Contradictories to be true together T. H. There is no doubt but by what Authority the Scripture or any other Writing is made a Law by the same Authority the Scriptures are to be interpreted or else they are made Law in vain But to obey is one thing to believe is another which distinction perhaps his Lordship never heard of To obey is to do or forbear as one is commanded and depends on the Will but to believe depends not on the Will but on the providence and guidance of our hearts that are in the hands of God Almighty Laws only require obedience Belief requires Teachers and Arguments drawn either from Reason or from some thing already believed Where there is no reason for our Belief there is no reason we should believe The reason why men believe is drawn from the Authority of those men whom we have no just cause to mistrust that is of such men to whom no profit accrues by their deceiving us and of such men as never used to lye or else from the Authority of such men whose Promises Threats and Affirmations we have seen confirmed by God with Miracles If it be not from the Kings Authority that the Scripture is Law what other Authority makes it Law Here some man being of his Lordships judgment will perhaps laugh and say 't is the Authority of God that makes them Law I grant that But my question is on what Authority they believe that God is the Author of them Here his Lordship would have been at a Nonplus and turning round would have said the Authority of the Scripture makes good that God is their Author If it be said we are to believe the Scripture upon the Authority of the Universal Church why are not the Books we call Apocrypha the Word of God as well as the rest If this Authority be in the Church of England then it is not any other than the Authority of the Head of the Church which is the King For without the Head the Church is mute the Authority therefore is in the King which is all that I contended for in this point As to the Laws of the Gentiles concerning Religion in the Primitive times of the Church I confess they were contrary to Christian Faith But none of their Laws nor Terrors nor a mans own Will are able to take away Faith though they can compel to an external obedience and though I may blame the Ethnick Princes for compelling men to speak what they thought not yet I absolve not all those that have had the Power in Christian Churches from the same fault For I believe since the time of the first four General Councels there have been more Christians burnt and killed in the Christian Church by Ecclesiastical Authority than by the Heathen Emperors Laws for Religion only without Sedition All that the Bishop does in this Argument is but a heaving at the Kings Supremacy Oh but says he if two Kings interpret a place of Scripture in contrary sences it will follow that both sences are true It does not follow For the interpretation though it be made by just Authority must not therefore always be true If the Doctrine in the one sence be necessary to Salvation then they that hold the other must dye in their sins and be Damned But if the Doctrine in neither sence be necessary to Salvation then all is well except perhaps that they will call one another Atheists and fight about it J. D. All the power vertue use and efficacy which he ascribeth to the Holy Sacraments is to be signs or commemorations As for any sealing or confirming or conferring of Grace he acknowledgeth nothing The same he saith particularly of Baptism Upon which grounds a Cardinals red Hat or a Serjeant at Arms his Mace may be called Sacraments as well as Baptism or the holy Eucharist if they be only signs and commemorations of a benefit If he except that Baptism and the Eucharist are of Divine institution But a Cardinals red Hat or a Serjeant at Arms his Mace are not He saith truly but nothing to his advantage or purpose seeing he deriveth all the Authority of the Word and Sacraments in respect of Subjects and all our obligation to them from the Authority of the Soveraign Magistrate without which these words repent and be Baptized in the name of Jesus are but Counsel no Command And so a Serjeant at Arms his Mace and Baptism proceed both from the same Authority And this he saith upon this filly ground That nothing is a Command the performance whereof tendeth to our own benefit He might as well deny the Ten Commandments to be Commands because they have an advantagious promise annexed to them Do this and thou shalt live And Cursed is every one that continueth not in all the words of this Law to do them T. H. Of the Sacraments I said no more than that they are Signs or Commemorations He finds fault that I add not Seals Confirmations and that they confer grace First I would have asked him if a Seal be any thing else besides a Sign whereby to remember somewhat as that we have promised accepted acknowledged given undertaken somewhat Are not other Signs though without a Seal of force sufficient to convince me or oblige me A Writing obligatory or Release signed only with a mans name is as Obligatory as a Bond signed and sealed if it be sufficiently proved though peradventure it may require a longer Process to obtain a Sentence but his Lordship I think knew better than I do the force of Bonds and Bills yet I know this that in the Court of Heaven there is no such difference between saying signing and sealing as his Lordship seemeth here to pretend I am Baptized for a Commemoration that I have enrolled my self I take the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to Commemorate that Christ's Body was broken and his Blood shed for my redemption What is there more intimated concerning the nature of these Sacraments either in the Scripture or in the Book of Common-Prayer Have Bread and Wine and Water in their own Nature any other Quality than they had before the Consecration It is true that the Consecration gives these bodies a new Relation as being a giving and dedicating of them to God that is to say a making of them Holy not a changing of their Quality But as some silly young men returning from France affect a broken English to be thought perfect in the French language so his Lordship I think to seem a perfect understander of the unintelligible language of the Schoolmen pretends an ignorance of his Mother Tongue He talks here of Command and Counsel as if he were no English man nor knew any difference between their significations What English man when he commandeth says more than Do this yet he looks to be obeyed if obedience be due unto him But when he says Do this and thou shalt have such or such a Reward he encourages him or advises him or
