in his thighes Yet he tells us boldly That no man can understand that the understanding maketh any alteration of weight or lightnesse in the object or that reason layes objects upon the understanding What poor trifling is this in a thing so plain and obvious to every mans capacity There can be no desire of that which is not known in some sort Nothing can be willed but that which is apprehended to be good either by reason or sense and that according to the degree of apprehension Place a man in a darke roome and all the rarest objects in the World besides him he seeth them not he distinguisheth them not he willeth them not But bring in a light and he seeth them and distinguisheth them and willeth them according to their distinct worths That which light is to visible objects making those things to be actually seen which were onely potentially visible that is the understanding to all intelligible objects without which they are neither known nor willed Wherefore men define the understanding to be A faculty of the reasonable soul understanding knowing and judging all intelligible things The understanding then doth not alter the weight of objects no more than the light doth change the colours which without the help of the light did lie hid in the darke But the light makes the colours to be actually seene So doth the understanding make the latent value of intelligible objects to be apprehended and consequently maketh them to be desired and willed according to their distinct degrees of goodnesse This judgement which no man ever denyed to intelligible creatures is the weighing of objects or attributing their just weight to them and the trying of them as it were by the Balance and by the Touchstone This is not the laying of objects upon the understanding The understanding is not the patient but the judge but this is the representing of the goodnesse or badnesse of objects to the will or to the free Agent willing which relatively to the will giveth them all their weight and efficacy There may be difference between these two Propositions Repentance is not voluntary and by consequence proceedeth from causes And Repentance proceedeth from causes and by consequence is not voluntary if his consequence were well intelligible as it is not All acts both voluntary and involuntary doe proceed from causes He chargeth me to have chopt in these words And therefore The truth is his words were and by consequence which I expressed thus and therefore Therefore and by consequence are the very same thing neither more nor lesse Is not this a doughty exception But the other is his greater errour That Repentance is not voluntary No Schooleman ever said that the faculty of the will was voluntary but that the Agent was a voluntary Agent and the act a voluntary act Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 24. HE accuseth me of charging him witly Blasphemy and Atheisme If he be wronged in that kind it is he who wrongeth himself by his suspicion Sprâ—…ta exolescunt si irascare agnita videntur I accused him not either of Blasphemy or Atheisme in the Concrete One may say a mans opinions are Blasphemous and Atheisticall in the Abstract without charging the person with formall Atheisme or blasphemy The reason is evident because it may be that through prejudice he doth not see the consequences which other men whose eyes are not blinded with that mist do see and if he did see them would abhor them as well as they For this reason he who chargeth one with speaking or writing implicite contradictions or things inconsistent one with another doth not presently accuse him of lying although one part of a contradiction must needs be false because it may be the force of the consequence is not evident to him A man may know a truth certainly and yet not know the formal reason or the manner of it so certainly I know that I see and I judge probably how I see yet the manner how I see whether by sending out beams or by receiving in the species is not so evident as â—…he thing it self that I do see They who do not agree about the manner of vision do all agree about the truth of vision Every man knoweth certainly that he can cast a stone up into the air but the manner how the stone is moved after it is seperated from the hand whether it be by some force or form or quality impressed into the stone by the caster or by the air if it be by the air whether it be by the pulsion of the air following or by the cession of the former air is obscure enough and not one of a thousand who knoweth the certainty of the thing knoweth the manner how it cometh to passe If this be true in natural actions how much more in the actions of God who is an infinite being and not comprehensible by the finite wit of man The water can rise no higher than the fountains head A looking-glasse can represent the body because there is some proportion between bodies but it cannot represent the soul because there is no proportion between that which is material and that which is immaterial This is the reason why we can in some sort apprehend what shall be after the end of the World because the soul is eternal that way but if we do but think of what was before the beginning of the World we are as it were presently swallowed up into an Abysse because the soul is not eternal that way So I know that there is true liberty from necessity both by Divine Revelation and by reason and by experience I know likewise that God knoweth all events from eternity the difficulty is not about the thing but about the manner how God doth certainly know things free or contingent which are to come in respect of us seeing they are neither determined in the event it self nor in the causes thereof The not knowing of the manner which may be incomprehensible to us doth not at all diminish the certain truth of the thing Yet even for the manner sundry wayes are proposed to satisfie the curiosities rather than the consciences of men Of which this is one way which I mentioned It were a great madnesse to reject a certain truth because there may be some remote difficulty about the manner and yet a greater madnesse for avoiding a needlesse scruple to destroy all the attributes of God which is by consequence to deny God himself His proof of necessity drawn from Gods eternall knowledge of all events hath been sufficiently discussed and satisfied over and over I pleaded that my doctrine of liberty is an ancient truth generally received His opinion of universall necessity an upstart Paradox and all who own it may be written in a ring So I am an old possessor he is but a new pretender He answereth That he is in possession of a truth derived to him from the light of reason And it is
