broken and that fierce and brutish Tyger War is awakened when or how he will be lulled into a new sleep the wisest Magistrate cannot fore-tell and therefore will with the more vigilance discountenance and suppress such bustlers who impudently make their way with their elbows into modest company to dispose them to suspect and then to censure the wisdom of their Fore-fathers for having bin swaied by their own illiterate experience so as to prefer it before the cleer reason of thinking and Learned Men who by cogitation have found a surer way for their security and there cannot be a more certain Expedient found out for the dissolving the Peace of any Nation how firmly soever establish'd then by giving leave or permitting men of parts and unrestrain'd fancy to examine the constitution of the Government both Ecclesiastical and Civil and to vent and publish what their wit and inventions may suggest to them upon or against the same which would expose the gravity and wisdom of all Government the infallibility of Scripture and the Omnipotence of God himself by their light and scurrilous questions and instances to the mirth and contemt of all men who are without an awful veneration for either of which there needs not be a more convincing evidence then the presumtion of Mr. Hobbes throughout his Leviathan of which it will not be possible not to give some in the progress we shall make He is over subtle in his Distinction that every crime is a sin but not every sin a crime that from the relation of sin to the Law and of crime to the Civil Law may be inferr'd that where the Law ceaseth sin ceaseth that the Civil Law ceasing crimes cease and yet that violation of Covenants Ingratitude Arrogance can never cease to be sin yet are no crimes because there is no place for accusation every man being his own Judg and accused only by his own conscience and cleer'd by the uprightness of his own intention and when his intention is right his fact is no sin if otherwise his fact is sin but no crime that when the Soveraign power ceaseth that is when the King is so oppressed that he cannot exercise his power crime also ceaseth there being no protection where there is no power which he is careful to repete whether it be to the purpose or as sure it is not very pertinent in the difference between sin and crime And to all that huddle of words in that whole Paragraph I shall say no more but that it looks like the Discourse of some men which himself saies pag. 39. may be numbred amongst the sorts of madness namely when men speak such words as put together have in them no signification at all by their non-coherence and contradiction False Principles of right and wrong cannot but produce many crimes and the greater the presumtion of those is who publish them the confusion that results thereby must be the greater and yet notwithstanding this bundle of false Principles which are contain'd in this Book the strength of the Laws and the good constitution of the Government hath hitherto for ought appears resisted the operation and malignity of the Institution of his Soveraignty with how much confidence soever offered by him and a true and lawful Soveraign could never be induc'd to affect that power which Mr. Hobbes so frankly assign'd to the Soveraign whom he intended to institute And without doubt that unreasonable Proposition That Justice is but a vain word can never be established for Reason so unanswerably as by the establishment of his Principles which would make all Laws Cobwebs to be blown away by the least breath of the Governor nor by his ratiocination did Marius or Sylla or Cesar ever commit any crime since they were all Soveraigns by acquisition and so in his own judgment possessed of all those powers which arise from his Institution whereby they might do all those acts which they did and no man could complain of injury or injustice every man being the Author of whatever dammage he sustain'd or complain'd of nor will he be able to lay any crime to any of their charges tho he seems to condemn them and at that same time to support his Institution of a Common-wealth But it is the less wonder since from his own constitution according to his first model and knowing from whence his own obedience proceeds he concludes that of all passions that which least inclines men to break the Laws is fear He provides such terrible Laws as no body can love and must fear too much to be willing to be subject to them which want of willingness must make them glad of any alteration which can bring no security to the Soveraign And I cannot enough recommend to Mr. Hobbes that he will revolve his own judgment and determination in this Chapter pag. 158. That he whose error proceedeth from a peremtory pursuit of his own Principles and reasonings is much more faulty then he whose error proceeds from the autority of a Teacher or an Interpreter of the Law publicly autoriz'd and that he that groundeth his actions on his private judgment ought according to the rectitude or error thereof to stand or fall And if his fear be so predominant in him as he conceives it to be in most men it will dispose him first to enquire what the opinion of the Judges is who are the autoriz'd Interpreters of Law before he publishes his seditious
secure from the assault of every other man who hath a right to take it from him But he thinks life too pretious to part with willingly and therefore cares for no more then to invest his Soveraign with a just title to punish how unable soever he leaves him to execute it And truly his fancy is very extraordinary in bringing it to pass He will not suffer his power to punish to be grounded upon the concession or gift of the Subjects from which fountain all his other extravagant powers flow which are as unnatural for them to give but saies it was originally inherent in him by the right of Nature by which every man might subdue or kill another man as he thought best for his own preservation which right still remain'd in him when all other men transferred all their rights to him because he never contracted with them to part with any thing and so he comes pag. 162. to a right to punish whiâ—h was not given but left to him and to him only as entire as in the condition of mere nature Is not this mere fancy without any reason which he needed not have exercis'd to so little purpose to erect a lawful Power which any man may lawfully resist and oppose Nor is the right much greater that is left him then what it seems is tacitly reserv'd to every man who notwithstanding all transferring hath still right to resist the Sword of Justice in his own defence and for ought appears to kill him that carries it So that in truth his Soveraign is vested in no other autority then lawfully to fight so many Duels as the Law hath condemned men to suffer death since he can command none of his Subjects to execute them and they have all lawful power to defend their own lives How this right and autority of punishing came into the hands of the Soveraign we shall not follow his example in repeting having before confessed that it neither is nor can be grounded on any concession or gift of the Subject but is indubitably inherent in the office of being Soveraign and inseparably annexed to it by God himself Corporal or Capital punishment Ignominy Imprisonment or Exile are not better understood then they were before his Definitions and Descriptions which he makes of them and in which he doth not so much consider the nature of a Definition as that he may insert somwhat into it to which he may resort to prove somwhat which men do not think of when they read those Definitions and assuming to himself to declare what will serve his turn to be the Law of Nature or the Law of Nations he makes such Inferences and Consequences as he thinks necessary to prove his desperate Conclusions There cannot be a more pernicious Doctrine and more destructive to Peace and Justice then that all men who are not Subjects are enemies that against enemies whom the Common-wealth judges capable to do them hurt it is lawful by the original right of Nature to make War which would keep up a continual War between all Princes since they are few who are not capable to do hurt to their Neighbors Nor can this mischief be prevented by any Treaty or League for whil'st they are capable of doing hurt the lawfulness still remains and being the original right of Nature cannot be extinguished But the wisest and most Learned who have wrote of the Law of Nature and of Nations abominate this Proposition and the incomparable Grotius saies De Iure B. P. lib. 2. cap. 1. part 17. Illud minime ferendum est quod quidam tradiderunt jure gentium arma recte sumi ad imminuendam potentiam crescentem quae nimium aucta nocere potest It may be a motive when there is other just cause in prudence towards the War but that it gives a title in Justice ab omni aequitatis ratione abhorret And he saies in another place cap. 22. part 5. that it must constare non tantum de potentia sed de animo quidem ita constare ut certum id sit ea certudine quae in morali materia locum habet And yet from this erroneous Proposition and because in pag. 165. War the Sword judgeth not nor doth the victor make distinction of nocent and innocent nor hath other respect of mercy then as it conduceth to the good of his own People he makes no scruple to tell Cromwell That as to those who deliberately deny his Autority for the Autority of the Common-wealth established could have no other signification the vengeance is lawfully extended not only to the Fathers but also to thâ— third and fourth generations not yet in being and consequently innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted because they that so offend suffer not as Subjects but as Enemies towards whom the Victor may proceed