AN ANSWER TO A BOOK Published by Dr. BRAMHALL late Bishop of Derry CALLED The Catching of the Leviathan Together With an Historical Narration Concerning HERESIE And the Punishment thereof By THOMAS HOBBES of Malmesbury LONDON Printed for W. Crooke at the Green Dragon without Temple-Barr 1682. TO THE READER AS in all things which I have written so also in this Piece I have endeavoured all I can to be perspicuous but yet your own attention is always necessary The late Lord Bishop of Derry published a Book called The Catching of Leviathan in which he hath put together divers Sentences pickt out of my Leviathan which stand there plainly and firmly proved and sets them down without their Proofs and without the order of their dependance one upon another and calls them Atheism Blasphemy Impiety Subversion of Religion and by other names of that kind My request unto you is That when he cites my words for Erroneous you will be pleased to turn to the place it self and see whether they be well proved and how to be understood Which labour his Lordship might have saved you if he would have vouchsafed as well to have weighed my Arguments before you as to have shewed you my Conclusions His Book containeth two Chapters the one concerning Religion the other concerning Politicks Because he does not so much as offer any refutation of any thing in my Leviathan concluded I needed not to have answered either of them Yet to the first I here answer because the words Atheism Impiety and the like are words of the greatest defamation possible And this I had done sooner if I had sooner known that such a Book was extant He wrote it ten years since and yet I never heard of it till about three Months since so little talk there was of his Lordship's Writings If you want leasure or care of the questions between us I pray you condemn me not upon report To judge and not examine is not just Farewell T. Hobbes CHAP. I. That the Hobbian Principles are destructive to Christianity and all Religion J.D. THe Image of God is not altogether defaced by the fall of Man but that there will remain some practical notions of God and Goodness which when the mind is free from vagrant desires and violent passions do shine as clearly in the heart as other speculative notions do in the head Hence it is That there was never any Nation so barbarous or savage throughout the whole world which had not their God They who did never wear cloaths upon their backs who did never know Magistrate but their Father yet have their God and their Religious Rites and Devotions to him Hence it is That the greatest Atheists in any sudden danger do unwittingly cast their eyes up to Heaven as craving aid from thence and in a thunder creep into some hole to hide themselves And they who are conscious to themselves of any secret Crimes though they be secure enough from the justice of men do yet feel the blind blows of a Guilty Conscience and fear Divine Vengeance This is acknowledged by T. H. himself in his lucid Intervals That we may know what worship of God natural reason doth assign let us begin with his attributes where it is manifest in the first place That existency is to be attributed to him To which he addeth Infiniteness Incomprehensibility Vnity Vbiquity Thus for Attributes next for Actions Concerning external Actions wherewith God is to be worshipped the most general precept of reason is that they be signs of honour under which are contained Prayers Thanksgivings Oblations and Sacrifices T. H. Hitherto his Lordship discharges me of Atheisme What need he to say that All Nations how barbarous soever yet have their Gods and Religious Rites and Atheists are frighted with thunder and feel the blind blows of Conscience It might have been as apt a Preface to any other of his Discourses as this I expect therefore in the next place to be told that I deny again my afore recited Doctrine J. D. Yet to let us see how inconsistent and irreconcileable he is with himself elsewhere reckoning up all the Laws of Nature at large even twenty in number he hath not one word that concerneth Religion or that hath the least relation in the world to God As if a man were like the Colt of a wild Asse in the wilderness without any owner or obligation Thus in describing the Laws of Nature this great Clerk forgeteth the God of Nature and the main and principle Laws of Nature which contains a mans duty to his God and the principal end of his Creation T. H. After I had ended the discourse he mentions of the Laws of Nature I thought it fittest in the last place once for all to say they were the Laws of God then when they were delivered in the Word of God but before being not known by men for any thing but their own natural reason they were but Theorems tending to peace and those uncertain as being but conclusions of particular men and therefore not properly Laws Besides I had formerly in my Book De Cive cap. 4. proved