to sinne by his temptations There are many kinds of motions besides moving from place to place He himself confesseth in this Section that we are moved to prayer by outward objects In the next place supposing there were no other motions than local motions yet he erreth in attributing no motion to any thing but bodies The reasonable soul is moved accidentally according to the motion of the body The Angels are spirits or spiritual substances no bodies by his leave and yet move locally from place to place Jacob sees the Angels of God ascending and descending The Angels came and ministred unto Christ The Angels shall gather the elect from the one end of Heaven to the other The soul of Lazarus was born by the Angels into Abrahams bosom God sent his Angel to deliver Peter out of prison and every where useth his Angels as ministring spirits Thirdly he erreth in this also That nothing can move that is not moved it self If he mean that all power to move is from God he speaketh truly but impertinently But if he mean as he must mean if he mean sense that nothing moveth which is not moved of some second cause he speaketh untruly The Angels move themselves all living creatures do move themselves by animal motion The inanimate creatures do move themselves heavy bodies descending downwards light bodies ascending upwards according to their own natures And therefore nature is defined to be an internal cause or principle of motion and rest c. And even they who held that whatsoever is moved is moved by another did limit it to natural bodies and make the form to be the mover in natural motion and the soul in animal motion His last errour in this Animadversion and a dangerous one is That it is not truly said that acts or habits are infused by God for infusion is motion and nothing is moved but bodies I wish for his own quiet and other mens that he were as great an enemy to errours and innovations as he is to metaphors and distinctions Affectation of words is not good but contention about words is worse By such an argument a man might take away all Zones and Zodiack in Astronomy Modes and Figures in Logick Cones and Cylindres in Geometry for all these are borrowed termes as infusion is What Logician almost doth not distinguish between acquired habits and infused habits If all infusion be of bodies then he never infused any paradoxical principles into his Auditours When any difference doth arise about expressions the onely question is Whether there be any ground in nature for such an expression He himself telleth us That faith and repentance are the gifts of God To say they are the gifts of God and to say they are infused by God is the same thing saving that to say they are infused by God is a more distinct and a more significant expression I hope he will not controle the language of the Holy Ghost I will powre out my spirit upon all flesh No saith T. H. that cannot be nothing can be powred out but bodies Saint Peter telleth us otherwise This Iesus being exalted by the right hand of God hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear That was the gift of tongues an act or habit infused That which was shed forth or effused on Gods part was infused on their part So saith Saint Paul The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Again He saveth us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Iesus Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word is still the same signifying an effusion from God and an infusion into us All those graces freely given which were infused by the Holy Ghost and are recited by the Apostle to the Corinthians are either permanent Habits or transient Acts. In the remainder of this Section is contained nothing but relapses and repetitions of his former Paradoxical errours still confounding the intellectual will with the sensitive appetite Liberty with Spontaneity the Faculty of the will with the Act of willing the liberty of reasonable Creatures with the liberty of mad men and fools Before he told us That he that can do what he will hath no liberty at all Now he telleth us of the liberty of doing what we will in those things we are able to do Before he limitted the power by the will now he limitteth the will by the power I affirmed most truely That liberty is diminished by vitious habits which he saith cannot be unnderstood otherwise then that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do vitious actions There is little doubt but he would expound it so if he were my Interpreter But my sense and my scope is evident to the contrary that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do virtuous actions He will take notice of no difference between the liberty of a man and the bias of a bowl Yet in the midst of all these mistakes and Paradoxes he hath not forgotten his old Thrasonicall humour Where I say liberty is in more danger to be abused than to be lost he telleth me It is a meer shift to be thought not