Member of the great Community to an orderly behaviour towards God and his Parents as also towards his own Soul and Body in cases which concern and which concern not life death is the Law of Nature Mr. Hobbes The Dictates of Reason concerning Vice and Virtue Men use to call by the name of Laws but improperly for they are but Conclusions or Theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves whereas Law properly is the word of him who by Right hath command over others Stud. These Dictates being the Natural Operations of our Minds the Being and undepraved condition of which in right reasoning we owe to God we cannot but esteem them as the voice of God within us and consequently Law wherefore St. Paul calleth the Rule of Natural Conscience amongst the Gentiles the Law written in their Hearts But whence doth it come to pass that self-interest is laid by you as the foundation-stone of the Law of Nature in such sort that nothing is unlawful which conduceth to such preservation For it is commonly taught amongst us that many things are condemn'd by the light of Reason and that we ought not to do evil that good may come on 't but prefer the Law of God in nature before private Utility it being the truest Self-interest to lose the present secular advantage for the future recompence of such as with peril obey God Mr. Hobbes The Reasons of my Opinion are manifest Because it is natural for Man to avoid pain and pursue utility and because in the state of Nature there is nothing unlawful against others For the desires and other passions of Man are in themselves no sin no more are the actions that proceed from those Passions 'till they know a Law that forbids them which till Laws be made they cannot know nor can any Law be made 'till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it Stud. Unless you explain your self concerning this state of Nature which you speak of the way of our proceeding will be darkned by words Mr. Hobbes The natural condition of Mankind may be thus explained Nature hath made Men so equal in the faculties of Body and Mind as that when all is reckoned together the difference between Man and Mâ—n is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends And therefore if any two Men desire the same thing which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy they become Enemies and in the way to their end which is principally their own conservation and sometimes their Delectation only endeavour to destroy or subdue one another Whereupon some are invited to invade others and from others may fear the like invasion From equality of ability competition ariseth fomented by equality of hope and from thence diffidence of one another And from this diffidence attended with desire of glory in conquering there ariseth a war of every Man against every Man And therefore whatsoever is consequent to a time of War where every Man is enemy to every Man the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invenâ—ion shall furnish them withal In such condition there is no place for industry because the fruit thereof is uncertain and consequently no culture of the earth no Navigation nor use of the Commodities that may be imported by Sea no commodious buâ—ding no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force no knowledg of the face of the earth no account oâ— time no Arts no Letters no Society and which is worst of all continual fear and danger of violent death and the life of man solitary poor nasty brutish and short To this War of every Man against every Man this also is consequent That nothing can be unjust The notions of Right and wrong justice and injustice have there no place Where there is no common power there is no Law whâ—â—â— no Law no Injustice Force and Fraud are in war the two Cardinal Virtues Justice and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body nor Mind Iâ— they were they might be in a Man that were alone in the World as well as his Senses and Passions They are Qualities that relate to Men in Society not in Solitude It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no propriety no dominion no Minâ— and Thine distinct but only that to be every Man 's that he can get and for so long as he can keep it And this is the ill condition which Man by meer nature is actually placed in though with a possibility to come out of it consisting partly in the Passions partly in his Reason The Passions that encline men to peace are fear of death desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living a hope by their industry to obtain them And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace upon which Men may be drawn to agreement These Articles are they which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature Stud. It is a very absurd and unsecure course to lay the ground-work of all civil Polity and formed Religion upon such a supposed state of Nature as hath no firmer support than the contrivance of your own fancy Let Ptolemy endeavour a Solution of those appearances which arise from the heavenly Bodies by one sort of Scheme and Tycho by another and Copernicus by a third and let Des-Cartes attempt a fourth for the declaring not only in what manner but by what Efficient Cause the Starrs may move for thus far the interests of Men remain secure not being minded by such remote Models and Hypotheses But when the Temporal and Eternal safety of Mankind is concerned as in the Doctrines of Civil and Moral and Christian Philosophy then are Hypotheses framed by imagination and not by reason assisted with Memory touching the passed state of the World as exceedingly dangerous as they are absurd Wherefore such persons who trouble the World with fancied Schemes and Models of Poliâ—y in Oceana's and Leviathan's ought to have in their Minds an usual saying of the most excellent Lord Bacon concerning a Philosophy advanced upon the History of Nature That such a work is the World as God made it and not as Men have made it for that it hath nothing of Imagination The faithful Records of time give us another account of the Origin of Nations and common Sense whereby one apprehends in another's birth the manner of his own doth sufficiently instruct us in this truth that we are born and grow up under Government Our Parents being before the Institution of Commonwealth absolute Soveraigns in their own Families And as Hicrocles speaketh Gods upon Earth Wherefore Cicero discoursing of the many Degrees of the Society of Men calleth
to profess the faith ibid. That Christ is not to be renâ—unced with the moâ—th that the Magistrates command excuseth not the Apostate of Mat. 10.23 c. 200 201. Of Martyrs their Aera A double sort in Mr. Hobbes 203. Of the words Acts. 4.19 Mr. Hobbes accâ—seth them in effâ—ct of impertinencie 207. Mr. Hobbes remitting Martyrs to heaven falletâ— into the scoff of Julian ibid. Article 11. Concerning the future estate and place of torment 209 c. Mr. Hobbes affâ—rmeth falsly that the Torments are eternal but not to single persons 211. He useth the irresiâ—tible power or mercy of God as they serve his turns this prov'd out of â—is de Cive 213. Against Mr. Hobbes that hell will not be on earth of the vast numbers of people before the floud and in a few years after 215. Mr. â—obbes supposeth devils earthly enemies of Gods Church 217. Of the second death ibid. Whether the wicked shall be annihilated It is prov'd against Mr. Hobbes from Sophocles and Grotius that a miserable life is usually expressed by death 218. Article 12. Concerning the future estate and place of happiness 219 c. Mr. Hobbes denying the immortality of the soul granteth a future estate after the Resurrection by Grace Ibid. It is prov'd that the soul surviveth the body and receiveth immediate recompence 220 221. A full answer to the place of Solomon wrested by Mr. Hobbes to prove that in death nothing remaineth of a man but a carcass 222 223 224. And to those out of Job 227. That although God could raise the body to life yet without the supposition of a substantial Soul the Doctrine of Religion would be prejudiced against Mr. Hobbes 228. Of the Kingdom of God Of the place of Heaven on earth it is prov'd that Christs Kingdom began long ago 230 231. Against Mr. Hobbes that St. Marc. 9.1 refers to the destruction of Jerusalem and not to the Transfiguration of Christ. 232 233. Of the Siege of Jerusalem by Gallus and Titus Ibid. Coelestial bodies in opposition to this gross flesh and bloud confess'd by Athenagoras and St. Hierom they seem unagreeable to an Heaven on earth 234. If a man hath no substantial soul he cannot be the same in the alter'd contexture of a Coelestial body Ibid. It is prov'd from Scripture against Mr. Hobbes that The Heaven shall not be on earth 235. Concerning the Argument of Christ for the Resurrection against the Sadduces 237. The double meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. An answer to 1 Cor. 15.22 alleged by Mr. Hobbes to prove heaven on earth and the blessed to be in the estate of innocent Adam The Interpretation of Crellius and Vorstius 238 239. Of Adams immortality on earth 240. Jerusalem not to be the Metropolis of Heaven 241. Answer to Psal. 133.3 produced unskilfully by Mr. Hobbes 242. Of the New Jerusalem Of Jerusalem above Of the new Jerusalem descending With what it synchronizeth 243. Answers to the places produced out of Isaiah Joel Obadiah St. John St. Paul to prove that The Heaven shall be at Jerusalem on earth at the second coming of Christ. 244 245 246 247. The Conclusion 284. The Editions of such Books of Mr. Hobbes as are cited in this Dialogue ELementa Philosophica de Cive Aâ—â—steroâ— 1647. Humane Nature London 1650. Leviathan London 1651. Objectiones in Renati Des Cartes Meditationes de prima Philosophia Amstel 1654. Of Liberty and Necessity Lond. 1654. De Corpore in English Lond. 1656. Six Lessons to the Oxford-Professors of the Mathematicks Lond. 1656. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or marks of the absurd Geometry Rural Language c. of Dr. Wallis Lond. 1657. Elementorum Philosophiae sectio secunda de Homine Lond. 1658. Mr. Hobbes considered or his Letter to Dr. Wallis concerning the Loyalty Religion Reputation and manners of the Author Lond. 1662. Mirabilia Pecci Lond. Reprinted 1666. THE CREED OF Mr. Hobbes c. The First Part. MR Hobbes of Malmsbury having pretended to furnish the World with Demonstration in stead of talkative and contentious Learning and having particularly attempted to resolve the appearanceâ— of Nature by Principles almost wholly new without any offensive novelty to discover the Faculties Acts and Passions of the Soul of Man from their original Causes to â—uild upon these two foundations the truth of Cases in the Law of Nature and all the undoubted Elements of Government and Society to discourse of God and of the most momentous Articles of Religion in a way peculiar to himself and having done all this with such a confidence as becometh only a Prophet or an Apostle there is certainly no man who hath any share of the Curiosity of this present Age or hath had his conversation amongst Modern Books who yet remaineth unacquainted with his Name and Doctrine Of these the latter hath spread its malignity amongst us too too far and it hath infected some who can and more who cannot read a difficult Author Wherefore it is the business of this little Book to expose this insolent and pernicious Writer to shew unto my Countreymen that weakness of head and venome of mouth which is in the Philosopher who hath rather seduc'd and poyson'd their Imaginations than conquer'd their Reason And in doing this I shall assume the usual and allowed Liberty of feigning a Discourse betwixt Mr. Hobbes and a Student in Divinity as also such Circumstances as gave occasion to the Dialogue after the ensuing manner A certain Divine having allotted one moneth in a year for his Diversion as also for his better information in the Topography of England he chose a while since to become an eye-witness of those Wonders of the Peak of which he had sometimes read with some content in the elegant Prose of Mr. Cambden and heroick numbers of Mr. Hobbes In this Progress he was led at length by his Curiosity to Buxton-Well in such a juncture of time as he esteemed happy For at the same hour with him Mr. Hobbes alighted there together with three or four other persons of no inferiour quality for the old Man being a well-willer to long life and knowing that those Waters were comfortable to the Nerves and very usefull towards the prolongation of health was not unwilling to be a visiter of them The fellow-â—ravellers of Mr. Hobbes had no sooner taken their Foot out of the Stirrop than they were surprized by the Contents of a Letter which a Messenger dispatched after them deliver'd into their hands The business was a matter of great importance and such as admitted of no delay and was very improper for the attendance of Mr. Hobbes who was therefore left by them with much excuse and many expressions of Civility to the sole conversation of the Divine In their Address Mr. Hobbes made his with a stiff posture and a forbidding countenance having no ground of hoping for good usage from Men of that Order upon which he had cast so much of his foulest Ink besides their Christian