them severally one by one out of the Scriptures which his Lordship had â—ead and knew 'T was therefore an unjust charge of his to say I had not one word â—n them that concerns Religion or that hath the least relation in the world to God and this upon no other ground then â—hat I added not to every article This Law 〈◊〉 in the Scripture But why he should call me ironically a great Clerk I cannot tell I suppose he would make men believe I arrogated to my self all the learning of a great Clerk Bishop or other inferior Minister A Learned Bishop is that Bishop that can interpret all parts of Scripture truly and congruently to the harmony of the whole that has learnt the History and Laws of the Church down from the Apostles time to his own and knows what is the nature of a Law Civil Divine Natural and Positive and how to govern well the Parochial Ministers of his Diocess so that they may both by Doctrine and Example keep the people in the belief of all Articles of Faith necessary to Salvation and in obedience to the Laws of their Country This is a Learned Bishop A Learned Minister is he that hath learned the way by which men may be drawn from Avarice Pride Sensuality Prophaness Rebellious Principles and all other vices by eloquent and powerful disgracing them both from Scripture and from Reason and can terrify men from vice by discreet uttering of the punishments denounced against wicked men and by deducing rationally the dammage they receive by it in the end In one word he is a Learned Minister that can preach such Sermons as St. Chrisostom preached to the Antiochians when he was Presbyter in that City Could his Lordship find in my Book that I arrogated to my self the eloquence or wisdom of St. Chrisostom or the ability of governing the
as an Enemy by an Enemy because he would not accept Laws His reason is because the Atheist never submitted his will to the Will of God whom he never thought to be And he concludeth that mans obligation to obey God proceedeth from his weakness Manifestum est obligationem ad prestandum ipsi Deo obedientiam incumbere hominibus propter imbecilitatem First it is impossible that should be a sin of meer ignorance or imprudence which is directly contrary to the light of natural reason The Laws of nature need no new promulgation being imprinted naturally by God in the heart of Man The Law of nature was written in our hearts by the finger of God without our assent or rather the Law of Nature is the assent it self Then if Nature dictate to us that there is a God and that this God is to be worshipped in such and such manner it is not possible that Atheism should be a sin of meer ignorance Secondly a Rebellious Subject is still a Subject De Jure though not De Facto by right though not by deed and so the most cursed Atheist that is ought by right to be the Subject of God and ought to be punished not as a just Enemy but as a disloyal Traytor Which is confessed by himself This fourth Sin that is of those who do not by word and deed confess one God the Supreme King of Kings in the natural Kingdom of God is the Crime of High Treason for it is a denial of Divine Power or Atheism Then an Atheist is a Traytor to God and punishable as a disloyal Subject not as an Enemy Lastly it is an absurd and dishonourable assertion to make our obedience to God to depend upon our weakness because we cannot help it and not upon our gratitude because we owe our being and preservation to him Who planteth a Vineyard and eateth not of the Fruit thereof And who feedeth a Flock and eateth not of the Milk of the Flock And again Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honour and Power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created But it were much better or at least not so ill to be a down right Atheist than to make God to be such a thing as he doth and at last thrust him into the Devils Office to be the cause of all Sin T. H. Though this Bishop as I said had but a weak attention in reading and little skill in examining the force of an Argument yet he knew men and the art without troubling their judgments to win their assents by exciting their Passions One Rule of his art was to give his Reader what he would have him swallow a part by it self and in the nature of News whether true or not Knowing that the unlearned that is most men are content to believe rather than be troubled with examining Therefore a little before he put these words T. H. no friend to Religion in the Margent And in this place before he offer at any confutation he says my Principles are brim full of Prodigious Impieties And at the next Paragraph in the Margent he puts that I excuse Atheism This behaviour becomes neither a Bishop nor a Christian nor any man that pretends to good education Fear of invisible powers what is it else in savage people but the fear of somewhat they think a God What invisible power does the reason of a savage man suggest unto him but those Phantasms of his sleep or his distemper which we frequently call Ghosts and the Savages thought Gods so that the fear of a God though not of the true one to them was the beginning of Religion as the fear of the true God was the beginning of wisdom to the Jews and Christians Ignorance of second causes made men fly to some first cause the fear of which bred Devotion and Worship The ignorance of what that power might do made them observe the order of what he had done that they might guess by the like order what he was to do another time This was their Prognostication What Prodigious impiety is here How confutes he it Must it be taken for Impiety upon his bare calumny I said Superstition was fear without reason Is not the fear of a false God or fancied Daemon contrary to right reason And is not Atheism Boldness grounded on false