as he thinks fit and best for himself After the giving which advice it was a marvellous confidence that introduc'd him into the Kings presence and encourag'd him still to expect that his Doctrine should be allow'd to be industriously taught and believed If Mr. Hobbes were condemn'd to depart out of the dominion of the Common-wealth as many men believe he might with great Justice be and so become an exil'd person he would be a more competent Judg to determine whether Banishment be a punishment or rather an escape or a public command to avoid punishment by flight and he would probably then be of opinion that the mere change of air is a very great punishment And if he remembers his own Definition pag. 108. That a free man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindred to do what he hath a will to he would believe that the taking that freedom from him and the restraining that liberty is a very severe punishment whether justly or unjustly inflicted and is in no degree mitigated by his declaring pag. 165. that a banish'd man is a lawful enemy of the Common wealth that banished him as being no more a member of the same and then he may be lawfully prosecuted as well in and after he hath undergon the punishment of Banishment as he was before but the duty that a banish'd Person still ow's to his Country and to the Soveraign of it is set down before But the truth is he hath very powerfully extinguish'd all those differences and priviledges which all Writers of the Ius gentium have carefully preserv'd between a just and unjâ—st War between lawful Enemies and the worst Rebels and Traitors and hath put the last into a better condition then the former by making them liable only to those pains and forfeiture which the Law hath literally provided for them and which in some cases preserves their Estates for their Families whereas the lawful Enemy even after quarter given remains at the mercy of the Victor who may take his life and inflict any other punishment upon him arbitrarily and
according to his own discretion In the last place he hath very much obliged his Soveraign in telling him so plainly why he hath compared him to Leviathan because he hath raised him to the same greatness and given him the same power which Leviathan is described to have in the 41 Chapter of Iob There is nothing on Earth to be compared with him he is made so as not to be afraid be seeth every high thing to be below him and is King of all the children of pride Job 41. 33 34. And if he had provided as well to secure his high station as he hath for the abatement of the pride of the Subject whom he hath sufficiently humbled he might more glory in his work but the truth is he hath left him in so weak a posture to defend himself that he hath reason to be afraid of every man and the remedies he prescribes afterwards to keep his prodigious power from dissolution are as false and irrational as any other advice in his Institution as will appear hereafter The Survey of Chapter 29. MR. Hobbes takes so much delight in reiterating the many ill things he hath said for fear they do not make impression deep enough in the minds of men that I may be pardon'd if I repete again somtimes what hath bin formerly said as this Chapter consisting most of the same pernicious doctrines which he declar'd before tho in an other dress obliges me to make new or other reflexions upon what was I think sufficiently answer'd before and it may be repete what I have said before He is so jealous that the strength of a better composition of Soveraignty may be superior and be preferr'd before that of his institution that be devises all the way he can to render it more obnoxious to dissolution and like a Mountebank Physician accuses it of diseases which it hath not that he may apply Remedies which would be sure to bring those or worse diseases and would weaken the strongest parts and support of it under pretence of curing its defects So in the first place he finds fault pag. 167. that a man to obtain a Kingdom is sometimes content wâ—th lâ—ss power then to the peace and defence of the Common-wealth is necessarily required that is that he will observe the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom which by long experience have bin found necessary for the Peace and defence of it And to this he imputes the insolence of Thomas Beckett Arch-Bishop of Canterbury pag. 168. who was supported against Harry the Second by the Pope the Subjection of Ecclesiastics to the Common-wealth having he saies bin dispensed with by William the Conquerour at his reception when he took an Oath not to infringe the liberty of the Church And this extravagant power of the Pope he imputes to the Universities and the doctrine taught by them which reproch to the Universities being in a Paragraph of his next Chapter I chuse to join in the answer with the case of Thomas Beckett and Henry the Second Mr. Hobbes hath so great a prejudice to the reading Histories as if they were all enemies to his Government that he will not take the pains carefully to peruse those from which he expects to draw some advantage to himself presuming that men will not believe that a man who so warily weighs all he saies in the balance of reason will ever venture to alledg any matter of fact that he is not very sure of But if he had vouchsafed to look over the Records of his own Country before the time of King Henry the Eight he would have found the Universities alwaies opposed the power of the Pope and would have no dependance upon him and that the Kings alone introduc'd his autority and made it to be submitted to by their Laws Nor did the Church of England owe their large priviledges to any donation of the Popes whose jurisdiction they would never admit but to the extreme devotion and superstition of the People and the piety and bounty of the Kings which gave greater donatives and exemtions to the Church and Clergy then any other Kingdom enjoied or then the Pope gave any where Christianity in the infancy of it wrought such prodigious effects in this Island upon the barbarous affections of the Princes and People who then were the inhabitants of it that assoon as they gave any belief to the History of our Saviour they thought they could not do too much to the Persons of those who preached him and knew best what would be most acceptable to him From hence they built Churches and endow'd them liberally submitted so entirely to the Clergy whom they look'd upon as Sacred persons that they judged all differences and he was not look'd upon as a good Christian who did not entirely resign himself to their disposal they gave great exemtion to the Church and Church men and annex'd such Priviledges to both as testified the veneration they had for the Persons as well as for the Faith And when they suspected that the Licentiousness of succeeding ages might not pay the same devotion to both they did the best they could to establish it by making Laws to that purpose and obliging the several Princes to maintain and defend the rights and priviledges of the Church rights and priviledges which themselves had granted and of which the Pope knew nothing nor indeed at that time did enjoy the like himself It is true that by this means the Clergy was grown to a wonderful power over the People who look'd upon them as more then mortal men and had surely a greater autority then any Clergy in Christendom assum'd in those ages and yet it was generally greater then in other Kingdoms then it hath ever bin since Nor could it be otherwise during the Heptarchy when those little Soveraigns maintain'd their power by the autority their Clergy had with their people when they had little dependence upon the Prince But when by the courage and success of two or three couragious Princes and the distraction that had bin brought upon them by strangers the Government of the whole Island was reduced under one Soveraign the Clergy which had bin alwaies much better united then the Civil state had bin were not willing to part with any autority they had enjoied nor to be thought of less value then they had bin formerly esteemed and so grew troublesom to the Soveraign power somtimes by interrupting the progress of their Councils by delaies and somtimes by direct and positive contradictions The Princes had not the confidence then to resort to Mr. Hobbes's original institution of their right the manners of the Nation still remained fierce and barbarous and whatsoever was pliant in them was from the result of Religion which was govern'd by the Clergy They knew nothing yet of that primitive contract that introduced Soveraignty nor of that Faith that introduced subjection they thought it would not be safe for them to oppose the power of the