in their Forms of Benediction celebrated the power of God above the ordinary Laws of Nature and whatever hopes the Heathens may have they cannot have firm assurance that their Souls shall be permitted to enjoy that duration which they are by nature capable of or that if they shall be permitted to survive their bodies they shall have a great or endless happiness For when they consider that there is God and that how virtuous soever they have bin yet their own consciences bearing witness they have too often transgressed his Laws they may be justly suspicious either of annihilation or at best of a low degree of felicitie and this suspition will be encreased if with you they gaze at his irresistible power and look not with hope upon his Philanthropie and therefore such salvation as signifieth the advancement of the Soul of man to the utmost height of blessedness is not of Nature or humane merit but of grace and an effect of the merits of our Lord who having overcome death did open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers But yet of this bounty we in some measure partake if we dye as Christians so soon as ever we have lay'd down this burthen of the flesh and of this we are assured by Revelation especially by that in the New Testament therein we read that our Saviour promised to the repenting Thief that very day a place in Paradise that is in some Region of happy Souls which the Jews were wont to call Paradise or the Garden of pleasure That besides the bodily life there is a Soul in man which cannot be touched by the sword or utmost violence of our Enemies That St. Stephen in the very Article of death commended his Spirit into the hands of Christ beseeching the same Jesus to receive it That the dead who dye in the Lord are from henceforth or immediately in an happy estate Neither can we with tolerable sense expound the Article of Christs descending into Hell or into Hades that is the state of the dead as also his preaching to Spirits in prison unless we suppose him to have had an immaterial Soul whereby his Spirit might be in the state of separate Spirits as well as his body was in the state of dead bodies their corruption excepted for to mean All of the body is to say in effect twice over that he was dead and buried and so to commit Tautology in the most compendious systeme of the Christian Faith Neither must we forget the wish of St. Paul who desired to be dissolved that he might be with Christ esteeming that far better for his own Person though his continuance in the world was of more advantage to the Christian church Now it cannot but be imagined that S. Paul exspected so soon as ever he had quitted this earthly Tabernacle to be received by Christ into the mansions prepared above for seeing his inclinations were so poised betwixt the thoughts of the benefit of the Church and the delay of his consummate happiness that he knew not which way to turn the scale there is no doubt but he would have preferred the advantage of the Church for which he would gladly spend and be spent before sâ—ch an Estate wherein for more then sixteen hundred years he should not so much as think of Christ or his holy Gospel but be as if he had never bin Mr. Hobbes There are other places perhaps more pertinent to which I will return an answer And first there are the words of Solomon Ecclesiastes 12.7 Then shall the dust return to dust as it was and the Spirit shall return to God that gave it which may bear well enough if there be no other Text directly against it this interpretation that God only knows but man not what becomes of a mans Spirit when he expireth and the same Solomon in the same book Chap. 3. v. 20 21. delivereth the same sentence in the sense I have given it his words are All go man and beast to the same place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again who knoweth that the Spirit of man goeth upward and that the Spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth that is none knows but God nor is it an unusual phrase to say of things we understand not God knows what and God knows where But what interpretation shall we give besides the literal sense of the words of Solomon Eccles. 3.19 That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts even one thing befalleth them as the one dyeth so doth the other yea they have all one breath one Spirit so that a man hath no preheminence above a beast for all is vanity By the litteral sense here is no natural immortalitie of the Soul Stud. You would here impose upon me by confounding the sense of those several verses which are to be interpreted apart from each other And that we may aright conceive the meaning of them and not say only though perhaps with reason we may do it I 'm sure with Authority that Solomon here and in other places doth personate the Atheist it is fit that we observe how the Preacher in this book sets forth the beginning progress and ripeness of his disquisition concerning the happiness of man Wherefore in the begining of his enquiry he setteth down his raw apprehensions and he relateth in the first and second Chapters how he once thought folly equal with wisdom and that there was nothing better then to eat and drink and what adventures and trials he made towards the better understanding of what was good for the sons of men and in this third Chapter he declareth how full of mystery he found the workes of God v. 11. and how little was manifest especially to sensual men of the future state but in the eleventh and twelfth Chapters wherein he declareth his advanced judgement and calleth men off from the world to the thoughts of the day of account and to the early remembrance of their Creator to the fear of God and the observance of his commands he layeth it down as a positive doctrine a doctrine apt to promote such observance fear and remembrance which at first was delivered by him as a probleme or as the mistake of worldly men that when the wheel shall be broken at the Cistern and the circle of our blood utterly disturbed then the dust shall return to the earth as it was and the Spirit shall return to God who gave it But if the Spirit be the breath and life and not an immaterial substance why make you it so hard to know what becomes of it so that only God can understand it for might we not say that the machine of the body is dissolved the breath vanisheth in the soft air the motion is gone from the carcasse into ambient bodies we might then with equal admiration say of a Clock broken all to peices and in rest God knoweth what is become of it for in both instances there
and are unwilling to allow to others their turns of speaking For the rest I might alledge with truth enough by way of excuse the performance of this Labour in the short space of the last Winter-Quarter but the Apology it self the great haste in those twelve Artiâ—les might perhaps seem a crime and a matter of greater guilt then the errour of Ovid who made the Sun to post through all the twelve Signes of the Zodiack in a single day The whole such as it is is most humbly submitted to the Candor and Charity of your Lordship of which that it is great I have good assurance seeing your Honour hath pleased to receive into the number of your dependants My Lord Your Lordships most obliged though unworthy Servant Tho. Tenison Camb. Iune 4. 1670 A TABLE Of the Contents THe Introduction Page Mr. Hobbes and the Student meet at Buxton-well 2. An instance of the train of imagination occasioned there 4 5. Mr. Hobbes his fear suspitious nature expressed in the instance of S. Roscius and parallel'd with the Character of Epicurus in Cicero 5. The entrance into the Dialogue The Students caution about Moroseness Profaneness c. Mr. Hobbes accus'd by des Cartes in one of his Epistles as a man with whom no correspondence is to be held Des Cartes himself noted for prophaning the holy Text. 5 6. Mr. Hobbes defence against the charge of Moroseness c. 7. Why des Cartes an Enemie to Mr. Hobbes and how they differ in the explaining of Sense ibid. Mr. Hobbes Creed in 12 Articles repeated 8 9. Mr. Hobbes boasts of the good effect of his Leviathan upon many of our Gentry 9. Article 1. Concerning the existence and immaterial nature of God 9. c. What Mr. Hobbes meaneth Atheistically in his pretended argument for the existence of a God 10. Mr. Hobbes opinion concerning the corporeitie of God noted by des Cartes and further shewed out of his Leviathan 10 11. The absurd consequences of that opinion which in effect denyeth the being of a God one of them noted by Athenagoras 12 13. Mr. Hobbes self-contradiction whilest he saith all is body yet denyeth parts in God 14. Mr. Hobbes denieth incorporeal substances because the terms are not in Scripture 15. His self-contradiction and improprietie of speech 16. Against Mr. Hobbes that the Scripture favours the doctrine of incorporeal substances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cited by Ignatius out of the N. T. 17. Against Mr. Hobbes that both Plato and Aristotle wrote of incorporeal substances 17 18. Mr. Hobbes argueth against incorporeal substances from Tertullian and the Doctors of the Greek Church 19. Against Mr. Hobbes that the incorporeitie of God is asserted by Athenagoras Theophilus Aut. Tatianus Eusebius Athanasius c. 19 20. Des Cartes accuseth Mr. Hobbes of making false illations whatsoever the premisses be 20. An answer out of other places in Tertullian to the words cited by Mr. Hobbes 22. Mr. Hobbes writes the same over and over especially about incorporeal substances 23. That Mr. Hobbes fixeth a wrong sense upon the words substance and matter 24 25. A saying of Marcellus concerning the making words free 24. Mr. Hobbes doctrine concerning the incomprehensible nature of God 26. How God is incomprehensible 27 28. Against Mr. Hobbes that we may have an Idea of God what an Idea is 31 32. That Mr. Hobbes is not advanc'd above the power of imagination 32 33. That Mr. Hobbes condemneth himself by granting a conception of Vacuum 35. Of the Antients calling God the place of all things 36. The first Article concluded with the Apostrophe of Arnobius 36 37. Article 2. Concerning the Trinity 37 38. Mr. Hobbes monstrous explication of that mystery 38. Mr. Hobbes submitteth to the Annotations of the Assembly 40. Pope Alexanders absurd proof of the Trinity noted by Enjedinus ibid. According to Mr. Hobbes there may be more then 100 persons in the Deity 41. Concerning Adam Abraham Moses Saul Christ c. as representing Gods person ibid. Against Mr. Hobbes that Father in the old Testament is used somtimes in reference to Christ. 42. A text cited by Just. Martyr disagreeing with the vulgar copy ibid. The Trinity according to the explication of Mr. Hobbes no mystery at all 43. Article 3. Of the Origin of the Vniverse 43 44. c. Mr. Hobbes conception of a great bulk of matter arising out of a point 44. Against Mr. Hobbes that men are not wearied in ascending by effects and causes to the first 45. Mr. Hobbes supposing an eternal cause in motion supposeth an eternal cause to be no eternal 46. The school of Epicurus noted by Cicero as deficient touching the source of motion 47. Against Mr. Hobbes that the Creation is to be proved by reason not authority 48 49. Mr. Hobbes is followed in his digression about the word Magistrate and refuted and places out of Varro Cicero Tertullian Grotius our Articles are to that purpose cited and Castalio's niceness taxed 49 50 51. Against Mr. Hobbes that if God is it follows he is Creator of the order of the world of the scituation of the heart 52 53. Mr. Hobbes in De homine confesseth that the order of the parts of the body doth inferre the existence of an intelligent framer of them 54. Article 4. Concerning the incorporeal and permanent nature of Angels Mr. Hobbes supposeth them as phantasms in dreams or pictures in a looking-glass 55. c. Whâ—t Spirit and Angel signifie according to Mr. Hobbes at large 56 57. Against Mr. Hobbes that the being of Angels and Spirits may be proved from natural reasoning and the old Testament 58. Against Mr. Hobbes that Religion ariseth not from tales publickly allowed 50. Of Cardan and his Genius ibid. Concerning Witches Sybills Oracles that they ceased not as Mr. Hobbes saith at Christs coming Concerning Michael Nostredamus 61 62. Against Mr. Hobbes that the Angels sent to Abraham and Lot were not meer apparitions 65. That Christ was not tempted as Mr. Hobbes saith in a Vision ibid. Scultetus's mistake of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mr. Hobbes his of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ibid. That the N. T. asserteth the existence of Angels â—piscopius mistake concerning Christ appearing aâ— a meer Spectre to the Disciples 66 67. Mr. Hobbes late confession of Angels as permanent â—nd substantial from the places in the N. T. Against Mr. Hobbes that the Scripture speaks of the creâ—tion of Angels 68 69. Of the â—ord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Col. 1. the reading of Irenaeus noted 70. Mr. Hobbes mistake about the word Ghost 71. Of his verses of the Peak ibid. Conclusion of the first dialogue 73. Beginning of the second dialogue Article 5. Concerning the Soul and perception in matter 75. According to Mr. Hobbes the Soul is the organized body in due moâ—ion and the Scripture meaneth by Soul bodily life 75 76. This refuted Why blood called the life not to be eaten 76. Mr. Hobbes hypothesis concerning sensation be putteth