reasoning such as is this the wicked prosper therefore there is no God He offers no proof against any of this but says only I make Atheism to be more reasonable than Superstition which is not true For I deny that there is any reason either in the Atheist or in the Superstitious And because the Atheist thinks he has reason where he has none I think him the more irrational of the two But all this while he argues not against any of this but enquires only what is become of my natural Worship of God and of his Existency Infiniteness Incomprehensibility Unity and Ubiquity As if whatsoever reason can suggest must be suggested all at once First all men by nature had an opinion of Gods Existency but of his other Attributes not so soon but by reasoning and by degrees And for the Attributes of the true God they were never suggested but by the Word of God written In that I say Atheism is a sin of ignorance he says I excuse it The Prophet David says The fool hath said in his heart There is no God Is it not then a sin of folly 'T is agreed between us that right reason dictates There is a God Does it not follow that denying of God is a sin proceeding from mis-reasoning If it be not a sin of ignorance it must be a sin of malice Can a man malice that which he thinks has no being But may not one think there is a God and yet maliciously deny him If he think there is a God he is no Atheist and so the question is changed into this whether any man that thinks there is a God dares deliberately deny it For my part I think not For upon what confidence dares any man deliberately I say oppose the Omnipotent David saith of himself My feet were ready to slip when I saw the prosperity of the wicked Therefore it is likely the feet of men less holy slip oftner But I think no man living is so daring being out of passion as to hold it as his opinion Those wicked men that for a long time proceeded so succesfully in the late horrid Rebellion may perhaps make some think they were constant and resolved Atheists but I think rather that they forgot God than believed there was none He that believes there is such an Atheist comes a little too near that opinion himself Nevertheless if words spoken in passion signifie a denial of a God no punishment praeordained by Law can be too great for such an insolence because there is no living in a Common-wealth with men to whose oaths we cannot reasonably give
Salvation what has a Divine to do to impose upon him any strange interpretation unless if he make him err to Damnation he will be damned in his stead J. D. Our God is immutable without any shadow of turning by change to whom all things are present nothing past nothing to come But T. H. his God is measured by time losing somthing that is past and acquiring somthing that doth come every minute That is as much as to say That our God is infinite and his God is finite for unto that which is actually infinite nothing can be added neither time nor parts Hear himself Nor do I understand what derogation it can be to the divine perfection to attribute to it Potentiality that is in English Power so little doth he understand what Potentiality is and successive duration And he chargeth it upon us as a fault that will not have eternity to be an endless succession of time How successive duration and an endless succession of time in God Then God is infinite then God is elder to day than he was yesterday Away with Blasphemies Before he destroyed the Ubiquity of God and now he destroyeth his Eternity T. H. I shall omit both here and henceforth his preambulatory impertinent and uncivil calumnies The thing he pretends to prove is this That it is a derogation to the Divine Power to attribute to it Potentiality that is in English Power and Successive Duration One of his reasons is God is infinite and nothing can be added to infinite neither of time nor of parts It is true And therefore I said God is infinite and eternal without beginning or end either of Time or Place which he has not here confuted but confirmed He denies Potentiality and Power to be all one and says I little understand what Potentiality is He ought therefore in this place to have defined what Potenality is For I understand it to be the same with Potentia which is in English Power There is no such word as Potentiality in the Scriptures nor in any Author of the Latin Tongue It is found only in School-Divinity as a word of Art or rather as a word of Craft to amaze and puzzle the Laity And therefore I no sooner read than intepreted it In the next place he says as wondring How an endless succession of time in God! Why not Gods mercy endureth for ever and surely God endureth as long as his mercy therefore there is duration in God and consequently endless succession of time God who in sundry times and divers manners spake in time past c. But in a former dispute with me about Free-will he hath defined Eternity to be Nuno stans that is an ever standing now or everlasting instant This he thinks himself bound in honour to defend What reasonable soul can digest this We read in Scripture that a thousand years with God is but as yesterday And why but because he sees as clearly to the end of a thousand years as to the end of a day But his Lordship affirms That both a thousand years and a day are but one instant the same standing Now or Eternity If he had shewed an holy Text for this Doctrine or any Text of the Book of Common Prayer in the Scripture and Book of Common Prayer is contained all our Religion I had yielded to him but School-Divinity I value little or nothing at all Though in this he contradict also the School-men who say the Soul is eternal only à parte post but God is eternal both à parte post and à parte ante Thus there are parts in eternity and eternity being as his Lordship says the divine substance the divine substance has parts and Nunc stans has parts Is not this darkness I take it to be the Kingdom of Darkness and the teachers of it especially of this Doctrine That God who is not only Optimus but also Maximus is no greater than to be wholly contained in the least Atome of earth or other body and that his whole duration is but an instant of time to be either grosly ignorant or ungodly Deceivers J. D. Our God is a perfect pure simple indivisible infinite Essence free from all composition of matter and form of substance and accidents All matter is finite and he who acteth by his infinite Essence needeth neither Organs nor Faculties id est no power note that nor accidents to render him more compleat But T. H. his God is a divisible God a compounded God that hath matter or qualities or accidents Hear himself I argue thus The divine substance is indivisible but eternity is the divine substance The Major is evident because God is Actus simplicissimus the Minor is confessed by all men that whatsoever is attributed to God is God Now listen to his answer The Major is so far from being evident that Actus simplicissimus signifieth nothing The Minor is said by some men thought by no man whatsoever is thought is understood The Major was this The divine substance is indivisible Is this far from being evident Either it is indivisible or divisible If it be not indivisible then it is divisible then it is materiate then it is corporeal then it hath parts then it is finite by his own confession Habere partes aut esse totum aliquid sunt attributa finitorum Upon this silly conceit he chargeth me for saying That God is not just but justice it self not eternal but eternity it self which he calleth unseemly words to be said of God And he thinketh he doth me a great courtesie in not adding Blasphemous and Atheistical But his Bolts are so soon shot and his Reasons are such vain Imaginations and such drowsie Phantasies that no sad man doth much regard them Thus he hath already destroyed the Ubiquity the Eternity and the Simplicity of God I wish he had considered better with himself before he had desperately cast himself upon these Rocks But paulo majora canamus my next charge is That he destroys the very being of God and leaves nothing in his place but an empty name For by taking away all incorporeal substances he taketh away God himself The very name saith he of an incorporeal substance is a Contradiction And to say that an Angel or Spirit is an incorporeal substance is to say in effect that there is no Angel or Spirit at all By the same reason to say That God is an incorporeal substance is to say there is no God at all Either God is incorporeal or he is finite and consists of parts and consequently is no God This That there is no incorporeal spirit is that main root of Atheism from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up T. H. God is indeed a Perfect Pure Simple Infinite Substance and his Name incommunicable that is to say not divisible into this and that individual God in such manner as the name of Man is divisible into Peter and John And therefore God is individual which word amongst
Bargains with him but Commands him not Oh the understanding of a Schoolman J. D. Sometimes he is for holy Orders and giveth to the Pastors of the Church the right of Ordination and Absolution and Infallibility too much for a particular Pastor or the Pastors of one particular Church It is manifest that the consecration of the chiefest Doctors in every Church and imposition of hands doth pertain to the Doctors of the same Church And it cannot be doubted of but the power of binding and loosing was given by Christ to the future Pastors after the same manner as to his present Apostles And our Saviour hath promised this infallibility in those things which are necessary to Salvation to his Apostles until the day of Judgment that is to say to the Apostles and Pastors to be Consecrated by the Apostles successively by the imposition of hands But at other times he casteth all this Meal down with his foot Christian Soveraigns are the supream Pastors and the only persons whom Christians now hear speak from God except such as God speaketh to in these dayes supernaturally What is now become of the promised infallibility And it is from the Civil Soveraign that all other Pastors derive their right of teaching preaching and all other functions pertaining to that Office and they are but his Ministers in the same manner as the Magistrates of Towns or Judges in Courts of Justice and Commanders of Armies What is now become of their Ordination Magistrates Judges and Generals need no precedent qualifications He maketh the Pastoral Authority of Soveraigns to be Jure divino of all other Pastors Jure civili He addeth neither is there any Judge of Heresie among Subjects but their own civil Soveraign Lastly the Church Excommunicateth no man but whom she Excommunicateth by the Authority of the Prince And the effect of Excommunication hath nothing in it neither of dammage in this World nor terror upon an Apostate if the Civil Power did persecute or not assist the Church And in the World to come leaves them in no worse estate than those who never believed The dammage rather redoundeth to the Church Neither is the Excommunication of a Christian Subject that obeyeth the Laws of his own Soveraign of any effect Where is now their power of binding and loosing T. H. Here his Lordship condemneth first my too much kindness to the Pastors of the Church as if I ascribed Infallibility to every particular Minister or at least to the Assembly of the Pastors of a particular Church But he mistakes me I never meant to flatter them so much I say only that the Ceremony of Consecration