licenced I had not thought him such a dangerous Adversary metuent omnes jam te nec immerito well if it be a shift it is such a shift as all conscionable men do find by experience to be true And for his silencing of men impavidum ferient ruinae I do not fear silencing by him except his arguments have some occult quality more than he or I dream of If a fish could speak a fish would not be silenced by him in this cause Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 23. THere is a double question discussed in this Section First Supposing that the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding whether this do take away the liberty of the will Secondly Whether the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding both which questions have formerly been discoursed of in this Treatise For clearing of the former question it ought to be considered That although men do ordinarily speak of the understanding and of the will as of two distinct Agents or individual substances subsisting by themselves whereof the one understandeth and the other willeth partly for the eminence of these two powers and partly for the clearer and more distinct conception and comprehension of them And although the practise of all former Divines and Philosophers do warrant us in so doing yet if we will speak properly and in rigour of speach the understanding and the will are but two powers flowing from the reasonable soul. And that the acts of willing and understanding are predicated most properly of the man whilest the soul and body are united Actiones sunt suppositorum and of the reasonable soul after its separation And because he suggesteth that this is done for
his pupill or do him injustice There is onely this difference that a pupill may implead his Guardian and recover his right against him But from a Soveraign Law-giver there lies no appeal but onely to God Otherwise there would be endlesse appeales which both nature and pollicy doth abhor As in the instance of the Roman Arbitrament formerly mentioned An arbitrary power is the highest of all powers Judges must proceed according to law Arbitrators are tied to no law but their own reason and their own consciences Yet all the world will say that the Romans dealt fraudulently and unjustly with the two parties Lastly the holy Scriptures do every where brand wicked Laws as infamous As the Statutes of Omrâ—… and the Statutes of Israel and stileth them expressely unjust laws or unrighteous decrees He asketh to whom the Bible is a law The Bible is not a law but the positive laws of God are contained in the Bible Doth he think the Law of God is no Law without his suffrage He might have been one of Tiberius his Council when it was proposed to the Senate Whether they should admit Christ to be a God or not He saith I know that it is not a law to all the World Not de facto indeed How should it when the World is so full of Atheists that make no more account of their soules than of so many handfuls of salt to keep their bodies from stinking But de jure by right it is a Law and ought to be a Law to all the World The Heathens and particularly the Stoicks themselves did speak with much more reverence of the holy Books of which to suspect a falsehood they held to be an heinous and detestable crime And the first argument for necessity they produced from the authority of those Books because they said that God did know all things and dispose all things He asketh How the Bible came to be a Law to us Did God speake it viva voce to us have we seen the miracles have we any other assurance then the words of the Prophets and the authority of the Church And so it concludeth that it is the Legislative power of the Common-wealth wheresoever it is placed which makes the Bible a Law in England If a man digged a pit and covered it not again so that an oxe or an asse fell into it he was obbliged by the Mosaical Law to make satisfaction for the dammage I know not whether he do this on purpose to weaken the authority of holy Scripture or not Let God and his own conscience be his Triers But I am sure he hath digged a pit for an oxe or an asse without covering it again and if they chance to stumble blindfold into it their blood will be required at his hands If a Turke had said so much of the Alchoran at Constantinople he were in some danger If it were within the compasse of the present controversie I should esteem it no difficult task to demonstrate perspicuously that the holy Scriptures can be no other then the word of God himself by their antiquity by their harmony by their efficacy by the sanctity and sublimity of their matter such as could not have entered into the thoughts of man without the inspiration of the Holy Ghost By the plainnesse of their stile so full of Majesty by the light of prophetical predictions by the testimony of the blessed Martyrs by a multitude of miracles by the simplicity of the Penmen and Promulgers poor fishermen and shepherds who did draw the World after their oaten reeds and lastly by the judgements of God that have fallen upon such Tyrants and others as have gone about to suppr esse or profane the Sacred Oracles But this is one of those things de quibus nefas est dubitare which he that calleth into question deserveth to be answered otherwise than with arguments But that which is sufficient to confute him is the law of nature which is the same in a great part with the positive Law of God recorded in holy Scriptures All the ten Commandments in respect of their substanrials are acknowledged by all men to be branches of the law of nature I hope he will not say that these laws of nature were made by our Suffrages though he be as likely to say such an absurdity as any man living For he saith the law of nature is the assent it self which all men give to the means of their preservation