satisfaction to find all this in the sequel of our Discourse confirmed to me by experience But whatsoever your behaviour is like to be I cannot but fear having been conversant in your Leviathan that your opinions will deserve reproof I have sometimes heard the substance of them comprized in twelve Articles which sound harshly to men profeâ—â—ing Christianity and they were delivered under the Title of the Hobbist's Creed in such phrase and order as followeth I believe that God is Almighty matter that in him there are three Persons he having been thrice represented on earth that it is to be decided by the Civil Power whether he created all things else that Angels are not Incorporeal substances those words implying a contradiction but preternatural impreâ—â—â—ons on the brain of man that the Soul of man is the temperament of his Body that the Liberty of Will in that Soul is physically necessary that the prime â—aw of nature in the soul of man is that of self-Love that the Law of the Civil Sovereign is the obliging Rule of good and evil just and unjust that the Books of the Old and New Testament are made Canon and Law by the Civil Powers that whatsoever is written in these Books may lawfully be denied even upon oath after the laudable doctrine and practice of the Gnosticks in times of persecution when men shall be urged by the menaces of Authority that Hell is a tolerable condition of life for a few years upon earth to begin at the general Resurrection and that Heaven is a blessed estate of good men like that of Adam beâ—ore his fall beginning at the general Resurrection to be from thenceforth eternal upon Earth in the Holy-Land These Articles as they are double in their number so do they a thousand times exceed in mischievous error those six so properly called bloody ones in the dayes of King Henry the eighth Nay Sir I beseech you set not so uneasily neither prepare to vent your passion for if it shall appear in the pursuit of this disputation that this charge which is now drawn up is false I will not persist in it but be zealous in moving all your slanderers to lay themselves at those Feet of yours at which as you your self have written so very many of our English Gentry have with excellent effect sate for instruction At present I desire to take no other advantage from that presumed Creed than may be derived from the method in which the Articles of it are propounded as also from the particular subjects contained in them without any forestalling assent or dissent of mind For from thence we may fitly borrow both the Heads and the Order of such a discourse as will lead us without confusion throughout all those Opinions with which you are said to have debauched Religion Let us then take our beginning from the first Article that fundamental principle which being removed all real Religion falls to the ground that is to say the Existence of a God Are you then convinced that God is Mr. Hobbs I am For the effects we acknowledge naturally do include a Power of their producing before they were produced and that Power presupposeth something Existent that hath such Power and the thing so existing with power to produce if it were not eternal must needs have been produced by somewhat before it and that again by somewhat else before that till we come to an eternal that is to say the First Power of all Powers and â—â—rst Cause of all Causes and this is it which all men conceive by the name of God Stud. By this argument unwary men may be perhaps deceived into a good opinion of your Philosophy as if by the aids of it you were no weak defender of natural Religion but such as with due attention search your Books they cannot miss a Key wherewith they may decypher those mysterious words and shew that in their true and proper meaning they undermine Religion in stead of laying the ground-work of it Des-Cartes in an Epistle to Father Mersennus makes mention though with much neglect of your opinion concerning a Corporeal God this it seems you had broached in a studied Letter which passed through divers hands about that time when All things Sacred began to be most rudely invaded to wit the commencement of our Civil Wars And in diver Books since that time published you have often insinuated and sometimes directly asserted that whatsoever existeth is material Seing then it is absurd to say that Matter can create Matter it followeth that the effects you speak of in your argument are not to be understood of the very Essences of bodies which in your Book de Corpore you conceive to be neither generated nor destroyed but of those various changes which by motion are caused in nature your sense then amounteth to this impious assertion that in the chain of natural causes subordinate to each other that portion of matter which in one rank of causes and effects for you admit of an eternal cause or of causes being it self eternally moved gave the first impulse to another body which also moved the neighboring Body so forward in many links of succession 'till the motion arrived at any effect which we take notice of is to be called God In the like sense the Atheist Vaninus called nature the Queen and Goddesse of Mortals being as saith a learned Writer a sottish Priest of the said Goddess and also a most infamous sacrifice Mr. Hobbes This principle that God is not incorporeal is the doctrin which I have sometimes written and when occasion serves maintain I say therefore that the world I mean not the Earth only that denominates the lovers of it worldly men but the Universe that is the whole Mass of all things that are is corporeal that is to say body and hath the dimensions of magnitude namely length breadth and depth also every part of body is likewise body and hath the like dimensions consequently every part of the universe is body that which is not body is no part of the â—niverse and because the universe iâ— all that which is no part of it is nothing and consequently no where nor do's it follow from hence that Spirits are nothing for they have dimensions and are therefore really bodies though that name in common speech be given to such bodies only as are visible or palpable that is that have some degree of opacity But for Spirits they call them incorporeal which is a name of more honor and may therefore with more piety be attributed to God himself in whom we consider not what attribute expresseth best his nature which is incomprehensible but what best expresseth our desire to honor him Stud. If every part of body be body not only â—s to us but in it self there seemeth to be such an inexhaustibleness in the least atome as will render it as infinite as the whole Mass of the
not look more like oâ—tentation than necessary defence of truth Some indeed of the Antients believed Angels not to be wholly incorporeal and St. Hierome placeth it amongst the Errors of Origen that he ascribed to Angels bodies of Air they taught not that Body was their sole essence but their cloathing So that to speak after your own manner I observe a great part of those Forces by the strength of which you contend against incorporeal substances to look and march another way Mr. Hobbes Tertullian however is on my side for he in his Treatise de Carne Christi sayes plainly Omne quod est corpus est sui generis ni hil est incorporale â—isi quod non est That is to say Whatsoever is any thing is a body of its kind nothing is incorporeal but that which has no being There are many other places in him to the same purpose for that doctrine served his turn to confute the heresie of them that held that Christ had no body but was a Ghost also of the soul he speaks as of an invisible body You see what fellows in Atheism you joyn with me Stud. Some perhaps might here reply that Tertullian was a single witness and that his testimony might appear invalid because he was condemned of old as an Heretick for this very Doctrine because he was a man of a various Creed because he was better skilled in the Laws of the Roman Empire than in those of nature at least that he attended not to the phylosophick consequence of his opinion lastly because to avoid his adversaries he ran too nigh the other extreme and would have used different weapons in another controversie But it will be more agreeable to the reverence which we owe to that very antient and learned Writer to explain one place in him by another than rudely to accuse him It is therefore to be noted that Tertullian sometimes called the passive matter by the name of body and sometimes by body understood the meer substance being or essence of things In the first sence are those words to be expounded which we find in his Book de Animâ In quantum omne corporale passibile est in tantum quod passibile est corporale est Now it is not to be imagined that in this meaning of the word Corpus a body should be attributed to the impassible Nature of God by a man who devoutly adored his Perfections For the second sence I will alledge the explication which he himself hath made in his Book against Hermogenes the Phylosopher and Painter who being perhaps debauched by his very profession which chiefly imploy'd his fancie affirmed that matter was co-eternal with God Nisi fallor enim omnis res aut corporalis aut incorporalis sit necesse est ut concedam interim aliquid incorporale de substantiis dunâ—axat cum ipsa substantia corpus sit rei cujusque And in the very words which Usâ—er in those now cited by you and craftily conceal'd it is apparent that by body Tertullian meant only essence and not impenetrable matter The words are these Quum autem sit habeat necesse est aliquid per quod est Si habet aliquid per quod est hoc erit corpus ejus Omne quod est corpus est sui generis Mr. Hobbes Of Authority enough let us consult natural Reason by attending to which I maintain that Incorporeal Body is not a name but an absurdity of speech Spirits supernatural commonly signifysie some substance without dimension which two words do flatly contradict one another I say again an Incorporeal Body or which is all one an incorporeal subâ—tance is a name made up of two names which have significations contradictory and inconsistent for a substance is matter subject to accidents and alterations If a man should talk to me of a round Quadrangle or accidents of Bread in Cheese or immaterial substances I should not say he were in an error but that his words were without meaning that is to say absurd Though men may put together words of contradictory signification as spirit and incorporeal yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them Substance incorporeal are words which when they are joyned together destroy one another I say again that to men that understand the signification of these words substance and incorporeal as incorporeal is taken not for subtil body but for not body they imply a contradiction Stud. This unbacked confidence in an argument of such moment provokes me to tell you that you are as notorious in repeating as those Priests whom men of your perswasion are wont to flout at whilst they should rather have regard to the dulness of their common Audience as also that if all things twice said or elsewhere written by you were picked out your Great Leviathan would shrink to a little Scallop But to reason with you in your own way I deny it once and again that the speech Incorporeal Substance either is or implies a contradiction there 's a bare Nay of as good strength as your naked affirmation you have somewhere promised to endeavor as much as you could to avoid too happy concluding but here you are so hasty as to leap over all proper premises into such a conclusion as is made only by a stiff and presumptuous will But I will be content to answer also that we forsake the usage of speech when we confound the names of Body and Substance The Logicians who are at variance in other matters consent in this that a Substance is either material or immaterial If you resolve to fix a sence to the word Substance which hitherto all Custome which is thâ— Interpreter of Speech ha's determin'd agâ—inst you usurp too great Authority M. Pomponius Marcellus fear'd not to tell Tiberius the Emperor who had usâ—d a word not truly Latin in one of his Edicts that it was in his Power to make Men but not to make Words free of the City Mr. Hobbes Do you understand the connexion of Substance and Incorporeal If you do explain it in English for the words are Latine It is something you 'l say that being without Body stands under stands under what will you say under accidents almost all the Fathers of the Church will be against you and then you are an Atheist Stud. By avoiding the word Substance by which in despight of general use you will mean Body your cavil vanisheth for if we should use the terms of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Being or Essence affirming that God is a Being which neither is nor ha's a Body you will be of a very quick and sagacious Nose to smell out a contradiction in words so put together For to Be and to be without Body are not terms which destroy each other It might then be inferred that all moral virtues and all Physical notions were names and nothing else But I will admit of