and Imposition of hands belongs to them and that also no otherwise than as given them by the Laws of the Common-wealth The Bishop Consecrates but the King both makes him Bishop and gives him his Authority The Head of the Church not only gives the power of Consecration Dedication and Benediction but may also exercise the Act himself if he please Solomon did it and the Book of Canons says That the King of England has all the Right that any good King of Israel had It might have added that any other King or soveraign Assembly had in their own Dominions I deny That any Pastor or any Assembly of Pastors in any particular Church or all the Churches on earth though united are Infallible Yet I say the Pastors of a Christian Church assembled are in all such points as are necessary to Salvation But about what points are necessary to Salvation he and I differ For I in the 43d chapter of my Leviathan have proved that this Article Jesus is the Christ is the unum necessarium the only Article necessary to Salvation to which his Lordship hath not offered any Objection And he it seems would have necessary to Salvation every Doctrine he himself thought so Doubtless in this Article Jesus is the Christ every Church is infallible for else it were no Church Then he says I overthrow this again by saying that Christian Soveraigns are the Supream Pastors that is Heads of their own Churches That they have their Authority Jure Divino That all other Pastors have it Jure Civili How came any Bishop to have Authority over me but by Letters Patents from the King I remember a Parliament wherein a Bishop who was both a good Preacher and a good Man was blamed for a Book he had a little before Published in maintenance of the Jus Divinum of Bishops a thing which before the Reformation here was never allowed them by the Pope Two Jus Divinums cannot stand together in one Kingdom In the last place he mislikes that the Church should Excommunicate by Authority of the King that is to say by Authority of the Head of the Church But he tells not why He might as well mislike that the Magistrates of the Realm should execute their Offices by the Authority of the Head of the Realm His Lordship was in a great error if he thought such incroachments would add any thing to the Wealth Dignity Reverence or Continuance of his Order They are Pastors of Pastors but yet they are the Sheep of him that is on earth their soveraign Pastor and he again a Sheep of that supream Pastor which is in Heaven And if they did their pastoral Office both by Life and Doctrine as they ought to do there could never arise any dangerous Rebellion in the Land But if the people see once any ambition in their Teachers they will sooner learn that than any other Doctrine and from Ambition proceeds Rebellion J. D. It may be some of T. H. his Disciples desire to know what hopes of Heavenly joyes they have upon their Masters Principles They may hear them without any great contentment There is no mention in Scripture nor ground in reason of the Coelum Empyraeum that is the Heaven of the Blessed where the Saints shall live eternally with God And again I have not found any Text that can probably be drawn to prove any Ascention of the Saints into Heaven that is to say into any Coelum Empyraeum But he concludeth positively that Salvation shall be upon earth when God shall Raign at the coming of Christ in Jerusalem And again In short the Kingdom of God is a civil Kingdom c. called also the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Glory All the Hobbians can hope for is to be restored to the same condition which Adam was in before his fall So saith T.H. himself From whence may be inferred that the Elect after the Resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned As for the beatifical vision he defineth it to be a word unintelligible T.H. This Coelum Empyraeum for which he pretendeth so much zeal where is it in the Scripture where in the Book of Common Prayer where in the Canons where in the Homilies of the Church of England or in any part of our Religion What has a Christian to
present time I am forced to in my defence not against the Church but against the accusations and arguments oâ— my Adversaries For the Church though it excommunicates for scandalous life and for teaching false Doctrines yet it professeth to impose nothing to be held as Faith but what may be warranted by Scripture and this the Church it self saith in thâ— 20th of the 39 Articles of Religion Anâ— therefore I am permitted to alledge Scrâ—pture at any time in the defence of my Belief J. D. But they that in one case are grieved in another must be relieved If perchance T. H. hath given his Disciples any discontent in his Doctrine of Heaven and the holy Angels and the glorified Souls of the Saints he will make them amends in his Doctrine of Hell and the Devils and the damned Spirits First of the Devils He fancieth that all those Devils which our Saviour did cast out were Phrensies and all Demoniacks or Persons possessed no other than Mad-men And to justifie our Saviour's speaking to a Disease as to a Person produceth the example of inchanters But he declareth himself most clearly upon this Subject in his Animadversions upon my reply to his defence of fatal destiny There are in the Scripture two sorts of things which are in English translated Devils One is that which is called Satan Diabolus Abaddon which signifieth in English an Enemy an Accuser and a destroyer of the Church of God in which sence the Devils are but wicked men The other sort of Devils are called in the Scripture Daemonia which are the feigned Gods of the Heathen and are neither Bodies nor spiritual Substances but meer fancies and fictions of terrified hearts feigned by the Greeks and other Heathen