Mr. Hobbes an occasion to reproch me with impertinency in this digression tho he hath given me a just provocation to it and since the Roman Writers are so solicitous in the collecting and publishing the Records of that odious Process and strangers are easily induc'd to believe that the exercise of so extravagant a jurisdiction in the Reign of so Heroical a Prince who had extended his Dominions farther by much then any of his Progenitors had don must be grounded upon some fix'd and confess'd right over the Nation and not from an original Usurpation entred upon in that time and when the Usurper was not acknowledged by so considerable a part of Christendom it may not prove ungrateful to many men to make a short view of that very time that we may see what unheard of motives could prevail with that high spirited King to submit to so unheard of Tyranny That it was not from the constitution of the Kingdom or any preadmitted power of the Pope formerly incorporated into the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom is very evident by the like having bin before attemted For tho the Clergy enjoied those great priviledges and immunities which are mention'd before whereby they had so great an influence upon the hearts of the people that the Conqueror himself had bin glad to make use of them and William the Second Henry the First and King Stephen had more need of them to uphold their Usurpation yet those priviledges how great soever depended not at all upon the Bishop of Rome nor was any rank of men more solicitous then the Clergy to keep the Pope from a pretence of power in the Kingdom And the Bishops themselves had in the beginning of that Arch-bishops contumacious and rebellious contests with the King don all they could to discountenance and oppose him and had given their consent in Parliament that for his disobedience all his goods and moveables should be at the Kings mercy and it was also enacted with their consent after the Arch-bishop had fled out of the Kingdom and was known to make some application to the Pope that if any were found carrying a Letter or Mandate from the Pope or the Arch-bishop containing any interdiction of Christianity in England he should be taken and without delay executed as a Traitor both to the King and Kingdom that whatsoever Bishop Priest or Monk should have and retain any such Letters should forfeit all their Possessions Goods and Chattels to the King and be presently banish'd the Realm with their kin that none should appeal to the Pope and many other particulars which enough declare the temper of that Catholic time and their aversion to have any dependance upon a foreign jurisdiction And after the death of Beckett and that infamous submission of the King to the Popes Sentence thereupon which yet was not so scandalous as it is vulgarly reported as if it had bin made and undergon by the King in Person when the same King desir'd to assist the Successor of that Pope Lucius the Third who was driven out of Rome and to that purpose endeavour'd to raise a collection from the Clergy which the Popes Nuntio appear'd in and hoped to advance the Clergy was so jealous of having to do with the Pope or his Ministers that they declar'd and advised the King that his Majesty would supply the Pope in such a proportion as he thought fit and that whatever they gave might be to the King himself and not to the Popes Nuntio which might be drawn into example to the detriment of the King The King himself first shewed the way to Thomas a Beckett to apply himself to the Pope till when the Arch-bishop insisted only upon his own Ecclesiastical rights and power in which he found not the concurrence of the other Bishops or Clergy and the King not being able to bear the insolence of the man and finding that he could well enough govern his other Bishops if they were not subjected to the autority and power of that perverse Arch bishop was willing to give the Pope autority to assist him and did all he could to perswade him to make the Arch-bishop of York his Legate meaning thereby to devest the other Arch-bishop of that Superiority over the Clergy that was so troublesom to him and which he exercis'd in his own right as Metropolitan But the Pope durst not gratifie the King therein knowing the spirit of Beckett and that he would contemn the Legate and knew well the Ecclesiastical superiority in that Kingdom to reside in his person as Arch-bishop of Canterbury who had bin reputed tanquam alterius Orbis Papa yet he sent to him to advise him to submit to the King whereupon the haughty Prelate then fled out of the Kingdom and was too hard for the King with the Pope who was perswaded by him to make use of this opportunity to enlarge his own power and to curb and subdue that Clergy that was indevoted to him and so by his Bull he suspended the Arch-bishop of York and the other Bishops who adher'd to the King in the execution of his commands which so much incens'd the King that he let fall those words in his passion that encouraged those rash Gentlemen to commit that assassination that produc'd so much trouble It must also be remembred that the King when he bore all this from the Pope was indeed but half a King having caused his son Henry to be crown'd King with him who thereupon gave him much trouble and join'd with the French King against him and that he had so large and great Territories in France that as the Popes power was very great there so his friendship was the more behovefull and necessary to the King Lastly and which it may be is of more weight then any thing that hath bin said in this disquisition it may seem a very natural judgment of God Almighty that the Pope should exercise that unreasonable power over a King who had given him an absurd and unlawful power over himself and for an unjust end when he obtain'd from our Country-man Pope Adrian who immediatly preceded Alexander a Dispensation not to perform the Oath which he had taken that his Brother Geoffery should enjoy the County of Anjoy according to the Will and desire of his Father and by vertue of that Dispensation which the Pope had no power to grant defrauded his Brother of his inheritance and broke his Oath to God Almighty and so was afterwards forced himself to yield to the next Pope when he assum'd a power over him in a case he had nothing to do with and where he had no mind to obey And this unadvised address of many other Princes to the Pope for Dispensations of this kind to do what the Law of God did not permit them to do hath bin a principal inlet of his Supremacy to make them accept of other Dispensations from him of which they stand not in need and to admit other his incroachments from
him which have proved very mischievous to them Of the condition of King Iohn we need not speak whose Usurpation Murders and absence of all Virtue made him fit to undergo all the reproches and censures which Pope Innocent the Third exercis'd him with when he usurped upon France with equal Tyranny The succeeding Kings no sooner found it necessary to expel or restrain that power which the Popes had so inconveniently bin admitted to and which they had so mischievously improv'd but the Universities not only submitted to but advanced those Acts which tended thereunto as appears by the Writings of Occam and other Learned men in the University of Oxford in the Reigns of those Kings both Edward the First and Edward the Third in which times as much was don against the power of the Pope as was afterwards don by Henry the Eighth himself And the Gallican Church would not at this time have preserved their liberties and priviledges to that degree as to contemn the power of the universal Bishop if the University of the Sorbone had not bin more vigilant against those incroachments then the Crown it self So far have the Universities bin from being the Authors or promoters of those false doctrines which he unjustly laies to their charge And I presume they will be as vigilant and resolute to preserve the Civil Autority from being invaded and endangered by their receiving and subscribing to his pernicious and destructive principles which his modesty is induced to believe may be planted in the minds of men because whole Nations have bin brought to acquiesce in the great mysteries of Christian Religion which are above reason and millions of men have bin made to believe that the same body may be in innumerable places at one and the same time which is against reason and therefore he would have the Soveraign power to make his Doctrine so consonant to reason to be taught and preached But his Doctrine is fit only to be taught by his own Apostles who ought to be looked upon as Seducers and false Prophets and God forbid that the Soveraign powers should contribute to the making those principles believed which would be in great danger to be destroied if it were but suspected that they affected to have that power which he would have to belong to them And such Princes who have bin williâ—g to believe they have it have bin alwaies most jealous that it should be known or thought that they do believe so since they know there would be a quick determination of their power if all their Subjects knew that they believed that all they have doth in truth belong to them and that they may dispose of it as they please Pag. 168. He saies a Common-wealth hath many diseases which proceed from the poison of Seditious doctrines whereof one is That every private man is Iudg of good and evil actions which is a doctrine never allow'd in any Common-wealth the Law being the measure of all good or evil actions under every Government and where that Law permits a liberty to the Subject to dispute the commands of the Soveraign no inconvenience can arise thereby but if the Soveraign by his own autority shall vacate and cancel all Laws the Common-wealth must need be distracted or much weakned Mr. Hobbes will have too great an advantage against any adversary if he will not have his Government tried by any Law nor his Religion by any Scripture and he could never think that the believing that pag. 168. whatsoever a man doth against his conscience is sin is a Doctrine to civil Society repugnant if he thought any of the Apostles good Judges of Conscience who all upon all occasions and in all actions commend themselves to every mans conscience 2. Cor. 4. 