England that Article though it consisteth in declaring the Power of the King in affairs both Civil and Ecclesiastical yet bears the Tide Of the Civil Magistrate But I have busied my self too long in a nicety â—f words which improve the memory but give not much advantage to the nobler faculty of reason It is time then that we look back upon our main Subject the Creation of the World If you have any further matter to deliver in relation to that Subject I am ready to attend to you and it Mr. Hobbes Something I have to say but there is little coherence of it with our former discourse I add however seeing you seem to have required something more that upon supposition of the Being of a God it follows not that he created the World Although it were demonstrated that a Being infinite independent omnipotent did exist yet could it not rightly be thence inferred that a Creator do's exist also Unless a maâ— should think that because there is a Being which we believe to have created all things therefore the World was created by Him Stud. Seeing dependent nature is so far removed from a power of making that it cannot so much as move it self but will if once moved be without impediment in perpetual motion and arreâ— alwayes if once at rest without fresh impulse froâ— some neighboring body we must of necessity have recourse to a Creator and because we suppose already in the Idea of God such infinitâ—â—ower as excludes the like power from all things else it cannot but follow that there being a World He was the Maker of it Seeing by the Hypothesis the impotent World exists and an infinite power also who else can be imagined this Omnipotent Architect This absurd Assertion puts me in mind of Heraclitus who having denied that any of the Gods were Creators subjoyned also that neither had any man created the world fearing sayes Plutarch in a dry jest lest after he had overthrown the power of the Deities we might suspect some mortal man had been the Author of such a Master-piece The like consequence is natural from the attribute of divine wisdome which being infinite can appertain but to one Essence If then the world be mâ—de in number and weight and measure it is demonstrable from thence both that there is an eternal Geometer as also that if such a one existeth the world which could not so frame it self was his Artifice And doubtless the disposition of the parts of the greater world and even the oeconomy of the parts of the lesser that of man implying most wise designs do necessarily inferr Gassendus himself confessing it the Being of a Creator We need not search further than to some one particular Note in the situation of the heart which is a kind of Box containing many wonders one within another It is to be observed that in man and in almost all such Animals as live of flesh that the situation of the heart is not in the center but in the superior part of the Body that it may the more readily convey to the head a due portion of bloud For seeing that the trajection and distribution of the bloud dependeth wholly upon the Systole of the heart and that the liquor cast forth does not so easily ascend as it flows into vessels paralel or inferior if the seat of the heart were more removed from the head the head would be rendred impotent for want of bloud unless the heart were framed with a far greater strength whereby it might with more potent violence force up its liquor But in such Animals whose neck is extended by nature as it were on purpose to meet their provisions the heart is placed without any prejudice in the center because the head being frequently pendulous the bloud runs to it in a wide and daily supplyed Channel Go now that I may bespeak you in the way of Gassendus and applaud your wit in saying that that was done by chance which could not have been more wisely contrived Mr. Hobbes In this Argument I my self in my Book de Homine have not denied the frame of nature to argue design and I have there spoken to this purpose Stud. Please to spare the Translation of the place for there is as I remember a conceit in the words which will be lost in English Mr. Hobbes Mock on I am not ashamed of the words and they are these Ad sensus procedo satis habens si hujusmodi res attigero tantùm planiùs autem tract andas aliis reliquero qui si machinas omnes tum Generationis tum Nutritionis satis perspexerint nec tamen eas à Mente aliqui conditas ordinatasque ad sua quasque officia viderine ipsi profecto sine Mente esse censendi sunt Stud. Seeing thus much is acknowledged from you in reference to the Body how great may that conviction be of the existence of a Creator which ariseth from the consideration of Souls and Angels whilest Thought is much more admirable than motion and incorporeal spirit than matter Mr. Hobbes Incorporeal Substance is a note which you shake too too often and here with much absurdity For to say an Angel or Spirit is an incorporeal substance is to say in effect there is no Angel or Spirit at all The Universe being the aggregate of all bodies there is no real part thereof that is not also body The substance of invisible Agents is by some conceived to be the same with that which appeareth in a dream or in a looking-glass to them that are awake But the opinion that such Spirits were incorporeal could never enter into the mind of any man by nature However that name will serve our purpose for the Introduction of the Fourth Head of our Discourse The Nature of Angels Stud. To requite your Quibble that Note of Incorporeal Angel ought not to have offended your purged â—ars seeing the old Philosophers thence derived the harmony of the celestial Orbs. But to be in good earnest you seem by denying Intelligencies or Incorporeal Angels not only to contend with those despised Philosophers but to encounter almost the whole world Mr. Hobbes It is true that the Heathens and all Nations of the World have acknowledged that there be Spirits which for the most part they hold to be Incorporeal whereby it might be thought that a man by natural reason may arrive without the Scriptures to the knowledge of this that Spirits are but the erroneous collection thereof by the Heathens may proceed from the ignorance of the Causes of Ghosts and Phantasms and such other apparitions that is to say from the ignorance of what those things are which are called Spectra Images that appeâ—r in the dark to children and such as have strong fears and other strange imaginations By the name of Angel is signified generally a Messenger and most often a Messenger of God and by a Messenger
recapitulates his dispersed Soldiers into a Troop So that hereby is set forth that Soveraignty over Men and Angels which was acquired by the Death Resurrection and Ascension of the Captain of our Salvation to whom as Head and Lord the whole body of them is referred and under whom they shall not contend as of old the Angels of Persia and Graecia are said to have done Mr. Hobbes For Angels be they permanent created substances be they what they will this I am sure of that I have no Idea of them When I think of an Angel sometimes the Image of Flame sometimes of a beautiful Cupid with wings comes into my fancy which Image I am confident is not the similitude of an Angel and therefore is not the Idea of it But believing that they are certain Creatures ministring to God invisible and immaterial we impose upon the thing believed or supposed the name of Angels whilst in the mean time the Idea under which I imagin an Angel is compounded of the Ideas of visible things Stud. You here again are blindly fallen into the old mistake of an Idea for an Image If we suppose an Angel to be an understanding Essence either not united vitally to matter or only to the purest Aether and conceive it employed in such offices as are in Scripture ascribed to it we have a competent notion of it and that is an Idea But of these invisible Powers above us methinks we have spoken largely enough considering their nature as also the season of the night if we pursue our Subject much longer the morning will break in and affright away the Ghosts we talk of When Goddess Thou lifts up thy wakened head Out of the Morning 's Purple bed Thy Quire of Birds about thee play And all the joyful World salutes the rising Day The Ghosts and monster-spirits that did presume A Bodie 's Priviledg to assume Vanish again invisibly And Bodies gain agâ—n their visibility So said the best of English Poets in his Hymn to Light Mr. Hobbes A Poet may talk of Ghosts but I 'm sorry you think that we have been seriously discoursing about them for then it seems we have talk'd about nothing It is not well that we render spirits by the word Ghosts which signifieth nothing neither in heaven nor earth but the imaginary inhabitants of mans brain Stud. Gast or Geast whence Ghost is a good old English word and signifieth the same with spirit and I could produce Verstegan to avouch it The word is good and the Poetry excellent and since I am fallen upon it I think it will not be amiss if we unbend a little and refresh and smooth our spirits with some Poetick numbers and dismiss our severer Reasonings 'till the morrow And now it comes into my mind that I have about me your Verses oâ— the Pâ—ak which are most agreeable to the place and circumstances in which we have been and in râ—peating which I might be satisfi'd concerning some expressions and particularly that of ninos sibi concolor Author Fallat Mr. Hâ—bbes For my Verses of the Peak they are as ill in my opinion as I believe they are in any mans and made long since I will by no means hear them Stud. Then let us get on the other side of our Curtains without any Epilogue at all for I begin to be as heavy as if the Mines of this Shire had a powerful influence upon me I would have been glad to have diverted the humour a little with something pleasant that we might have concluded as the Italians advise Con la bocca dolce But I will force none of my humour upon you Sir I return you thanks for your Conversation and I wish you most heartily a good night Mr. Hobbes Sir praying God to prosper you I take leave of you and am your humble Servant The End of the First Dialogue The Second Dialogue Art 5. Concerning the Soul of Man Stud. A Good morrow to you Mr. Hobbes I hope you slept well since I parted from you notwithstanding the heat of our Disputation Mr. Hobbes Very well as quietly as if I had been rocked by one of those good Genii which we spake of a little before we took our leaves Stud. I thank God I slept so soundly that the passed time is esteemed by me â—ong upon no other account than that it hath kept me some hours from debating such further matters in Philosophy and Religion as we at first propounded Mr. Hobbes Let us then delay no longer but enter immediately upon our second Conference Stud. I am ready to wait upon you and setting aside the time of sleep as nothing to connect this part of our life with that wherein we were awake conferring about Angels and because we said as much as we intended upon that Subject let us descend to the Fifth Article which concerns those Beings next in order the Souls of Men of them I would gladly hear your thoughts seeing it is a matter which relates so closely to the greatest interest of man Mr. Hobbes By the Soul I mean the Life of Man and Life it self is but motion so that the Soul or Life is but a motion of Limbs the beginning whereof is in some principal part within Stud. By this means you will make of Man an excellent piece of Clock-work which though you have been hammering out more than thirty years may methinks like the artificial man of Albertus Magnus be broken in sunder in a moment I know that you may set the wheels of your machin a going but what is there within that shall understand when it goes well or ill or feel and number the repeated strokes You mean surely by your description the mechanism of the Body set on work and not the Soul perceiving its operations Mr. Hobbes Perception or Imagination depends as I think upon the motion of Corporeal Organs and so the Mind will be nothing else but a motion in certain parts of an Organized Body Stud. If you can clearly and distinctly both explain and prove that which you have now proposed in gross you shall then be esteemed that great Apollo whom every one that has feigned any singular Hypothesis does in the absence of good Neighbours boast himself to be Mr. Hobbes Before I undertake this I will remove out of your way that prejudice which you may have against the notion of the Soul as consisting in Life by proving most effectually to an Ecclesiastick that the Scripture giveth countenance to my definition The Soul in Scripture signifieth always either the life or the living creature and the Body and Soul jointly the body alive In the first day of the Creation God said Let the Waters produce Reptile animae viventis The creeping thing that hath in it a living soul the English translate it That hath life And again God created Whales Et omnem animam viventem which in the English is Every living