People which St. Paul calleth Nothings So T.H. hath killed the great infernal Devil and all his black Angels and left no Devils to be feared but Devils Incarnate that is wicked men T. H. As for the first words cited Levi. page 38 39. I refer the Reader to the place it self and for the words concerning Satan I leave them to the judgment of the Learned J. D. And for Hell he describeth the Kingdom of Satan or the Kingdom of darkness to be a confederacy of deceivers He telleth us that the places which set forth the torments of Hell in holy Scripture do design Metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind from the sight of that eternal felicity in others which they themselves through their own incredulity and disobedience have lost As if Metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them as well as literal as if final desperation were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion as if it were a loss so easily to be born to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical Vision and lastly as if the Damned besides that unspeakable loss did not likewise suffer actual Torments proportionable in some measure to their own sins and Gods Justice T. H. That Metaphors bear sad truths in them I deny not It is a sad thing to lose this present life untimely Is it not therefore much more a sad thing to lose an eternal happy Life And I believe that he which will venture upon sin with such danger will not stick to do the same notwithstanding the Doctrine of eternal torture Is it not also a sad truth that the Kingdom of darkness should be a Confederacy of deceivers J. D. Lastly for the damned Spirits he declareth himself every where that their sufferings are not eternal The Fire shall be unquenchable and the Torments everlasting but it cannot be thence inferred that he who shall be cast into that Fire or be tormented with those Torments shall endure and resist them so as to be eternally burnt and tortured and yet never be destroyed nor dye And though there be many places that affirm everlasting fire into which men may be cast successivily one after another for ever yet I find none that affirm that there shall be an everlasting life therein of any individual Person If he had said and said only that the pains of the Damned may be lessened as to the degree of them or that they endure not for ever but that after they are purged by long torments from their dross and Corruptions as Gold in the fire both the damned Spirits and the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition he might have found some Ancients who are therefore called the merciful Doctors to have joyned with him though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholick Church T. H. Why does not his Lordship cite some place of Scripture here to prove that all the Reprobates which are dead live eternally in torment We read indeed That everlasting Torments were prepared for the Devil and his Angels whose natures also are everlasting and that the Beast and the false Prophet shall be tormented everlastingly but not that every Reprobate shall be so They shall indeed be cast into the same fire but the Scripture says plainly enough that they shall be both Body and Soul destroyed there If I had said that the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition his Lordship would have been so kind as to have put me into the number of the Merciful Doctors Truly if I had had any Warrant for the possibility of their being less enemies to the Church of God than they have been I would have been as merciful to them as any Doctor of them all As it is I am more merciful than the Bishop J. D. But his shooting is not at rovers but altogether at randome without either President or Partner All that eternal sire all those torments which he acknowledgeth is but this That after the Resurrection the Reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his Posterity were in after the sin committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and not to them Adding that they shall live as they did formerly Marry and give in Marriage and consequently engender Children perpetually after the Resurrection as they did before which he calleth an immortallity of the kind but not of the persons of men It is to be presumed that in those their second lives knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of Redemption for them from corporal death upon their well-doing nor fear of any Torments after death for their ill-doing they will pass their times here as pleasantly as they can This is all the Damnation which T. H. fancieth T. H. This he has urged once before and I answered to it That the whole Paragraph was to prove that for any Text of Scripture to the contrary men might after the Resurrection live as Adam did on earth and that notwithstanding the Text of St. Luke chap. 20. verse 34 35 36. Marry and propagate But that they shall do so is no assertion of mine His Lordship knew I held that after the Resurrection there