Every law is a rule of our actions a meer assent is no rule A law commandeth or forbiddeth an assent doth neither But to shew him his vanity Since he delighteth so much in distinctions let him satisfie himself out of the distinction of the law of nature The law of nature is the prescription of right reason whereby thorough that light which nature hath placed in us we know some things to be done because they are honest and other things to be shunned because they are dishonest He had forgotten what he had twice cited and approved out of Cicero concerning the law of nature which Philo calls The law that cannot lie not moral made by mortals not without life or written in paper or columnes without life but that which can not be corrupted written by the immortal God in our understandings Secondly if this which he saith did deserve any consideration it was before the Bible was admitted or assented unto or received as the word of God But the Bible hath been assented unto and received in England sixteen hundred years A fair prescription and in all that time I do not find any law to authorize it or to under-prop heaven from falling with a bullrush This is undeniable that for so many successive ages we have received it as the law of God himself not depending upon our assents or the authority of our Law-makers Thirdly we have not onely a nationall tradition of our own Church for the divine authority of holy Scripture but which is of much more moment we have the perpetuall constant universall tradition of the Catholick Church of Christ ever since Christ himself did tread upon the face of the earth This is so clear a proof of the universall reception of the Bible for the genuine Word of God that there cannot justly be any more doubt made of it than whether there ever was a William the Conquerer or not But this is his opinion That true religion in every Country is that which the Soveraign Magistrate doth admit and injoyne I could wish his deceived followers would think upon what rock he drives them For if this opinion be true then that which is true religion to day may be false religion tomorrow and change as often as the chief Governour or Governours change their opinions Then that which is true religion in one Country is false religion in another Country because the Governours are of different opinions then all the religions of the World Christian Jewish Turkish Heathenish are true religions in
themselves whereby neverthelesse all sorts of gold are weighed There can be nothing more certain and evident than this That all these Logicall and Astronomicall terms be second notions and terms of Art Nay so extreamly blind and partiall he is that he approveth of Barbara Celarent Darii Ferio which he maketh terms of Art as a good invention to help the apprehension of young men and yet with the same breath rejecteth these most excellent and most significant distinctions and expressions which have been received in a manner universally some of them for two thousand years all of them for diverse Centuries of years in the Church and in the Schools as well of Theology as Philosophy which were invented for remedies against confusion and helps to the clearer and more distinct understanding of high and difficult notions upon this false and slanderous praetext that they were invented to blind the understanding because he presumed to condemne them before he took pains to understand them He addeth That I cite no terms of Art for Geometry saying he was afraid I would have put in lines or perhaps equality and unequality for terms of Art To free him from this fear I put in their numbers numbring and numbred their superficies concave and coâ—…vexe their triangles ambligone and oxygone their cones cubes cylinders their parallells and parallelogrammes their proportions superpartinent and superbipartinent c. their rules of Algebra and Helcataim their Integers and Numerators and Divisors and Denominators and fabricall figures their proportionality Arithmeticall and Geometricall continuall and discontinuall direct conversed alternative inversed compounded parted Geometry hath its words of Art and proper expressions as well as all other Arts and Sciences So hath Physick Chirurgery Law So have Souldiers Mariners Hawkers Hunters But of all others he hath the least favour for the Divine whom he will not permit to use a word in preaching but such as his Auditours nor in writing but such as his common Readers may understand I do not like it any more than he that a Divine should affect uncouth words to make his ignorant Auditours to gape I had rather speak five words in the Church with understanding c. than ten thousand in an unknown tongue But doth he make no distictian between the Church and the Schools Doth he think that Theology which hath the sublimest subject doth not require as high as learned and as distinct expressions as any Art or Science whatsoever All hearers and readers are not novices nor of the vulgar or common sort There are those who have been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel and have been admitted into the innermost Closet of the School learning The holy Scripture it self though it affect plainnesse is not allwayes such a stranger either to learing or elegance The onely answer I shall give him to this is That he is beyond his Last In the last part of this Section he troubleth himself more than he needeth about a testimony which I cited out of his book De Cive not out of any esteem I had for it for I condemned it but to let him see his contradiction There he made the Ecclesiasticall Doctours to be infallible here he maketh them to be fallible There he made their infallibility to be a peculiar priviledge derived to them by imposition of hands from the Apostles whom they succeeded and from the promise of Christ Here he attributeth it wholly to that power which is committed to them by the civil Magistrate And what if the civil Magistrate commit no power to them then by his doctrine Christ breaketh his promise and this priviledge ceaseth Infallibilitatem hanc promisâ—…t servator noster in iis rebus quae ad salutem sunt necessariae Apostolis usque ad diem judicii hoc est Apostolis pastoribus ab Apostolis successive per manuum impositionem consecrandis He answereth That the infallability of Ecclesiastical Doctours doth not consist in this that they cannot be deceived but that a Subject cannot be deceived in obeying them when they are lawfully constituted Doctours A pretty phancy If the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch Doctour and Subject together If the Doctours be deceived themselves they must needs deceive the Subjects who trust to their interpretation Secondly he waveth now the two grounds of their infallibility that is the promise of Christ and the priviledge conferred by imposition of hands and ascribeth all their infallibility to the constitution of the civil power which may render their expositions legal according to the municipal laws but cannot render them infallible Thirdly If Ecclesiastical Doctours lawfully constituted be so far infallible that they cannot deceive the Subject why did he vary so much notoriously from their expositions at that time as he hath done in his book De Cive when they had both imposition of hands and approbation from supreme authority Why doth he now wanting both the promise of Christ and imposition of hands take upon him to be the tryer and examiner of the exposition not onely of single Prophets but of whole convocations Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 20. IF Mr. Hobs did understand what true election and true compulsion is it were evident that election of one out of more than one cannot consist with antecedent determination to one much lesse with compulsion or force where he that is compelled opposeth and resisteth as much as he can That the same act should be both voluntary that is with our will and compulsory that is against our will not in part but in whole is impossible But as the Sepia to preserve her self undiscovered doth shed forth about her a quantity of black inky blood to hide her self from the fisher So T. H. for fear to be catched in palpable errours doth confound and blunder all things making a new election a new compulsion a new liberty There is not a word of moment here that hath not been discussed formerly in this Treatise And I do not esteem his raw meditations worthy of repetition over and over What is new in them I shall cull out from the rest He telleth us that when a stone is thrown upwards the external agent giveth it a beginning of motion So far we agree whatsoever gives it the continuance He saith further That when the stone falleth it is moved downward by the power of some other Agent which though it be imperceptible to the eye is not imperceptible to reason Herein we differ wherein all the world hitherto have agreed But it was very meete that he should deny the stone the determination of its natural motion who had denyed the intellectual soul the determination of its own will Yet since he is pleased to conceale his new Agent I have no desire to scrape acquaintance with it especially upon such terms to relinquish that intrinsecal principle which all the World hitherrto hath received So passing by his spiritual court unsaluted he loves to shew his
teeth though he cannot bite and leaving counterfeiting in hope of quarter to himself as a person much more capable of that design the next new Subject that presenteth it self is Whether there be any mixt actions partly voluntary partly unvoluntary He denieth it positively upon this ground That one and the same action can never be both voluntary and unvoluntary I answer first to his argument That voluntary and unvoluntary are not opposed contradictorily so as to admit no mean but privatively which do admit a mean as the dawning of the day or the twilight is a mean between light and darknesse when it may be truly said it is partly light and partly dark Melancthon hath an excellent rule to this purpose Privative opposita nequeunt esse in eodem subjecto gradibus excellentibus Privative opposites cannot be in the same subject in eminent degrees but in remisse degrees they may As to avoid importunity a man may do a free act with reluctance All reluctance is a degree of unwillingnesse When Nero in the beginning of his Quinquennium was to sign the condemnation of a malefactor he used to wish that he had never learned to write to shew that though he did it willingly to satisfie Justice for otherwise he might have pardoned him yet he did it unwillingly in his own nature And with this Aristotle agreeth fully There are some actions which are neither properly voluntary nor unvoluntary but of a middle kind or mixed actions as things done for fear of a greater evil or for some honest cause And he giveth two instances This is one of a man who throws his goods into the sea willingly in respect of the end to save his life but the action being simply considered in it self unwillingly The other instance of one commanded to do some dishonest act by a Tyrant who hath his parents and children in his power And so he concludeth truly That they are mixt actions but participate more of the voluntary than of the unvoluntary Whereas I urged that election of one out of more could not consist with determination to one he answereth That a man forced to prison may chuse whether he will walk upon his feet or be haled upon the ground Which as it is false as I have shewed in my former defence so it is wholly wide from his purpose There is no doubt but he who is necessitated in one particular may be