creature And likewise of Man God made him of the dust of the Earth and breathed in his face the breath of life Et factus est homo in animam viventem that is And man was made a living creature And after Noah came out of the Ark God saith He will no more smite Omnem animam viventem that is Every living creature And Deut. 12.23 Eat not the blood for the blood is the soul that is the Life From which places if by Soul were meant a substance incorporeal with an existence separated from the body it might aswell be inferred of any other living Creatures as of Man Stud. To argue from one sense of an equivocal word to the universal acceptance of it becomes not a man of ordinary parts Nephesh Soul as well as Ruach Spirit is a word of various signification in the Old Testament and in many places it denotes will lust or pleasure We read in the Psalmes this phrase To bind his Princes Benaphscho according to his soul or at his pleasure And again Deliver me not Benephesch unto the soul or will of mine Enemies When the word is improperly attributed to God in Scripture this usually is the sense of it You would now esteem me absurd enough if I went about to infer from hence either that the essence of the Soul consisteth in Will and Pleasure or that the Deity had a Soul that is Life that is Motion The Soul being the spring of bodily life in man it might by an easie Metonymie be used as in the recited places in expressing Life In that place where the Blood is call'd the Soul or Life it was not the design of Moses to set forth Philosophically the inward essence of a Beast but to let the people understand that the blood of a Beast which was sprinkled upon the Altar being an embleme of the life of Man forfeited through disobedience and an instrument in expiation they should abstain out of reverence to that Mystery from a rude quaffing and devouring of it But what answer have you in readiness to those places where the Scripture speaks distinctly of Body and Soul Mr. Hobbes Body and Soul is no more than Body and Life or Body alive In those places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast body and soul into hell-fire it is no more than body and life that is to say they shall be cast alive into the perpetual fire of Gehenna Stud. Your Gloss is extreamly wide of the unwrested meaning of the holy Text. For our Saviour counselleth his Apostles not to fear them that can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul making a manifest distinction thereby betwixt the Soul and the Life of the Body for if the Soul were nothing but the Life of the body it were in the power of every man to kill our Souls unto whose sword and malice our lives lay do open And thus you see instead of removing truth which in me you call a prejudice you have laid a stumbling block in the way an occasion of falling into error But let us leave the explication of Scripture in which you are for the greater part unhappy and attempt the explication of the exalted mechanism of Living Man wherein you have laboured so many years and concerning which you have raised the expectations of many Mr. Hobbes The cause of Sense is the external body or object which presseth the organ proper to each sense either immediately as in the Tast and Touch or mediately as in Seeing Hearing and Smelling which pressure by the mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of the body continued inwards to the brain and heart causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure or endeavour of the heart to deliver it self which endeavour because outward seemeth to be some matter without and the seeming or fancy is that which men call Sense Stud. You do not here at all surprize me as if some new Philosophy for the main not heard of in former ages had to your immortal renown been first discover'd by you For it has been said of old that All variety in bodies ariseth from motion and that Sensation is a perception of that manner in which impressing bodies affect us For Aristotle hath recited an ancient saying of Philosophers who holding that Phantaâ—ms were not the things themselves but only in our Senses express'd their opinion by asserting that there was no blackness without Sight nor without Taste And Des-cartes in his Meteors published in French together with his Method Dioptriques and Geometry as soon as I was born explained the nature of Colours light and vision otherwise than by intentional Species and told us that by cold and heat are to understood perceptions occasioned by the less or more vehement touch of little bodies upon the capillaments of the nerves which serve in our organs to that purpose Yet I am not tir'd in hearing such Hypotheses repeated or varied please then to proceed and if it liketh you particularly in the explication of the nature of Vision wherein the Doctrine of Phantasms is most concern'd Mr. Hobbes In every great agitation or concussion of the brain as it happeneth from a stroke especially if the stroke be upon the Eye whereby the Optick-nerve suffereth any great violence there appeareth before the Eyes a certain light which light is nothing without but an apparition only all that is real being the concussion of motion of the parts of that nerve from which experience we may conclude that apparition of light is really nothing but motion within and image and colour is but an apparition to us of that motion agitation or alteration which the object worketh in the brain or spirits or some internal substance in the head Stud. This exposition of Light by the crouding of the parts though it be not wholly to be rejected yet may it I think be rendred suspicious for a time by that which deserves at least the name of a puzzling Objection Let us then suppose unto our selves such a circumference as is surrounded with Eyes for in every point of enlightned space and at all times there may be Vision I say then that the part in the Center being equally crouded on all sides no motion or pressure can be thence conveighed Diametrically from Eye to Eye which is against the Hypothesis mention'd This Scruple concerneth also the Philosophy of Des-cartes against whose Globuli in Vision there hath likewise of late been this Exception made They have been supposed in a right line to move after the manner of Jack-wheels the one from East to West moving the next from West to East from whence it has been concluded that the motion being thus disturbed the knowledg of the Object cannot distinctly be attained to by the endeavour of the last Globulus But to on it what he himself hath written concerning the Collateral Globuli I observe that the Globuli are so
must be obstructed by the grant of an undetermin'd liberty in Man It is not that I know of affirm'd by any Disputant that there is such a lawless Liberty in Man as is not under subjection to the absolute Power of God but that it is a Liberty which God Almighty in an agreeableness to the free nature of Man hath been pleas'd to grant and for the greater part to suffer in the exercise of it Only it is said concerning sin that God cannot force the Will of Man to the commission of it for the production of such a wretched Issue would argue not omnipotency but impotence and imperfection in the parent of it God created Man and gave a Law to him and design'd not to use his Almighty Power to effect the fulfilling of that Law which Power supposeth the Command of a Law to be in vain He therefore that interposeth not his Power whilst he may hath not his Power disanulled when his preceptive Will is only withstood and he permitteth that disobedience Mr. Hobbes But what Elusion can be invented touching the foreknowledg of God The denying necessity destroyeth both the Decrees and Prescience of God Almighty for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by Man as an instrument or foreseeth shall come to pass a Man if he have Liberty from necessitation might frustrate and make not to come to pass and God should either not foreknow it and not decree it or he should foreknow such things shall be as shall never be and decree that which shall never come to pass Stud. Touching the Decees of God it cannot be proved that they extend to all things which come to pass For his Prescience I 'm sure that it extendeth to all things possible to be known and that it hath no necessary influence upon the Event it doth neither hinder the Power of God nor the Liberty of Man God foreseeth that the Event may come to paâ—s and that he will not hinder it yet that he might and it cometh to pass most necessarily if God â—oreseeth it but the necessity ariseth from the supposition of the infallibility and not from any causal energy of divine foreknowledg It is manifest by the fulfilled Prophesies of divers inspired Men that there is Prescience and a man may also be assured that neither is his Liberty intringed by it nor Prescience by his Liberty It is evident to every Man in many cases as evident as that he perceiveth at all or understandeth that he willeth or â—efuseth without any constraint upon his freedom But there is great difficulty in unridling the manner of the consistence of Foreknowledg and Liberty because although there be some notion yet there is not a knowledg fully comprehensive of the Divine Wisdom in a finite Soul Thus much notwithstanding may with sobriety be offer'd towards the explication of this mysterious truth that the boundless wisdom of God who made the World understanding the Laws and Operations of his Workmanship from the beginning to the end of them understandeth also the nature of all appearances in all Objects in relation to the mind of Man in every Estate wherein he is placed and at all times together with the dispositions of each Man's Soul and thereby foreseeth what he will refuse or chuse whilst he had power absolutely speaking otherwise either to elect or reject He that should drop a piece of money by an undiscerned hand in the way of a man afflicted with extream poverty the same person might readily foresee that the espied money would infallibly be taken up by that poor man though he could not but understand that the Beggar had so much power over his own limbs as not to stoop unless he pleased But it seemeth not worth the time and pains to reconcile to your apprehension the Doctrins of Foreknowledg and undetermin'd Liberty because this Objection is by you proposed in order to the amusing of other Men's Reasons rather than in justification of the Truth For according to your Principles all evidence or knowledg ariseth from Objects already in being Neither understand you this of Essence in the Sense of the Metaphysick-Schools but of the actual presence of caused Objects Mr. Hobbes In my Opinion Foreknowledg is Knowledg and Knowledg depends on the existence of things known not they on it However the Objection serveth for the incommoding of those who maintain another sort of Foreknowledg but the argument on which I establish my Doctrine is of another kind I hold that to be a sufficient cause to which nothing is wanting that is needful to the producing of the effect The same also is a necessary cause For if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect then there wanteth somewhat which was needful to the producing of it and so the Cause was not sufficient but if it be impossible that a sufficient Cause should not produce the Effect then is a sufficient Cause a necessary Cause for that is said to produce an Effect necessarily that cannot but produce it Hence it is manifest that whatsoever is produced is produced necessarily for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient Cause to produce it or else it had not been and therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated Stud. In the alterations made in Bodies every sufficient is an efficient Cause by reason that matter sufficiently moved cannot stay it self but is wholly determin'd by foreign impulse which impulse also had an undefeated determination But because I have proved the existence of an Immaterial Soul I may affirm that all outward preparations being made so that there remaineth nothing wanting but the Act of Volition the Spiritual Mind not being overcome by the sway of Matter hath a power to abstain from acting though perhaps it is not pleased to use it And this we may illustrate by the Example of Abraham whose Fire Wood and Son to be a Victim and Sacrificing-knife were in a readiness and sufficient strength with these to execute the Command which God Almighty by way of trial had given to him yet who can doubt that Abraham had a power at the same time to render these preparations useless and to be disobedient For how could those Objects and this Command conveigh a force into his Will and thence into his Arm to slay his Son though they might present him with a reason which the goodness of his Disposition would not refuse The intention of Abraham to slay his Son was wrought by a Moral and not a Physical or Natural Power Mr. Hobbes Natural efficacy of Objects does determine voluntary Agents and necessitates the Will and consequently the Action but for Moral efficacy I understand not what you mean Stud. I understand by Moral efficacy the perswaâ—ive power of such Motives as those which arise from fear and love and trust and gratitude and especially such as arise from the meer reason of the Case as when a man doth therefore give Alms