2. as also Our rejoicing is this the Testimony of our conscience 2 Cor. 1 12. and throughout the whole New Testament the conscience is made the Judg of all we do And if Mr. Hobbes had not so often excepted against Divines for being good Judges in Religion I could tell him of very good ones who are of opinion that it is a sin to do any thing against an erroneous conscience which is his own best excuse that he will not depart from his own judgment which is his conscience how erroneous soever it is But this liberty of Conscience is restrain'd only to those Cases where the Law hath prescribed no rule for where the Law enjoins the duty no private conscience can deny obedience In case of misperswasion it looks upon the action as sinful in him and so chuses to submit to the penalty which is still obedience or removes into another Climate as more agreeable to his constitution If Mr. Hobbes proposes to himself to answer all extravagant discourses or private opinions of seditious men which have no countenance from public Autority he will be sure to chuse such as he can easily confute All sober men agree that tho Faith and Sanctity are not to be attain'd only by study and reading yet that study and reading are means to procure that grace from God Almighty that is necessary thereunto And himself confesseth that with all his education discipline correction and other natural waies it is God that worketh that Faith and Sanctity in those he thinks fit So that if he did not think men the more unlearn'd for being Divines it is probable that there is very little difference between what those unlearned Divines and himself say upon this point saving that they may use inspiring and infusing which are words he cannot endure as insignificant speech tho few men are deceiv'd in the meaning of them If all Soveraigns are subject to the Laws of Nature as he saies they are because such Laws are divine and cannot by any man or Common-wealth be abrogated they then are oblig'd to observe and perform those Laws which themselves have made and promised to observe for violation of faith is against the Law of Nature by his own confession Nor doth this obligation set any Judg over the Soveraign nor doth any civil Law pretend that there is any power to punish him it is enough that in justice he ought to do it and that there is a Soveraign in Heaven above him tho not on Earth The next indeed is a Doctrine that troubles him and tends as he saies pag. 169. to the dissolution of a Common-wealth That every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods such as excludes the right of the Soveraign which if true he saies p. 170. he cannot perform the Office they have put him into which is to defend them both from Foreign Enemies and from the injuries of one another and consequently there is no longer a Common wealth And I say if it be not true there is nothing worth the defending from Foreign Enemies or from one another and consequently it is no matter what becomes of the Common-wealth Can he defend them any other way then by their own help with
which immediatly follows and therefore I shall make no reflexions upon what he saies concerning it till we come thither nor upon his Worship and Attributes which he assigns to God or rather what are not Attributes to him in which under pretence of explaining or defining he makes many things harder then they were before As all men who know what the meaning of knowledg and understanding is know it less after they are told that iâ— is pag. 190. nothing else but a tumult in the mind raised by external things that press the organical parts of mans body And I must confess he hath throughout this whole Chapter with wonderful art by making use of very many easie proper and very significant words made a shift to compound the whole so involv'd and intricate that there is scarce a Chapter in his Book the sense whereof the Reader can with more difficulty carry about him and observe the several fallacies and contradictions in it Of which kind of obscurity Mr. Hobbes makes as much use as of his brightest elucidations and having the Soveraign power over all definitions which he uses not as is don in Geometry which he saies is the only science it hath pleased God hithâ—rto to bestow upon man-kind as preliminaries or postulata by which men may know the setled signification of words but reserves the prerogative to himself to give new Definitions as often as he hath occasion to use the same terms that when it conduces to his purpose he may inform his Reader or else perplex him And therefore he doth not think himself safe in the former plain Definition which he gives of understanding pag. 17. that it is nothing else but conception caused by speech by which speech being peculiar to man understanding must be peculiar to him also but now being in his one and thirtieth Chapter and to deprive God of understanding that Definition will not serve his turn since it cannot be doubted but that God doth hear all we say and therefore we are to be amuzed by being told pag. 190. that understanding is nothing else but a tumult of the mind raised by external things that press the organical parts of mans body So that there being no such thing in God and it depending on natural causes cannot be attributed to him And now he is as safe as ever he was and let him that finds no tumult in his mind that presses the organical parts of his body get knowledg and understanding as he can I am not willing under pretence of adjourning some reflexions which would be natural enough upon this Chapter to a more seasonable occasion for enlargement upon the third part of his Discourse to be thought purposely to pretermit some of his Expressions in this Chapter which seem to have somwhat of Piety and of Godliness in them and to raise hope that his purposes are yet better then they appear'd to be After all that illimited power he hath granted to his Soveraign and all that unrestrain'd obedience which he exacts from his Subject he doth in the first Paragraph of this Chapter frankly acknowledg pag. 186. that the Subjects owe simple obedience to their Soveraign only in those things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the Law of God and is very solicitous so to instruct his Subject that for want of entire knowledg of his duty to both Laws he may neither by too much civil obedience offend the Divine Majesty or through fear of offending God transgress the Commandments of the Commonwealth a circumspection worthy the best Christian and is enough to destroy many of the Prerogatives which he hath given to his Soveraign and to cancel many of the Obligations he hath impos'd upon his Subject But if the Reader will suspend his judgment till he hath read a few leaves more he will find that Mr. Hobbes hath bin wary enough to do himself no harm by his specious Divinity but hath a salvo to set all streight again for he makeâ— no scruple of determining pag. 199. That the Books of the holy Scripture which only contain the Laws of God are only Canonical when they are establish'd for such by the Soveraign power So that when he hath suspended obedience to the Soveraign in those things wherein their obedience is repugnant to the Law of God it is meant only till the Soveraign declares that it is not repugnant to the Law of God with other excellent Doctrine the examination whereof we must not anticipate before its time and shall only wonder at his devout provision pag. 191. that Praiers and Thanksgiving to God be the best and most significant of honor And whereas most pious men are of opinion that rhose Devotions being the most sincere and addressed to none but to God himself who at the same time sees the integrity of the heart ought to be without the least affectation of Word or elegance of Expression he will have them pag. 192. made in words and phrases not sudden and plebeian but beautiful and well compos'd for else we do not God so much honor as we may and therefore he saies Tho the Heathen did â—â—surdly to worship Images for Gods yet their doing it in verse and with music both of voice and instrument was reasonable I cannot omit the observation of his very conâ—ident avoiding that place in the Scripture pag. 193. It is better to obey God then man which he could not but find did press him very hard and was worthy of a better answer then that it hath place in the Kingdom of God by pact and not by nature which if it be an answer hath not that perspicuity in it which good Geometricians require and the answer stands much more in need of a Commentary then the Text which he will supply us with in the next Edition However let it be as it will he hath he saies pag. 193. recover'd some hope that at one time or other this writing of his may fall into the hands of a Soveraign who will consider it himself he acknowledg'd at that time no Soveraign but Cromwell and without the help of any interessed or envious Interpreter and by the exercise of entire Soveraignty in protecting the public teaching it convert the truth of speculation into the utility of practice It is one of the unhappy effects which a too gracious and merciful Indulgence ever produces in corrupt and proud natures that they believe that whatsoever is tolerated in them is justified and commended and because Mr. Hobbes hath not receiv'd any such brand which the Authors of such Doctrine have bin usually mark'd with nor hath seen his Book burned by the hand of the Hang-man as many Books more innocent have bin he is exalted to a hope that the supreme Magistrate will at some time so far exercise his Soveraignty as to protect the public teaching his Principles and convert the truth of his Speculation into the utility of practice But he might remember and all those who are