left free in another as he who is appointed the time and place for a Duel may chuse his weapon But in that particular wherein he is necessitated he cannot chuse If they will tie him to an horsetaile he must be tied If they will fasten him to a sled and draw him to prison he must be drawn There cannot possibly be any election where there is and so far as there is an antecedent determination to one He disliketh the terme of rational will saying There is nothing rational but God Angels and men I hope he is not in earnest Surely he believeth there is a reasonable soul or otherwise he deserts his Athanasian creed that is The soul of a rational man as a will is the will of a rational man Whether he make the will to be a faculty of the reasonable soul or to be the reasonable soul as it willeth I am indifferent As the appetite of a sensitive creature is called the sensitve appetite So the appetite of a rational or intellectual creature is called the rational or intellectual will He saith he would not have excepted against this expression but that every where I speak of the will and other faculties as of men or spirits in mens bellies I do not confine the reasonable soul to the belly but it is a spirit in a mans body If it be not let him say what it is The will is either a faculty of the reasonable soul or which is all one the reasonable soul it self as it dischargeth the duties of such a faculty Sometimes he confesseth as much himself Indeed as the will is a faculty or power of a mans soul so to will is an act of it according to that power He jesteth at my five terrible things saying I had no more reason for five than fifteen It seemeth that when he should have been reading Authors he was meditating upon a dry Summer Let him consult with Aristotle and his Expositors That which determined the three children was no antecedent extrinsecal cause but conscience and their own judgement which dictated to them their duty to their God He seemeth to be troubled at sundry passages in my former defence as exâ—…mpting Subjects from active obedience to unjust laws which he saith makes it impossible for any nation in the world to preserve it self from Civil wars Whether was it want of memory or rather subtilty in him among these passages to omit that Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye It is hard that we who have formerly been accused to maintain blind obedience should now be charged with seditious principles which our souls abhor But we sail securely between this Scylla and that Charybdis by steering the ancient and direct course of passive obedience We justifie no defensive armes against a Soveraign Prince We allow no Civil wars for conscience sake When we are persecuted for not complying with the unlawful commands of a lawful Soveraign we know no other remedy but to suffer or to flee according to that memorable example of the Thebaean Legion consisting wholy of Christians of unmatchable valour and such as might in probability have defended themselves from the Emperours fury Yet when Maximian commanded them to sacrifice to Idols they refused suffering every tenth man of them to be slain without a blow smitten And when the bloody Emperour came among them again to renew his command and to see them decimated the second time they cryed out with one voice Cognosce O Imperator c. Know O Emperour that we are all Christians we submit our bodies to thy power but our free souls flee unto our Saviour Neither our known courage nor desperation it self hath armed us against thee because we chuse rather to die innocents than to live nocents Thou shalt find our hands empty of weapons but our breast armed with the Catholick Faith And so having power to resist yet they suffered themselves without resistance to be cut in pieces They are T. H. his own principles which make no difference between just and unjust power between a sword given by God and a sword taken by man which do serve to involve Nations in Civil Wars He saith it seemeth that I call compulsion force and he calleth it a fear of force I called it as all the World called it and as it hath been defined in the Schooles for two thousand years Yet I do not believe that it is alwayes necessary to all sorts of compulsion that the force be actually
Soveraign Princes are often contradictory one to another One commandeth to worship Christ another forbiddeth it One forbiddeth to offer sacrifice to idols another commandeth it Yea the same person may both forbid idolatry in general and yet authorise it in particular Or forbid it by the publick laws of the Country and yet authorise it by his personal commands Thirdly true Religion is alwayes justified in the sight of God But obedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes is not always justified in the sight of God This is clearly proved out of his own expresse words Whatsoever is commanded by the Soveraign power is as to the Subject though not so alwayes in the sight of God justified by their command VVhence it is evident by his own confession that the wicked commands of Soveraigne Princes are not justified by their Royal authority but are wicked and repugnant to the Law of God And consequently that of the Apostle hath place here Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye True Religion hath alwayes reference unto God Fourthly true Religion doth not consist in obedience to any laws whatsoever which are repugnant to the Moral Law of God or to the law of Nature This Proposition is granted by himself The laws of nature are immutable and eternal And all Writers do agree that the law of nature is the same with the moral Law Again Soveraigns are all Subjects to the law of nature because such laws be Divine and cannot by any man or Common-wealth be abrogated And in all things not contrary to the moral Law that