the hearty belief of it he may with his mouth renounce it out of a tender regard to flesh and bloud To proceed in this Argument there is yet remaining another objection to which I know not what answer can be by you returned It is the Argument used by St. Peter and St. Iohn to the Rulers of the people and Elders of Israel when by menaces they urg'd them to desist from the propagation of the holy Gospel Whether it be right said those Apostles in the sight of God to hearken unto you more then unto God judge ye Mr. Hobbes If the command of the Civil Soveraign be such as that it may be obeyed without the forfeiture of life eternal not to obey it is unjust but if it be such as cannot be obeyed without being damned to eternal death then it were madness to obey it All men therefore that would avoid both the punishments that are to be in this world inflicted for disobedience to their earthly Soveraign and those that shall be inflicted in the world to come for disobedience to God have need to be taught to distinguish well between what is and what is not necessary to eternal Salvation Now all that is necessary to Salvation is contained in two Vertues Faith in Christ and Obedience to Laws Now our Saviour Christ hath given us no new Laws but counsel to observe those we are subject to that is to say the Laws of Nature and the Laws of our several Soveraigns and for Faith The Vnum necessarium onely Article of Faith which the Scripture maketh simply necessary to Salvation is this That Jesus is the Christ. Having thus shown what is necessary to Salvation it is not hard to reconcile our obedience to God with our obedience to the civil Soveraign who is either Christian or Infideld If he be a Christian he alloweth the belief of this Article that Jesus is the Christ and of all the Articles that are contained in it or are by evident consequence deduced from it which is all the Faith necessary to Salvation and because he is a Soveraign he requireth obedience to all his own that is to all the Civil Laws in which also are contained all the Laws of Nature that is all the Laws of God for besides the Laws of Nature and the Laws of the Church which are part of the Civil Law for the Church that can make Laws is the Common-wealth there be no other Laws Divine And when the civil Soveraign is an Infidel every one of his own subjects that resisteth him sinneth against the Laws of God And for their Faith it â—s internal and invisible they have the Liâ—ense that Naaman had and need not put themselves into danger for it But if they do they ought to expect their reward in Heaven â—nd not to complain of their lawful Soveraign In the mean time they are to intend to obey Christ at his coming but at present they are bound to obey the Laws of that Infidel King all Christians are bound in Conscience â—o to do Thought is free but when it comes to confession of Faith the private Reason must submit to the publick that is to say to Gods Lieutenant Stud. Instead of the resolution of this Queâ—y when we are to obey God rather then man you shew that we may very well do both together and so â—ndirectly you accuse the Apostles of falshood or folly in their suggestion And here again you repeat your errors that Christ hath not made any new Laws and that the Faith of a Christian is intire without or contrary to profession and you suppose what the experience of the World refuteth that Infidel Kings command not sometimes against the Laws of Nature Also whilst here you remit the Martyrs scoffingly to heaven for a reward you fall unawares into the mock of Iulian the Apostate who amidst his persecution us'd this taunt It becometh not you Christians to enjoy any thing in this world for your Kingdom is in Heaven But if such persons as suffer for Christianity shall be rewarded in Heaven their constancie then was noble and excellent whilst they chose trouble rather then base compliance and those who inflicted evils on them for doing what God approved were unjust If then you remit the Martyrs to Heaven you send the civil Soveraigns who shed the bloud of the Apostles for disobedience to their unrighteous Edicts to a place of less refreshment Mr. Hobbes You have made your instance in the Apostles of whose Martyrdom I approve because of their Commission For others who hazard their lives for Christianity I praise them not he that is not sent to preach the fundamental Article but taketh it upon him of his private Authority though he be a witness and consequently a Martyr either primary of Christ or secondary of his Apostles or their Successors yet is he not obliged to suffer death for that cause because being not called thereto 't is not required at his hands nor ought he to complain if he looseth the reward he expecteth from those that never set him on work None therefore can be a Martyr neither of the first nor second degree that have not a warrant to preach Christ come in the Flesh that is to say none but such as are sent to the conversion of Infidels Stud. Every Member of the Christian Society is bound to profess the Gospel as hath been proved and therefore a private man though he hath not right not having Commission to exercise the Offices of a Priest yet hath he a command to own the truth when he is adjur'd to confess of what faith he is not onely in relation to Christianity in general but also in relation to the Doctrines of Moment in it which sometimes the Christian Powers do erre in And every person will with readiness make such profession notwithstanding the terrours of the Civil Sword who hath sworn in his heart and tongue Allegiance unto Christ who is sincere in his Religion who valueth his soul more then his body who is heartily perswaded of a life or death eternal the latter of which is Our eleventh Subject Mr. Hobbes The maintainance of civil Society depending on Justice and Justice on the powâ—r of life and death and other less rewards and punishments residing in them that have the Soveraignty of the Common-wealth it is impossible a Common-wealth should stand where any other then the Soveraign hath a power of giving greater rewards then life and of inflicting greater punishments then death Now seeing eternal life is a greater reward then the life present and eternal torment a greater punishment then the death of Nature it is a thing worthy to be well considered of all men that desiâ—e by obeying Authority to avoid the calamities of confusion and Civil War what is meant in holy Scripture by life eternal and torment eternal Stud. What is then to be understood by eternal Torment if we aright interpret the Holy
Hell on earth if also their condition shall be such as to admit of Generation eating and drinking the provisions for which require wide spaces upon earth not at all possessed by the bodies of men and there be also required room as you assert for the followers of Christ it will trie the utmost of your Mathematick-skill to finde place sufficient for the bodies of all that have already lived or shall live before the Universal Judgment Some of no mean degree amongst the Learned have by probable Rules computed the number of men before the Floud who begat Sons and Daughters at a very great age and have found it to exceed much more then a thousand millions insomuch that the Floud may seem to have been almost as necessary in relation unto the numbers of people as to the increase of their iniquities And they observe how in less then four hundred years after the Floud there were Armies in the Eastern Countries sufficient to leave nothing rising there besides the Sun If therefore Tophet be on earth let it not any more be taken up as a Proverb by us That Hell cannot be satisfi'd seeing it will be glutted with half the people for whom it is prepared But methinks if that be in truth the estate of the Reprobate which you have described the literal Hinnom may seem to have been overspread with greater horror then the mystical shall be and the unrighteous may dance and leap with joy in their very chains of darkness seeing they neither pinch extreamly at the present nor shall be everlasting there is nothing more Divine to voluptuous men then to eat and drink and to exonerate nature and to be immortal in their off-spring Mr. Hobbes You are too hasty in your reflexions you mistake that for the full description of Hell which I design'd for the easier part of it I therefore tell you further that they shall be punished with grief and discontent of mind from the sight of that eternal felicitie in others which they themselves through their own incredulity and disobedience have lost And because such felicity in others is not sensible but by comparison with their own actual miseries it followeth that they are to suffer such bodily pains and calamities as are incident to those who not only live under evil and cruel Governours but have also for Enemy the eternal King of the Saints God Almighty Stud. But shall not there be Devils let loose upon those persons who have bin seduced by thâ—m from obedience to God! shall not they be deliver'd over to the Tormentors who have not discharged their obligations towards him and have such outward scourges superadded to the lash of remorse within Mr. Hobbes For the Tormentors we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy or Satan the Accuser or Diabolus the Destroyer or Abaddon which significant names Satan Devil Abaddon set not forth to us any individual Person as proper Names use to doe but only an Office or Quality and are therefore Appellatives Gods Kingdome was in Palestine and the Nations round about were the Kingdomes of the Enemy and consequently by Satan is meant any earthly Enemy of the Church You are therefore mistaken in the notion of Tormentors Now that which completeth the misery of the damned is that they shall dye again Stud. That which you make the top of their calamitie is to be reckoned as a priviledg because it puts an end to their torment together with their being the continuance of which cannot make recompence for that misery with which in the real Hell it will be oppressed but whence is it proved by you that the last pain of the damned is such destruction Mr. Hobbes I learn from the Scripture that amongst bodily pains is to be reckoned also to every one of the wicked a second death for though the Scripture be clear for an universal Resurrection yet we do not read that to any of the Reprobate is promised an eternal life I know you will now salve your self by saying that by the second and everlasting death is meant a second and everlasting life but in torments a Figure never used but in this very case Stud. The Figure in which we speak whilest we express a great calamitie by death is of common use in relation to the incommodities of this present life for nothing is more usual then to say that to live is to be well St. Paul with reference to his many troubles said he dyed daily And Grotius somwhere expoundeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by such quibus vita haud vitalis In Sophocles you might have read these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That this also is the true meaning of the second death appeareth to those who are aware that the phrase was borrowed by St. Iohn from the Hebrew-Doctors with whom it was and is most frequent to call the torments of Hell by that very name Wherefore those words of David He seeth that wise men die are thus Paraphrased by the Caldee Paraphrast He shall see wicked wise men who die the second death and are adjudged to Hell Having now attended to your Opinion concerning the Place and Estate of the damned methinks it begetteth in me as feeble belief as the Fables of Charon and the River Styx and the black Frogs therein were wont to do in Iuvenal's daies amongst the Romans whose very children he saies unless they were so young as not to pay for their Bath were apt to scoffe at such improbable stories But let us now understand in order to the dispatch of our Twelfth and last Head What more successful doctrine you can deliver concerning the felicities of the just He that cannot paint a Devil well is not likelie to shew masterie in the painting of an holy Angel but whatsoever your description be of eternal life I am ready to fix my eye upon it and if I espie reason to approve it Mr. Hobbes In delivering my opinion concerning the future state I will begin by telling you that the Soul of man is not in its own nature eternal or a living creature independent on the body and that no meer man is immortal otherwise then by the resurrection in the last day except Enoch and Elias But though there be no natural immortalitie of the Soul yet there is life eternal which the Elect shall enjoy by grace Stud. It hath bin alreadie proved that there is in man a spiritual substance which immagineth remembreth reasoneth and that therefore naturally it endureth after the dissolution of that body from which it is by such notorious marks distinguish'd neither doth it slumber 'till the sounding of the last Trump at the general resurrection It is true that without the assistance of Revelation we cannot well understand that our withered bodies shall spring out of the dust and therefore with reference to the resurrection the ancient Iews