scandaliz'd that such monstrous and seditious Discourses have so long escaped a judicial Examination and Punishment must know that Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan was printed and publish'd in the highest time of Cromwell's wicked Usurpation for the vindication and perpetuating whereof it was contriv'd and design'd and when all Legal power was suppress'd and upon his Majesties blessed return that merciful and wholsom Act of Oblivion which pardon'd all Treasons and Murders Sacriledg Robbery Heresies and Blasphemies as well with reâ—erence to their Writings as their Persons and other Actions did likewise wipe out the memory of the Enormities of Mr. Hobbes and his Leviathan And this hath bin the only reason why the last hath bin no more enquired into then the former it having bin thought best that the impious Doctrines of what kind soever which the license of those times produc'd should rather expire by neglect and the repentance of the Authors then that they should be brought upon the Stage again by a solemn and public condemnation which might kindle some parts of the old Spirit with the vanity of contradiction which would otherwise in a short time be extinguish'd and it is only in Mr. Hobbes his own power to reverse the security that Act hath given him by repeting his former Errors by making what was his Off-spring in Tyrannical Times when there was no King in Israel his more deliberate and legitimate Issue and Productions in a time when a lawful Government flourishes which cannot connive at such bold Transgressors and Transgressions and he will then find that it hath fallen into the hands of a Soveraign that hath consider'd it very well not by allowing the public teaching it but by a declared detestation and final snppression of it and enjoining the Author a public recantation We shall conclude here our disquisition of his Policy and Government of his Commonwealth with the recollecting and stating the excellent Maximes and Principles upon which his Government is founded and supported that when they appear naked and uninvolv'd in his magisterial Discourses men may judg of the liberty and security they should enjoy if Mr. Hobbes Doctrine were inculcated into the minds of men by their Education and the Industry of those Masters under whom they are to be bred as he thinks it necessary it should be which Principles are in these very terms declared by him 1. That the Kings word is sufficient to take any thing from any Subject when there is need and that the King is Iudg of that need pag. 106. cap. 20. part 2. 2. The Liberty of a subject lieth only in those things which in regulating their actions the Soveraign hath pretermitted such as is the liberty to buy and sell and otherwise to contract with one another to chuse their own abode their own diet their own trade of life and institute their children as they themselves think fit and the like pag. 109. cap. 21. par 2. 3. Nothing the Soveraign can do to a subject on what pretence soever can properly be called injustice or injury pag. 109. 4. When a Soveraign Prince putteth to death an innocent subject tho the action be against the Law of Nature as being contrary to Equity yet it is not an injury to the subject but to God pag. 109. 5. No man hath liberty to resist the word of the Soveraign but in case a great many men together have already resisted the Soveraign power unjustly or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expecteth death they have liberty to join together and to assist and defend one another pag. 112. 6. If a Soveraign demand or take any thing by pretence of his power there lieth in that case no action at Law pag. 112. 7. If a subject be taken prisoner in War or his person or his means of life be within the guards of the Enemy and hath his life and corporal liberty given him on condition to be subject to the Victor he hath liberty to accept the condition and having accepted it is the subject of him that took him pag. 114. 8. If the Soveraign banish the subject during the banishment he is no subject pag. 114. 6. The obligation of subjects to the Soveraign is as long and no longer then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them pag. 124. 10. Whatever Promises or Covenants the Soveraign makes are void pag. 89. 11. He whose private interest is to be judged in an assembly may make as many friends as he can and tho he hires such friends with mony yet it is not injustice pag. 122. cap. 22. part 2. 12. The propriety which a subject hath in his Lands consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them and not to exclude their Soveraign pag. 128. cap. 24. part 2. 13. When the Soveraign commandeth a man to do that which is against Law the doing of it is totally excus'd when the Soveraign commandeth any thing to be don against Law the command as to that particular fact is an abrogation of the Law pag. 157. cap. 27. part 2. 14. Tho the right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguish'd by the act of another yet the obligation of the members may for he that wants protection may seek it any where and when he hath it is oblig'd without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himself out of fear to protect his Protector as long as he is able pag. 174. cap. 29. part 2. If upon the short reflexions we have made upon these several Doctrines as they lie scattered over his Book and involv'd in other Discourses which with the novelty administers some pleasure to the unwary Reader the contagion thereof be not enough discover'd and the ill consequence and ruine that must attend Kings and Princes who affect such a Government as well as the misery insupportable to Subjects who are compelled to submit to it it may be the view of the naked Propositions by themselves without any other clothing or disguise of words may better serve to make them oqious to King and People and that the first will easily discern to how high a pinnacle of power soever he would carry him he leaves him upon such a Precipice from whence the least blast of Invasion from a Neighbor or from Rebellion by his Subjects may throw him headlong to irrecoverable ruine and the other will as much abhor an Allegiance of that temper that by any misfortune of their Prince they may be absolv'd from and cease to be Subjects when their Soveraign hath most need of their obedience And surely if these Articles of Mr. Hobbes's Creed be the product of right Reason and the effects of Christian Obligations the great Turk may be look'd upon as the best Philosopher and all his Subjects as the best Christians The Third Part. The Survey of Chapters 32 33 34. AS we had no reason to expect a rational discourse of civil Government and Policy when the opinion and
a purpose to raise more veneration towards the holy Prophets recorded in the sacred story when he took such pains to examine the Etymology of their title and appellation which he saies pag 224. sometimes signifies a foreteller of things to come and sometimes one that speaketh incoherently as men that are distracted and thence goes to their commission and qualification how they came to know the will and pleasure of God And when he hath brought their title as low as he thinks fit and their qualifications as mean he is contented that the name of a Prophet pag. 225. may be given not improperly to them that in Christian Churches have a calling to say public Praiers for the Congregation But that they may not be too much exalted with the vocation he allows prophecy to signify that which Women may do in the Church and at last is content that the Heathen Poets shall likewise be called Prophets all which he concludes from several texts of Scripture which he chuses to make use of What man of a sincere and pious heart could in order to contradict the literal sense of that expression and Argument of the Prophet David and which may well be understood literally Shall he that made the eie not see and he that made the ear not hear controul it by such an instance as would be little less then Blasphemy to repete and to which I shall only apply a sage saying of his own pag. 34. that an Anatomist or a Physician may speak or write his judgment of unclean things because it is not to please but profit but for another man to write his extravagant and pleasant fancies of the same is as if a man from being tumbled in the dirt should come and present himself before good company an animadversion he will do well to remember upon many occasions wherein he transgresses it What his design was by torturing so many Texts of Scripture to make it believ'd that the extraordinary Prophets in the old Testament took no other notice of the word of God nor had any other knowledg of it then from apparitions and dreams that is to say pag. 227. from the imagination which they had in their sleep or in an extasy may well be suspected when he contributes so little to advance the reverence that is due to Gods Word or the honour that is due to the memory of those Saints the Prophets neither the one or the other being in any degree improved to say no worse of it by the whole discourse of that his first Chapter in which he thinks he hath said enough to perswade his disciples from so many Texts of Scripture and his commentaries upon them that the Soveraign power is the Soveraign Prophet who hath under God the Autority to govern the People and that they are bound to observe for a rule pag. 232. that Doctrine which he hath commanded to be taught and thereby to examine and try the truths of those Doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance And it is the more observable that he gave this Soveraign power to Cromwell and annex'd to it this Soveraign Prophesy that he might establish his Throne for ever Nor could he have in all this any intention so opposite to his purposes as when he had subjected all Laws to his Sword without any violation of justice to subdue the Gospel too to the same arbitriment that he might reform the one as he had don the other And the rather because tho the Law was quiet whilst his Soveraign power proceeded according to his own institution without any controul yet the Gospel was troublesome to him by the noise of his own Clergy who had interpreted the Scripture according to his own spirit and purposes whilst the contest was with the King but now found that all his own designs and assuming the Soveraignty