is to say to the law of nature all Subjects are bound to obey that of Divine Law which is declared to be so by the laws of the Common-wealth But the commands of a Soveraign Prince may be repugnant not onely to the Moral Law or the law of nature but even to the laws of the Common-wealth This assumption is proved four wayes First by his own confession It is manifest enough that when a man receiveth two contrary commands and knows that one of them is Gods he ought to obey that and not the other If there can be no such contrary commands then it is not manifest nor yet true Secondly this is pâ—…oved by his resolution of two queres The fist is this Whether the City or the Soveraign Prince be to be obeyd if he command directly to do any thâ—…ng to the contumely of God or forbid to worship God To which he answereth directly non esse obediendam that he ought not to be obeyed And he gives this reason Because the subjects before the constitution of the Common-wealth had no right to deny the honour due unto God and therefore could transferre no right to command such things to the common-wealth The like he hath in his Leviathan Actions which do naturally signifie contumely cannot by humane power be made a part of Divine Worship As if the denial of Christ upon a Soveraigns command which he justifieth were not contumelious to Christ or as if subjects before the constitution of the common-wealth had any right themselves to deny Christ. But such palpable contradictions are no novelties with him How doth true Religion consist in obedience to the commands of a Soveraign if his commands may be contumelious to God and deny him that worship which is due unto him by the eternal and immutable law of nature and if he be not to be obeyed in such commands His second question is If a Soveraign Prince should command himself to be worshipped with Divine Worship and Attributes whether he ought to be obeyed To which he answereth That although Kings should command it yet we ought to abstain from such attributes as signifie his independence upon God or inmortality or infinite power or the like And from such actions as do signifie the same As to pray unto him being absent to aske those things of him which none but God can give as rain and fair weather or to offer sacrifice to him Then true Religion may sometimes consist in disobedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes Thirdly that the commands of Soveraign Princes in point of Religion may be contrary to the law of nature which needeth no new promulgation or reception doth appear by all those duties internal and external which by his own confession nature doth injoyn us to perform towards God and all which may be and have been countermanded by Soveraign Princes as to acknowledge the existence of God his unity his infinitenesse his providence his creation of the World his omnipotence his eternity his incomprehensibility his ub quity To worship him and him onely with Divine worship with prayes with thanksgivings with oblations and with all expressions of honour Lastly this is proved by examples Nebuchadnezar commanded to worship a golden image And Darius made a decree that no man should ask any petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King onely Yet the transgression of both these commands of Soveraign Princes was justified by God as true Religion Fiftly Christ will deny no man before his Father for true Religion But those who deny Christ before men to fulfil the commands of an earthly Prince he will deny before his father which is in Heaven And therefore Christ encourageth his Disciples against these dangers which might fall upon them by disobedience to such unlawful commands Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell But Mr. Hobs hath found out an evasion for such Renegadoes Whatsoever a Subject is compelled to in obedience to his Soveraign and doth it not in order to his own mind but in order to the lawes of his country that action is not his but his Soveraigns nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men but his Governour and the law of his Country If this Fig-leafe would have served the turn Shedrach Meshach and Abednego needed not to have been cast into the fiery Furnace For though they had worshipped the golden image by this doctrine they had not been idolaters but Nebuchadnezar onely and his Princes If this were true Daniel might have escaped the Lions Den If he had forborne his praises to God Darius had been faulty and not he But these holy Saints were of another minde I hope though he might in his baste and passion censure the blessed Martyrs to be fooles which were so many that there were five thousand for every day in the year except the calends of January when the Heathens were so intent upon their devotions that they neglected the slaughter of the poor Christians yet he will not esteem himself wiser than Daniel Behold thou art wiser than Daniel was an hyperbolical or rather an ironical expression With the heart man believeth unto righteousnesse