is only a dissolution of the contexture of the parts and the motion convey'd to other portions of neighbouring matter Why also do you vary from the translation of the Hebrew copy in Chap. 3. v. 21. for instead of Who knoweth the spirit of man that is ascending and the Spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth You have thus rendred the words Who knoweth that the spirit of man goeth upward for there is great difference betwixt this saying Who knoweth that Mr. Hobbes is a Mathematician and this Who knoweth Mr. Hobbes who is a Mathematician The former disposition of Solomon's words supposeth a Spirit and the ascent of it and withall our ignorance of the nature of the Soul the latter leaveth it doubtful whether the Spirit ascendeth or not It is well though I believe you knew it not your self that the Seventie Interpreters are a little on your side Mr. Hobbes But what is on your part to be said to those words of Solomon in Chap. 4. ver 3. of Ecclesiastes Better is he that hath not yet been then both they that is then they that live or have lived which if the Soul of all them that have lived were immortal were a hard saying for then to have an immortal Soul were worse then to have no Soul at all Stud. To this the easie truth is to be replyed that the wise man preferreth a condition of not being if we suppose him speaking in his own Person before a life of misery and doubtless it is better to have no Soul then to have a Soul immortal together with immortal grief and the saying is common amongst Diviâ—es that it had bin better for Dives to have had no tongue then to have bin possessed of it meerly as a subject for the fury of the infernal flames to prey upon and I think also it is the natural sense of mankind Wherefore though Iob was a man of great fortitude of spirit and one who feared by impatience to offend God Yet when his calamities as so many waves in thick succession were ready to over-whelme him he began to curse the day of his Nativitie Mr. Hobbes There is yet another place in the book of Ecclesiastes which confirmeth my opinion of the state of the dead It is said in Chap. 9. ver 5. That the living know they shall dye but the dead know not any thing that is naturally and before the resurrection of the body Stud. For answer to this citation I â—efeâ— you to Diodati whose notes you have no reason to despise seeing you have submitted the declaration of your judgement to the Annotations of the Assembly who pleased to transcribe so very many places out of the aforesaid Authour observe therefore the context and his interpretation which I may represent to you in this Paraphrase Ver. 3. By reason of this indifferency of events mentioned by Solomon in the beginning of the Chapter worldly men dally with 'till they die iâ— their sins Ver. 4. For whilst life doth last the gate of hope and repentance is open though men make not use of this opportunity in order to their salvation For a living dogg that is to say a great sinner alive is happier whilst God grants to him life and opportunitie of conversion then a lesser sinner compared to a Lyon which is a more noble and not so unclean a beast as a dogg who dyeth in his impenitencie and so is past all remedy Ver. 5. For the living know they shall die and through the fear of death may be induced to repentance whilst there is space for it but the dead know not any thing not in this sense that their souls do loose all knowledge conscience or remembrance but in this because it availeth them nothing to Salvation and they understand not now the things that belong to their peace for they are by the absence of opportunity quite hidden from their eyes neither have they any more a reward set down for virtue whilst a man liveth in this world which is the place appointed for us to labour and run our race in for the memory of them is forgotten God hath for ever cast them off according to that of David Like the slain that lye in the grave whom thou remembrest no more and they are cut off from thy hand And this sense of the place is confirmed by the tenth verse where Solomon presseth men to a speedie exercise of religion in these words Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might for there is no work nor device nor knowledg nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest Mr. Hobbes What answer have you to the words of Iob Chap. 14. ver 7. There is hope of a tree if it be cast down though the root thereof wax old and the stock thereof dye in the ground yet when it senteth the water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant but man dyeth and wasteth away yea man giveth up the ghost and where is he And ver 12. man lyeth down riseth not till the heavens be no more But when is it that the heavens shall be no more S. Peter tells us that it is at the general resurrection Stud. It hath been thought by some a sufficient answer to this place to understand it of entire man as he consisteth of soul and body seeing man is not man ariseth not ' though the soul existeth and ascendeth before the consummate estate of both in the great day of the Messiah I know also that the Jews consider Iob as a Gentile who had no assurance of a future state and that he speaketh in the seventh Chapter as much against the resurrection of the body as the immortalitie of the soul. As the cloud saith Iob is consumed and vanisheth away so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more And there are many who expound the letter in the 19 Chap. and 25 26. verses of the restitution of Iobs body tormented with worms to soundness of health and of the blessings descending upon him in his latter daies even to the eclipsing the glories of his first posteritie Mr. Hobbes What need is there of answer upon answer in the present case for this doctrine of the natural immortalitie of the soul which you so eagerly conted for is unnecessary to the Christian faith For supposing that when a man dies there remaineth nothing of him but his carcass cannot God that raised inanimated dust and clay into a living creature by his word as easily raise a dead carcass to life again and continue him alive for ever or make him dye again by another word Stud. If you attempt thus to explain the resurrection of entire man you will be pressed with such a weighty inconvenience as cannot by the utmost strength of your wit be ever sustained For if man be not raised up by a reunion of his immaterial soul to the main Stamina of such a
reason on their side when they affirm that the kingdom of glory is in the highest Heavens and not on earth which if men rise the same they were when they acted in the present world retaining all their parts howsoever new-moulded then according to your Hypothesis which conceiveth man to be wholly material the whole earth will be little enough to give the Blessed space wherein to move with pleasure and we shall be as much in the dark for the place of the damned as the place it self is said to be Our blessed Saviour hath assur'd us that we shall in the Resurrection be like the Angels And St. Paul hath also informed Christians that they shall be indued with Coelestial Bodies when they have put off these earthly Sepulchres in which their nobler mindes lay entombed and that this body of flesh and bloud for of that is his whole discourse and not of any moral body of sin and corruption shall not inherit the Kingdom of God And from hence Athenagoras hath been taught to say that in the Resurrection we shall not be as flesh though we bear flesh about us Now this Angelical Coelestial Body seemeth very unagreeable to the condition of Inhabitants upon earth neither had innocent Adam such a body in Paradise And it is also to be noted that the Blessed cannot by any means enjoy such Coelestial Bodies according to the principles by you delivered and of this I above have given some intimation For if man be onely a piece of well-disposed matter and is devoyd of an immaterial soul upon the permanent oneness of which dependeth chiefly his individuation he is no more the same person upon so great an alteration made in the contexture of the body then a spire of Grass is the same with part of the flesh of an Ox into which after digestion it is transform'd But why doth it seem to you incredible that holy men shall be caught up with Enoch and Elias and St. Paul and enjoy their happiness in Heavenly Regions when there are so many places of Scripture which look that way Our blessed Lord administreth comfort to such as bear his Cross by telling them that their reward is great in Heaven And he adviseth all his followers to lay up for themselves treasures not on earth but in the heavens that their hearts may with the greater facility be lifted up by Divine and Heavenly Meditation And he spake these words of consolation to his Disciples who began to be most deeply concerned at the thoughts of his departure Let not your heart be troubled ye believe in God believe also in me In my Fathers house are many mansions if it were no so I would have told you And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self that where I am there ye may be also This then was the Doctrine of Christ as also of his Apostles St. Paul delivereth this Doctrine with much confidence saying We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens And he blesseth God for the faith of the Colossians and for the hope which was laid up for them in the Heavens And he comforteth the Thessalonians after this manner The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of the Arch-angel and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first then we which are alive and remain shall he caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. The Author also of the Epistle to the Hebrews extolleth the patience of the afflicted Converts and likewise insinuateth the great Reason which they had to take joyfully the spoiling of their earthly goods because they had in Heaven a better and enduring substance Mr. Hobbes I have with much patience attended to your citations there is reason that now you should listen to such as on my side may be produced We finde written in in St. Iohn That no man hath ascended into heaven but he that came down from heaven even the son of man that is in heaven yet Christ was then not in Heaven but upon the earth The like is said of David Acts 2.34 where St. Peter to prove the Ascension of Christ using the words of the Psalmist Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell nor suffer thine holy One to see corruption saith they were spoken not of David but of Christ and to prove it addeth this reason For David is not ascended into Heaven But to this a man may easily answer and say that though their bodies were not to ascend till the general day of Judgement yet their souls were in Heaven as soon as they were departed from their bodies which also seemeth to be confirmed by the words of our Saviour who proving the Resurrection out of the words of Moses saith thus That the dead are raised even Moses shewed at the bush when he called the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob For he is not a God of the dead but of the living for they all live to him But if these words be to be understood onely of the immortality of the soul they prove not at all that which our Saviour intended to prove which was the Resurrection of the body that is to say the immortality of man Therefore our Saviour meaneth that those Patriarchs were immortal not by a property consequent to the Essence and Nature of Mankinde but by the Will of God that was pleased of his meer Grace to bestow eternal life upon the faithful And though at that time the Patriarchs and many other faithful men were dead yet as it is in the Text they lived to God that is they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sins and ordained to life eternal at the Resurrection Stud. Our Lord design'd to prove a future state against the Sadduces who denyed not onely the Resurrection of the body but likewise the existence of Angel or Spirit and the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do not always imply the raising of the body but being used without the addition of flesh or body do usually denote the future life and the awakening and advancing of the Soul or the conserving or keeping of it alive as God is said to have raised up Pharaoh that is to have kept him still alive And whereas you suggest that the Patriarchs were alive onely by destination it is an exposition derived by you from your Hypothesis that man is wholly mortal and not from the letter of the words where Christ speaketh in the present and not the future time affirming that the Patriarchs live already and not that they shall be awakened unto