himself was expresly against the word of God and they found so much credit with the people that they had so long deluded that he foresaw a storm coming against him that he could hardly ride out And therefore Mr. Hobbes brought him a very seasonable relief in making a doubt when novelties were so much in request and the minds of the People so well prepar'd to hearken to what they had never before heard of whether there were any such thing as the word of God at least that that was not it which they took to be so and that if the ten Commandments were agreeable to his sense yet that they were not words spoken by him and then in bringing the autority and qualifications of the Prophets themselves so low that there was room enough left to doubt whether they were alwaies in the right From whence he might easily expose his Enemies who succeed them in the office of informing and instructing them in the Laws and good pleasures of God as men without a lawful mission and autority to pronounce those things they do And upon those weighty reasons he takes upon him to advise the People to be very circumspective pag. 230. and wary in obeying the voice of man that pretending himself to be a Prophet requires us to obey God in that way which he in Gods name tells us is the way to happiness For he in that pretends to govern them that is to say to rule and reign over them which is a thing that all men naturally desire and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and imposture and consequently ought to be examin'd and tried by every man before he yields them obedience And having thus deprav'd the rule the Word of God by which they were to walk and vilified the Preachers who are to instruct them how they may observe that Rule he hath enough amuz'd them to refer them for a complete and perfect information and satisfaction to his Soveraign power who is his Soveraign Prophet that is Cromwell himself to be told by him what they are to believe and what they are to do and to conform themselves thereunto and in his absence to what they shall be directed by those who are autoriz'd by him to inform them it being reasonably to be presum'd that they are p. 232. men to whom God hath given a part of the Spirit of their Soveraign I wish with all my heart that it were within my comprehension how Mr. Hobbes can be absolv'd from this naughty and impious discourse since he could not hope thereby to render himself gracious to any other Soveraign upon Earth since they all detest the power he would invest them with as a means to extirpate Christian Religion out of their Dominions which depends solely upon the universal veneration to the Scripture upon which if secular and politic interests did not fan a small Fire that would easily be extinguish'd into a flame there are not in sixteen hundred years many such differences grown in the interpretation thereof as must exclude any pious believer from Heaven if in his life he
believe what he will he shall perish for speaking lies And if he will believe St. Paul he will not find the heart to be the seat that comprehends all Christian Religion but that the tongue hath a very necessary part assign'd to it to perform If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Iesus and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved Rom. 10. â— Salvation would be gotten at too cheap a rate if believing would serve the turn and men might speak and do what they find most convenient Words are actions in his own judgment and to be punish'd with the same severity Our Saviour had provided very ill for the propagation of his Faith if he had left a latitude for men to deny him in their words so they confessed him in their hearts How many Converts would that secret and reserv'd belief and confession have produc'd Confession with mouth as it is the more generous so it is the more avowed and declar'd way of doing God service He cannot confess him with his mouth that doth not believe him in his heart and he doth believe him in his heart to no purpose that will not confess him with his mouth A man cannot be a true Christian without both There may be some men who may be possessed with as much fear as Mr. Hobbes and as good Courtiers as he in submitting to the commands of their Soveraign of what kind soever but I have not heard that any man doth so frankly own it as he doth and the expedient that he hath found might have saved many hundred thousand lives of the Christians in the primitive persecution when the greatest part of them were not required with their mouth to deny Jesus Christ but to acknowledg Iupiter or Venus or Apollo according to the Religion of the Climate to be Gods and to worship them which after they were Christians they could not do so that their Martyrdom was that they chose to lose their lives with the most terrible circumstances of Torment rather then they would lie and say that they believ'd them to be Gods when they knew they were not so and the Church hath never doubted of their being Martyrs very precious in the eies of God But we shall have occasion to resume this argument of Martyrs again very shortly But it is not reasonable to believe or expect that those or any other Texts of Scripture can make any impression upon Mr. Hobbes when he is able to save himself harmless from that determination and declaration of our Saviour Who so dâ—nieth me before men I will deny him before my Father which is in Heaven by saying roundly that whatsoever a Subject is compell'd to do in obedience to his Soveraign and doth it not in order to his own mind that action is not his but his Soveraigns nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men but his Governor so that he is well content to shift of his own damnation to his Soveraign But that this distinction will not serve his turn is evident to all but the Casuists of his own faith and t will concern him to find a better way to defend himself for committing Adultery Theft Murder or any other wickedness God hath forbidden if his Soveraign commands him then he hath taught any other men who believe his doctrine and who deserve more satisfaction from him for depending upon his reason I know no difficulty in resolving his case of conscience concerning his Mahometan in a Christian Common-wealth nor can doubt but that he which is a true Mahometan and believes that Mahomet will not permit him to be present at the divine Service in a Christian Church which I do not think the Mahometans restrain'd from out of their own Country no more then the Jews who make no scruple to be present at Common Praier or Mass if it be attended with any convenience looking upon themselves only as being present in the company not at the devotion Yet I say if he believes it he doth well not to obey his Soveraigns commands and is much the honester men in avoiding the doing against conscience however erroneous it may be Nor will any part of that tragical inference follow that then any private man may disobey their Princes in maintenance of any Religion true or false there being other trials for the punishment of those then the bare word and command of the Prince There are two conclusions which reasonably result from Mr. Hobbes his Axiome and which may prove beneficial to him the first is that we may believe that he doth not himself believe one word in his Book that we find fault with for writing is at least as external a thing as speaking and therefore keeping his heart right he might have the same liberty the Prophet gave to Naaman and write what his Soveraign Cromwell commanded him or what he discern'd would be so acceptable to him that it would procure him his protection which ought to have the same force with him as his command The other is that when ever he shall be commanded by the King or required by any Court of Law which is the voice of the King to retract and recant whatever is condemned in this Book he will cheerfully and with a better conscience renounce them all and write an other Book more reasonably in the confutation of his errors in this But then he is upon an other disadvantage which is very grievous to an honest man that when he makes that recantation no man will believe that it is the thoughts of his heart but only his profession with the tongue which being but an external thing he doth signify his obedience to that autority to which he is Subject without any remorse for the wickedness of his former writing The truth is this licence which he avows how odious and impious soever hath in it self likewise so much of levity and extreme weakness that a man may depart a little from his gravity in answering it and wonder why he did not make use of a Text of Euripides englisht in Hudibras who is much a graver writer and far better Casuist as an autority to support his doctrine Oaths are but words and words but wind Too feeble instruments to bind c. He knows well that in the custom of speaking worse cannot be said of any man then that he is ready to say any thing he is bid and the natural judgment upon him is that no man believes any thing he saies Error is naturally pregnant and the more desperate it is the more fruitful Mr. Hobbes well foresaw that the latitude he assum'd to himself could not consist with the courage of the blessed Martyrs of the Christian Faith who had laid down their lives rather then they would with their tongue which would have saved their lives deny their Saviour or say they did not believe in him upon the command of what Emperour of Soveraign