serve their turns I said not that this was their meaning but that I thought it was so For no man living can tell what a School man means by his words Therefore I expounded them according to their true signification Merit ex condigno is when a thing is deserved by Pact as when I say the Labourer is worthy of his hire I mean meritum ex condigno But when a man of his own grace throweth Money among the people with an intention that what part soever of it any of them could catch he that catcheth merits it not by Pact nor by precedent Merit as a Labourer but because it was congruent to the purpose of him that cast it amongst them In all other meaning these words are but Jargon which his Lordship had learnt by rote Also passive obedience signifies nothing except it may be called passive obedience when a man refraineth himself from doing what the Law hath forbidden For in his Lordship's sense the Thief that is hang'd for stealing hath fulfilled the Law which I think is absurd J. D. His whole works are a heap of mishapen Errors and absurd Paradoxes vented with the confidence of a Jugler the brags of a Mountebank and the Authority of some Pythagoras or third Cato lately dropped down from Heaven Thus we have seen how the Hobbian Principles do destroy the Existence the Simplicity the Ubiquity the Eternity and Infiniteness of God the Doctrine of the blessed Trinity the Hypostatical Union the Kingly Sacerdotal and Prophetical Office of Christ the Being and Operation of the Holy Ghost Heaven Hell Angels Devils the Immortality of the Soul the Catholick and all National Churches the holy Scriptures holy Orders the holy Sacraments the whole frame of Religion and the Worship of God the Laws of Nature the reality of Goodness Justice Piety Honesty Conscience and all that is Sacred If his Disciples have such an implicite Faith that they can digest all these things they may feed with Ostriches T. H. He here concludes his first Chapter with bitter Reproaches to leave in his Reader as he thought a sting supposing perhaps that he will Read nothing but the beginning and end of his Book as is the custom of many men But to make him lose that petty piece of cunning I must desire of the Reader one of these two things Either that he would read with it the places of my Leviathan which he cites and see not only how he answers my arguments but also what the arguments are which he produceth against them or else that he would forbear to condemn me so much as in his thought for otherwise he is unjust The name of Bishop is of great Authority but these words are not the words of a Bishop but of a passionate School-man too fierce and unseemly in any man whatsoever Besides they are untrue Who that knows me will say I have the confidence of a Jugler or that I use to brag of any thing much less that I play the Mountebank What my works are he was no fit Judge But now he has provoked me I will say thus much of them that neither he if he had lived could nor I if I would can extinguish the light which is set up in the World by the greatest part of them and for these Doctrines which he impugneth I have few opposers but such whose Profit or whose Fame in Learning is concerned in them He accuses me first of destroying the Existence of God that is to say he would make the World believe I were an Atheist But upon what ground Because I say that God is a Spirit but Corporeal But to say that is allowed me by St. Paul that says There is a Spiritual Body and there is an Animal Body 1 Cor. 15. He that holds that there is a God and that God is really somewhat for Body is doubtlesly a real Substance is as far from being an Atheist as is possible to be But he that says God is an Incorporeal Substance no man can be sure whether he be an Atheist or not For no man living can tell whether there be any Substance at all that is not also Corporeal For neither the word Incorporeal nor Immaterial nor any word equivalent to it is to be found in Scripture or in Reason But on the contrary that the Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ is found in Colos 2.9 and Tertullian maintains that God is either a Corporeal Substance or Nothing Nor was he ever condemned for it by the Church For why Not only Tertullian but all the learned call Body not only that which one can see but also whatsoever has magnitude or that is somewhere for they had greater reverence for the Divine Substance than that they durst think it had no Magnitude or was no where But they that hold God to be a Phantasm as did the Exorcists in the Church of Rome that is such a thing as were at that time thought to be the Sprights that were said to walk in Church-yards and to be the Souls of men buried they do absolutely make God to be nothing at all But how Were they Atheists No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivolent to Atheism yet in their hearts they thought God a Substance and would also if they had known what Substance and what Corporeal meant have said he was a Corporeal Substance So that this Atheism by consequence is a very easie thing to be fallen into even by the most Godly men of the Church He also that says that God is wholly here and wholly there and wholly every where destroys by consequence the Unity of God and the Infiniteness of God and the Simplicity of God And this the Schoolmen do and are therefore Atheists by consequence and yet they do not all say in their hearts that there is no God So also his Lordship by exempting the Will of man from being subject to the necessity of God's Will or Decree denies by consequence the Divine Praescience which also will amount to Atheism by consequence But out of this that God is a Spirit corporeal and infinitely pure there can no unworthy or dishonourable consequence be drawn Thus far to his Lordship's first Chapter in Justification of my Leviathan as to matter of Religion and especially to wipe off that unjust slander cast upon me by the Bishop of Derry As for the second Chapter which concerns my Civil Doctrines since my errors there if there be any will not tend very much to my disgrace I will not take the pains to answer it Whereas his Lordship has talked in his discourse here and there ignorantly of Heresie and some others have not doubted to say publickly that there be many Heresies in my Leviathan I will add hereunto for a general answer an Historical relation concerning the word Heresie from the first use of it amongst the Graecians till this present time FINIS AN Historical Narration CONCERNING HERESIE AND THE Punishment thereof BY