Wedlock the beginning of a City and as it were the Seminary of a Kingdom So that to talk of such a state of nature as supposeth an Independency of one person upon another is to lay aside not only the History of Moses but also of Experience which teacheth that we are born Infants of Parents for that reason to be obey'd and to put some such cheat upon the World as Nurses are wont in sport to put upon unwary Children when they tell them they started up out of the Parsley-bed And verily some such odd conceit is to be suspected in that Man who says that all is Matter and by consequence that Mankind arose at first out of the fortuitous Concretions of it Epicurus therefore in sequel of that doctrine of his that all things were produced by atoms explained the birth of Man by supposing certain swelling bags or wombs upon the earth which brake at last and let forth Infants nourished by her Juice clothed by her Vapours provided of a bed in the soft grass and he also taught that in the beginning though he knew not when Men wander'd about like Beasts and every one was for himself and that meerly to secure themselves they combin'd into Societies and that those Societies were formed by Pacts and Covenants and that from those Covenants sprang good and evil just and unjust For such a Romance is to be read at large in his Compurgator Gassendus who subjoyneth no Essay of confutation Mr. Hobbes It may peradventure be thought there was never such a time nor condition of War as this now described and I believe it was never generally so over all the World But there are many places where they live so now For the Savage People in many places of America except the Government of small Families the concord whereof dependeth on Natural Lust have no Government at all and live at this day in a brutish manner Stud I am sorry that so much barbarousness being charged upon Mankind so little of the imputation can be fairly taken off Yet that the condition of human nature is not so very rude as you seem to represent it appeareth from many passages in undoubted Story Iustin in his Epitom of Trogus Pompeius describeth the ancient Scythians in such a manner that their Behaviour seemeth to upbraid those People who call themselves The Civilized parts of the World By him we are informed That they had neither Houses nor Enclosures of ground but wander'd with their Cattel in solitary and untilled Desarts That Justice had honour derived to it not from positive Law but from the good natures of the People That no man was more odious amongst them than the Invader of such things as were occupied by another In consideration of which inbred civility the Historian wisheth that the other Nations of the World were followers of the Scythick Moderation after which he thus concludeth It may seem a matter fit to be admired that Nature should bestow that upon the Scythians which the Graecians themsâ—lves though long instructed by the Doctrines and Precepts of Law-givers and Philosophers have not attain'd to and that formed manners should be excelled by uneducated Barbarity But let it be supposed that many brutish Families in America in whose stead you might have rather mentioned the wild Arabes are so many dens of Robbers and live by such prey as their power and wildness can provide for them Yet by this Instance because it is made in Families where Government has place you rather overthrow than prove your supposed state of Nature Wherefore in a note added upon second thoughts to your Book de Cive in order to a Solution of this Argument that the Son killing his Parent in the state of Nature acteth unjustly you subjoin an Answer to this effect A man cannot be understood to be a son in the meer state of Nature seeing as soon as he is born he is under the lawful Power and Government of them to whom he oweth his conservation to wit of his Mother or Father or to him who affords him Provisions of common life It is further to be marked that one Family as it stands separated from another is as one Kingdom divided from the Territories of a Neighbouring Monarch If therefore the state of Nature remaineth in a Family not depending upon another Family in places where there is no common Government then all Kingdoms which have not made Leagues with one another are at this day in the same state Whereas they rather are in a state of defence dictated by prudence and as you say in the posture of Gladiators having their swords pointing and their Eyes fixed on one another than in a state of War prompted by pride and insatiâ—ble ambition And therefore no affront being offered to a foreign Prince before his Invasion he is esteem'd both injurious and unjust whilst for no other reason than his greedy Will he thrusts inoffensive people out of ancient possession I know you esteem all distinct Kingdoms in a state of War in relation to each other and that therefore they have a right if they have a Power of invading but he that consults Grotius in his Book de jure belli Pacis designed chiefly to set forth the Rights not of Domestick but Formsick VVar will not be much of your opinion neither will he easily be reconcil'd to the Practice of the Romans in Petronius Arbiter a Practice to which that of the Spaniards is akin who made foreign Nations to be Enemies as Princes sometimes make their Subjects Traytors for the sake of their Riches Mr. Hobbes I confess that a great Family if it be not part of some Commonwealth is of it self as to the Rights of Soveraignty a little Monarchy whether that Family consist of a Man and his Children or of a Man and his Servants or of a Man and his Children and Servants together wherein the Father or Master is the Soveraign But yet a Family is not properly a Commonwealth unless it be of that power by its own number or by other opportunities as not to be subdued without the hazard of War Stud. In those Places where there is no common Government as of late amongst the West Arabes 'till their acceptance of Muley Arsheid first for their General and then their King a Family may be called a small Kingdom notwithstanding the meanness of its Power because it can as well secure it self against the assaults of another Family as one Kingdom can withstand the Opposition of another For we compare Family to Family and not to a vast Empire against whose mighty numbers it is in vain to make resistance For if want of strength doth render a Family no Commonwealth than by the same reason the Republicks of Athens Corinth Lacedaemon and the rest were properly no Republicks because they were but so many weak and little Members compar'd to the vast Body of the Graecian
Empire But further Were every man supposed loose even from the yoke of Paternal Government yet in such a state there would be place for the Natural Laws of good and evil For first There is in Mankind an ability of Soul to ascend unto the knowledg of the first invisible Cause by the effects of his Power and Wisdom and Goodness which are conspicuous in all the parts of his Creation I say an ability to know not an actual acknowledgment of the Being of a God For the Acrothoitae are said by Theophrasius to have been a Nation of Atheists as also to have been swallow'd up by the gaping Earth undergoing a Judgment worthy that God whom their Imaginations banish'd out of the World If then there be such ability in the Mind of Man he is capable of sinning by himself in the secretest retirement from the Societies and Laws of his Fellow-creatures either by the supiness of his mind in being secure in Atheism for want of exerting those Powers by exercise which God hath implanted in him or by the ingratitude of his mind by want of Love and Thankfulness to God whom in speculation he confesseth to exist the notion of a Deity including that of a Benefactor Mr. H. I must acknowledg that it is not impossible in the state of Nature to sin against God Stud. A man may also in that state fin by being injurious to himself Mr Hobb Neither is that denied because hec may pretend that to be for his preservation which neither is so nor is so judged by himself Stud. But he may likewise sin with reference to himself in matters wherein no prejudice accrueth to his health or outward safety The Instance may be made in Buggery with a Beaâ—â— which seemeth to be a sin against the order oâ— God in Nature This monstrous Indecency this detestable and abhominable Vice as the Statute calls it is by our Law made Felony without Clergy and this surely in regard it is rather a sin against Nature than Commonwealth it being less noxious to Society to humble than to kill the owners beast the latter of which is but a treâ—pass Lastly In relation to otâ—ers I cannot but judg that one man espying another and not discerniâ—g in him any tokens of mischief but rather of submission if being thus secure unassaulted he rusheth upon him so to display his power and please his tyrannous mind bereaveâ—h him of life he is a murdâ—rer in the account of God Man The reason seemeth unstâ—ained cogent For there is no such neer propriety to a man in any possession as in that of life which a man as to this state can no more forego then he can part with himself neither can the Right be more confirmed to him than his own Peâ—â—â—nality Wherefore in no condition of Mankind can it be forfeited but by his own default or consent But in meer self defence there 's no murther because one life being apparently in hazard it is reason that the assaulted man should esteem his own more dearly than his Enemy's It is eâ—sie to understand on which side to act when it is come to this pass that as the Italians say of War We must either be spectators of other meâ—s deaths or spectacles of our own Moreover it appeareâ—h unto me not altogether improbable that in this feigned state of nature unjust robbery may have place For in this community there being sufficient portions both for the necessity convenience of all men if one shall intrude into the possessiâ—n of another who is contented with a modest share being moved only by ambition wantonness of mind he seemeth to be no other than an unrighteous aggressoâ— For all men being by you supposed of equal righâ— the advantage of pre-occupancy on the one sidâ— do's turn the scale if natural justice holds the ballance For it is in Law an old maxim In pari jure melior est conditio Possidentis Wherefore if any person endeavours by such unnatural practises as I have mention'd to encrease his outward safety or brutish delight he in truth destroyeth by his iniquity more of himself than he can preserve by his ambition and lust And he may be resembled to a rash Seaman who out of presumed pleasure in swimming throws himself headlong into a boisterous Sea temporal delight and preservation by sin being the ready way to bottomless ruin By what hath been said I am induced to believe that there is not only iniquity but injustice too in a meer state of Nature although neither of them be capable of such aggravations or are extended to so many Instances as in that state where men live under Positive Commands For to make Instance not in the lower restraints of fishing fowling hunting but in the more considerable case of promiscuous mixtures such practice seemeth not so much condemned by the Law of Nature as by Custom the commands of Moses Christ Christian Magistrates and heathen Powers For the most holy God would never have begun the World by one Man and Woman whose Posterity must needs be propagated by the mixtures of their Sons Dâ—ughters if what we call Incest had been inconsistent with any immutable Law of Reason Nature Neither would â—e have allowed the Patriarchs in Polygamy if it had been in truth an absolute evil and not rather in some Circumstances of time and place and persons fit and convenient Neither is there in these matters any consent of Nations who have no other instructor besides Nature for the Garamantici married not but engendred as the Monsters at the Springs of Africa And Sâ—leucus gave his own Wife to his son Antiochus then passed it into a Law And Socrates the great pretender to Moral Prudence esteemed it a civility to his Friend to permit his wife to enter into his imbraces Wherefore St. Paul affirming that the taking of the Father's wife was a Forâ—ication not once named amongst the Gentiles is to be understood of those Heathens whose manners conversations he had observed in his Travels And Aelian's Reading or Memory was but narrow when in contemplation of the victorious Sicyâ—â—ians deflouring the Pollenaearian Virgins he cried out These Practices by the gods of Graecia are very cruel and as far as I remember not approved of by the veriest Barbarians And as I think it must be granted to you that such consent of Nations as may seem to argue a common principle whence it is derived is not easily in many cases found by those who look beyond the usages of Europe the Colonies planted by the Europâ—ans For Pagans unless it be in the acknowledgment of God in which most agree do infinitly differ not only from Jews Christians but from one another â—rom their very selves also in process of time And those who liv'd but an hundred years ago before the strange improvement of Navigation and Merchandize could understand but little