Reason which proves that it ought to be so so Mr. Hobbes who when History controuls him thinks it a sufficient answer to say If it was not so it should be so as unreasonably follows the same method and would by the ill consequences which would flow from such a right devest the Pope of an autority which he confidently saies was granted to him immediately by our Saviour and hath bin enjoied by his Predecessors from that time to this Which if true all the arguments from Reason may fortifie but can never shake a Right so founded upon a clear and plain Grant from one who had an Original power to grant and wherewith the possession hath gon ever since He therefore who will pertinently answer and controul these pretences which Mr. Hobbes can well do if it would not cross some other of his Doctrines must do it by positively denying any such grant which never was nor ever can be produced in such plain and significant terms as are necessary to the grant of the most inferior Office in any Church or State He would make it manifestly appear that for many hundreds of Years no Bishop of Rome made the least pretence to any such Soveraignty and when they began to make it with what a torrent of contradiction it was rejected He would make it evident that all that power which that See assum'd was granted to them by Kings and Princes and restor'd to them again when they were oppressed by their own Factions and Schisms and by more powerful Enemies He would point out the very Article of time when by the Incursions of the Goths and Vandals into Italy and the foul arts practiced by the Popes their autority by degrees increased to a great height by the bounty of Charlemain in making them great Temporal Princes against the inconvenience whereof he thought he had sufficiently provided when he reserved to himself and succeeding Emperors to make all the Popes He would shew them many wonderful accidents by which the power of the Emperor grew to decay and the weakness of all neighbor Kings and Princes by the Rebellions in their several Kingdoms and their unreasonable bloody Wars amongst themselves and then the artifices still practiced by the Popes to foment those Divisions and to contribute to their own Greatness Usurpation notwithstanding all which that there hath not bin one Century of Years from St. Peter to this time that there hath not bin some notorious opposition and contradiction to that Supremacy which was argument enough that it was never look'd upon as a Catholic verity All this he would prove to be true as likewise that no Prince of the Roman communion who at present is most indulgent to it as all of them are in such a degree as is most advantageous to their own affairs look upon it as such and that a submission to the Popes autority except it be commanded or allowed by the King and the Law is not taken for a part of Religion in any Kingdom but that of England This is the method that must be taken towards the enervating those high pretences and if it were vigorously pursued by one well versed in the Pontifical Histories in which he needs no other witness then their own Records I mean Popish Writers all the World would be convinc'd except only such Princes who are very well paid for the communication of part of their Soveraignty to him that the Pope hath not out of his own Dominions so much as the power of the Metropolitan Schole-master which Mr. Hobbes seems willing to confer upon him The Survey of Chapter 43. HE who hath taken so ill a Survey of Heaven if self is not like to be a good guide for the way thither which is the business of his forty third Chapter and which into how little room soever he brings all that is necessary to Salvation would be very difficult to find if it were not for his old expedient his Soveraigns commands since the most prescrib'd and known way which hath bin thought to lead thither is quite damm'd up by him the Scriptures pag. 323. That which made the Patriarchs and the Prophets of old to believe was God himself who spake unto them supernaturally and the person whom the Apostles and Disciples that conversed with Christ believ'd was our Saviour himself But of us to whom neither God the Father nor our Saviour ever spoke he saies it cannot be said that the person whom we believe is God So that the Faith of Christians ever since our Saviours time hath had no other foundation then the reputation of their Pastors and the Old and New Testament which their Soveraign Princes have made the rule of their Faith which Princes are the only persons whom Christians now hear speak from God and to whom consequently they are beholding for their Salvation Admit that single contracted Article Iesus is Christ comprehends all that is necessary to Salvation for he confesses that he who holdeth that foundation Iesus is the Christ holdeth expressly all that he seeth rightly deduc'd from it and implicitly all that is consequent thereunto tho he have not skill enough to discern the consequence I demand still how they shall believe this Article whom their Soveraigns forbid to look upon the New Testament as Scripture which is all the evidence they can have for it and yet he saies pag. 327. for the belief of this Article we are to reject the autority of an Angel from Heaven much more of any mortal man if he teach the contrary I know well he reconciles this contradiction by believing in the heart and denying with the tongue having the example of Naaman But how shall he believe in his heart if he be depriv'd of the New Testament and if he doth come to believe in his heart as he ought to do what affection and duty can he have for that Soveraign who will not be saved himself and requires him to renounce his Saviour He must be content with a mere verbal affection without any influence upon the heart which is much less duty then he requires towards his Soveraign whom he is so intirely to obey that he must say all he bids him say and do all he bids him do so much more duty he requires for his Earthly then for his Heavenly Soveraign I wish with all my heart that Mr. Hobbes did remember or believe his own good rule in the end of this Chapter which would have preserved him from many presumtions which administer great trouble and grief to his Readers for his sake pag. 331. It is not the bare words but the scope of the Writer that giveth the true light by which any writing is to be interpreted and they that insist upon single Texts without considering the main design can derive nâ—thing from them clearly but rather by casting atomes of Scripture as dust before mens eies make every thing more obscure then it is an ordinary artifice he saies of those that seek
they would have understood him better if he had said that sight is a faculty that God hath given to living creatures who keep their eies open However whether it be clear or no it serves his turn by his skill in Optics and the unskilfulness he concludes most other men have in that science to examine that part of the Religion of the Gentiles which was called Demonology And by the credit that kind of learning had got among the Jews he finds a way to controul the literal sense of the Scripture in the most important places and to undermine the miracles which were wrought by our Saviour himself Rather then he will have his Geography and Geometry contradicted and because there pag. 354 is not any Mountain high enough he saies to shew him one whole Hemisphere he will have the Devil 's carrying our Saviour unto a high Mountain and all that relates thereunto to be nothing else but a vision or dream then which no Jew could more undervalue it or Christ be more dishonour'd then to have his conflict with the enemy of mankind to be look'd on only and consider'd as a dream And that his Philosophy may be preserved unhurt which assures him that no corporeal Spirit may be in a body of Flesh and Bone full already of vital and animal Spirits he will not believe that our Saviour ever cast the Devil out of any man only pag. 354. that he cured those persons of madness or Lunacy which cures have bin wrought by many other Persons and so would be unworthy to be reckon'd amongst the Miracles of Christ. Nor will he admit that Satan otherwise entred into Iudas then that he had a traiterous intention of selling his Master I wonder he doth not impute his hanging himself afterwards or hanging in the air to nothing but a fit of Melancholy Under pretence of informing and reforming the Church of Rome in their worshipping of Images which he saies and it may be reasonably is a relique of Gentilism and rather left then brought into the Church he could not avoid persecuting it to Idolatry which he doth not think well enough defin'd nor well enough defended by Christian Divines And remembring how he preserved himself from renouncing our Saviour when he denied that he believed in him by believing in him in his heart at the same time that he denied him upon his Soveraigns command he will not deprive his Soveraign of that prerogative nor be without the benefit of his own fear in the liberty to commit Idolatry And therefore that he may not be thought to do any thing out of ignorance of wickedness he is not so tender he declares frankly that pag. 360. to pray to the King for fair weaâ—her or for any thing which God only can do for us is divine worship and Idolatry on the other side if the King compel a man to it by the terror of death or other great corporal punishment it is not Idolatry for the worship which the Soveraign commandeth to be don unto himself by the terror of his Law is not a sign that he that obeieth him doth inwardly honor him as a God but that he is desirous to save himself from death or from a miserable life and that which is not a sâ—gn of internal honor is no worship and therefore no Idolatry The sum is that there is no wickedness for there can be no greater wickedness then Idolatry which a man may not commit to save his life or to avoid pain which is a Thesis in Mr. Hobbes's Religion suitable to the rest of his policy and piety and might properly have bin controuled by his own love of Justice of which he would be thought to be an