body is no part of the universe And because the universe is all that which is no part of it is nothing and consequently no where How by this doctrine he maketh not onely the Angels but God himself to be nothing Neither doth he salve it at all by supposing erroneously Angels to be corporeal spirits and by attributing the name of incorporeal spirit to God as being a name of more honour in whom we consider not what attribute best expresseth his nature which is incomprehensible but what best expresseth our desire to honour him Though we be not able to comprehend perfectly what God is yet we are able to comprehend perfectly what God is not that is he is not imperfect and therefore he is not finite and consequently he is not corporeal This were a trim way to honour God indeed to honour him with a lie If this that he say here be true That every part of the universe is a body and whatsoever is not a body is nothing Then by this doctrine if God be not a body God is nothing not an incorporeal spirit but one of the idols of the brain a meer nothing though they think they dance under a not and have the blind of Gods incomprehensibility between them and discovery To what purpose should a coelum empyreum serve in his judgement who denieth the immortality of the soul The doctrin is now and hath been a long time far otherwise namely that every man hath eternity of life by nature in as much as his soul is immortal Who supposeth that when a man dieth there remaineth nothing of him but his carkase Who maketh the word soul in holy Scripture to signifie alwayes either the life or the living creature And expoundeth the casting of body and soul into hell-fire to be the casting of body and life into hell-fire Who maketh this Orthodox truth That the soules of men are substances distinct from their bodies to be an errour contracted by the contagion of the demonology of the Greeks and a window that gives entrance to the dark doctrine of eternal torments Who expoundeth these words of Solomon Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God that gave it Thus God onely knows what becomes of a mans spirit when he expireth He will not acknowledge that there is a spirit or any substance distinct from the body I wonder what they think doth keep their bodies from stinking But they that in one case are grieved in another must be relieved If perchance T. H. hath given his disciples any discontent in his doctrine of Heaven and the holy Angels and the glorified souls of the Saints he will make them amends in his doctrine of hell and the devils and the damned spirits First of the devils He fancieth that all those devils which our Saviour did cast out were phrensies and all daemoniacks or persons possessed no other than mad-men And to justifie our Saviours speaking to a disease as to a person produceth the example of inchanters But he declareth himself most clearly upon this subject in his Animadversions upon my reply to his defence of fatal destiny There are in the Scripture two sorts of things which are in English translated devils One is that which is called Satan Diabolus Abaddon which signifieth in English an enemy an accuser and a destroyer of the Church of God in which sense the devils are but wicked men The other sort of devils are called in the Scripture daemonia which are the feigned gods of the heathen and are neither bodies nor spiritual substances but meer phansies and fictions of terrified hearts feigned by the Greeks and other heathen people which St. Paul calleth nothings So T. H. hath killed the great infernal devil and all his black Angels and lest no devils to be feared but devils incarnate that is wicked men And for hell he describeth the kingdom of Satan or the kingdom of darknesse to be a confederacy of deceivers He telleth us that the places which set forth the torments of hell in holy Scripture do designe metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind from the sight of that eternal felicity in others which they themselves through their own incredulity and disobedience have lost As if metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them as well as literal as if final desperations were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion as if it were a losse so easily to be borne to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical vision And lastly as if the damned besides that unspeakable losse did not likewise suffer actual torments proportionable in some measure to their own sins and Gods justice Lastly for the damned spirits he declareth himself every where that their sufferings are not eternal The fire shall be unquenchable and the torments everlasting but it cannot be thence inferred that he who shall be cast into that fire or be tormented with those torments shall endure and resist them so as to be eternally burnt and tortured and yet never be destroyed nor dye And though there be many places that affirm everlasting fire into which men may be cast successively one after another for ever yet I find none that affirm that there shall be an everlasting life therein of any individual person If he had said and said only that the pains of the damned may be lessened as to the degree of them or that they endure not for ever but that after they are purged by long torments from their drosse and corruptions as gold in the fire both the damned spirits and the Devils themselves should be restored to a better condition he might have found some Ancients who are therefore called the merciful Doctours to have joyned with him though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholick Church But his shooting is not at rovers but altogether at randome without either president or partner All that eternal fire all those torments which he acknowledgeth is but this That after the resurrection the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in after the sinne committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and not to them adding that they shall live as they did formerly marry and give in marriage and consequently engender children perpetually after the resurrection as they did before which he calleth an immortality of the kind but not of the persons of men It is to be presumed that in those their second lifes knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of redemption for them from corporal death upon their well doing nor fear of any torments after death for their ill doing they will passe their times here as pleasantly as they can This is all the damnation which T. H. fancieth In summe I leave it to the free judgement of the understanding