Idolater for he saies pag. 74 that which gives to human action the relish of Iustice is a certain nobleness and gallantness of courage rarely found by which a man scorns to be beholding for the contentment of his life to fraud or breach of promise And sure he hath as great obligations to preserve him from Idolatry and therefore I wish that to the great bulk of scorn of which he is possess'd he had that scorn likewise added to be beholding to such an expedient for the preservation of his life That this Doctrine of Mr. Hobbes is very pernicious and destructive to the very essence of Religion cannot be doubted by Pious and Religious men But what kind of arguments to apply towards the information or conversion of him is very difficult to find That which is got by reasoning from the autority of Books will work nothing upon him pag. 367. because it is not knowledg but faith So that the example of Socrates who scorned to redeem his life by the least trespass against truth or ingenuity or the Precepts and Judgments of Seneca will be of no force with him tho both great and confessed Philosophers What would Seneca have thought or said of any corrupt way for the prolongation of life if he had known any thing of the obligations of Christianity when only upon the strength of natural reason he could so much undervalue it Non est vita tanti ut sudem ut aestuâ—m O quam contemta res est homo nisi supra humana se erexerit What shall we say when a Heathen Philosopher valued life only as it was a way to somwhat more precious tho he could not comprehend it and when a Christian Philosopher who pretends to have a full prospect of all that is most precious will redeem his life at the price of disclaiming to have any share in it when Philosophy disswaded men from an over affectation of death that there might not be ad mâ—riendum inconsulta animi inclinatio but that they should patiently attend Natures pleasure and Christianity shall be perswaded that it may prolong life by the basest submissions and by the most unworthy and unrighteous condescentions Mr. Hobbes is of the Venetian Curats mind of whom Cardinal Iâ—yeuse makes mention in his Letters When Paul the Fifth had issued out his Interdict against the Republick whereby any Priest who should say Mass or perform any other part of his Function stood excommunicated and the Republic had publish'd an Edict that the Magistrates upon any Priests refusal to say Mass or to do any thing else that his duty obliged him to do should cause every such Priest to be hanged a Magistrate demanded of his Neighbor Curate whether he would say Mass and he making some pause the Magistrate told him that if he refused he must presently hang him The Curate replied with more resolution that he had rather be excommunicated thirty years then hanged a quarter of an hour and that Princes did at last make an end of all quarrels by Treaties of Peace and then their Subjects on both sides had the benefit of the Articles only he had heard that they who were hang'd had never the benefit of any Articles therefore for his part he would say Mass. Yet it is probable
of the Learning then of the places where it is professed otherwise he could not so much mistake the Universities as to believe that Philosophy hath no other place here then as a Hand-maid to the Roman Religion And whatever opinion he had when he wrote his Leviathan I presume he finds by this time that his beloved and justly esteemed Geometry is studied and taught there by men who have convinced him of many Errors and of not being enough conversant in that Science insomuch as the Learned and Reverend Dr. Ward the present Lord Bishop of Salisbury and Dr. Wallis the Worthy Professor of Geometry in Oxford have both produced a Person to him whom he thought in the beginning of his Leviathan impossible to find pag. 21. who is so stupid as both to mistake in Geometry and also to persist in it when another detects his error to him And for the Universities in general being the Hand-maids to the Roman Religion over and above what hath bin truly said of our own Famous Universities that they have bin in all times eminent Opposers of the Papal Power and are at present the greatest Bullwarks Christendom hath against that Tyranny and the propagation of the Roman Doctrine I may justly say that the other famous Universities of Europe tho in Popish Countries as the Sorbone Lovain and even Salamanca it self have bin so far from advancing the most pernicious point of Popery I call it most pernicious because it is most destructive to the peace of Christendom the most Supreme and Universal Jurisdiction of the Pope which if rejected as it ought to be there would quickly be as much unity of opinion amongst Christians as Christianity it self requires that they all contradicted it as long as their Civil Soveraign would permit And as the Sorbone still continues its vigor as enjoying a freer air so the other two have not deserved by any demonstration they have made to be suspected to have degenerated from the spirit that possessed them in the Council of Trent when the Pope was more afraid of their Bishops then of the Cardinal of Lorrain himself or of the two Crowns of France and Spain And truly it might be wished that in this Chapter he had either forborn to have asked that question pag. 373. to what purpose such subtlety was in a discourse of that nature where he pretends to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine of Government and obedience or that he had given a clearer and more satisfactory answer then by saying that it is to that purpose that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abus'd by them that by the doctrine of separated Essences built on the vain Philosophy of Aristotle would fright them from obeying the Laws of their Countries as men fright Birds from the corn with an emty doublet a hat and a crooked stick It is not possible that Mr. Hobbes can believe that many of those who are most guilty of disobeying the Laws or have openly and rebelliously opposed the Soveraign power in his own Country or in Foreign Kingdoms have ever bin led into it by the doctrine of separated Essences which very terms few of them have ever heard of And if the Immortality of the Soul which he thinks so great an absurdity hath some dependance upon the opinion of separated Essences it will still as little concern that Classis of Men against whom he intends to inveigh who rather believe they have no Souls at all then that they are immortal the belief of which would make them more consider what is like to become of them by their wicked and rebellious lives to which they are most like to be induced by Mr. Hobbes's Doctrine that the Soul and Body die together which would secure them from a world of troublesom apprehensions He knew too well the Lord Say Mr. Pim and Mr. Hambden who first promoted the Rebellion and the Earl of Essex who conducted it to suspect that they were corrupted to it by the Doctrine of separated Essences And if Cromwell and Vane and Ireton who carried it much farther then the others intended to do and made it incapable of reconciliation grew better inform'd of the mischiefs of that Doctrine it was after the publication of the Leviathan and yet they continued more of the opinion then most other men in the literal sense that Faith and Wisdom and other Virtues were somtimes pour'd into them and somtimes blown into them from Heaven and yet were not more Rebels from that opinion then they were before with which words Mr. Hobbes renews his mirth more then he hath cause for except it be for their sakes If he were constant to his own assertions and did not think himself oblig'd to defend every new Definition he thinks fit to give as in the beginning of this Chapter he makes a very new Definition of Philosophy never heard of before nor applicable to any Philosophy but his own a man might wonder that he should so categorically pronounce that pag. 367. that Original Knowledg called Experience in which consisteth Prudence is no part of Philosophy because it is not attain'd by reasoning but found as well in brute beasts as in man and is but a memory of successions of events in times past wherein the omission of every little circumstance altering the effect frustrateth the expectation of the most prudent whereas nothing is produced by reasoning aright but general eternal and immutable truth How is this consistent with the Definition he formerly gave pag. 79 that Moral Philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind for now he excludes all this from being any part of Philosophy Which may make some men apt to believe that he doth not reason aright in words he understands for he saies pag. 367. that he who reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never conclude an error So that if we have discover'd any error throughout his Book and we are monstrously in the fault if we have not in such abundant choice we may without presumtion conclude by his own rule that either he hath not reasoned aright or that he hath don it in words that he doth not understand And he would have don well to have informed us what those brute Beasts are in whom that original knowledg called Experience in which consisteth Prudence is found as well as in man I shall not labor to reconcile him to the Schole-men with whose Learning I am not much in love nor do believe that they have made any necessary or useful knowledg much more clear or easie by their Definitions or Distinctions and do often wish that very many of them had bin bred Artificers and Handy-craft-men in which they would have don the world much more good and Learning much less hurt And as Canon and Gun-powder were first the Invention of a Monk or a Friar so I believe some of the Schole-men would have bin excellent Lock-smiths