The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
AN ANSWER, ETC.
For though I know what these Latin words singly signify, yet I understand not how any thing is in a _place definitively_ and not _circumscriptively_. For _definitively_ comes from _definio_, which is to set bounds. And therefore to be in a place definitively, is when the bounds of the _place_ are every way marked out. But to be in a place circumscriptively, is when the bounds of the place are described round about. To be in a place repletively, is to fill a place. Who does not see that this distinction is canting and fraud? If any man will call it pious fraud, he is to prove the piety as clearly as I have here explained the fraud. Besides, no fraud can be pious in any man, but him that hath a lawful right to govern him whom he beguileth; whom the Bishop pretends to govern, I cannot tell. Besides, his Lordship ought to have considered, that every Bishop is one of the great Council, trusted by the King to give their advice with the Lords temporal, for the making of good laws, civil and ecclesiastical, and not to offer them such obscure doctrines, as if, because they are not versed in School-divinity, therefore they had no learning at all, nor understood the English tongue. Why did the divines of England contend so much heretofore to have the Bible translated into English, if they never meant any but themselves should read it? If a lay-man be publicly encouraged to search the Scriptures for his own salvation, what has a divine to do to impose upon him any strange interpretation, unless, if he make him err to damnation, he will be damned in his stead?
_J. D._ Our God is immutable without any shadow of turning by change, to whom all things are present, nothing past, nothing to come. But T. H. his God is measured by time, losing something that is past, and acquiring something that doth come every minute. That is as much as to say, that our God is infinite, and his God is finite; for unto that which is actually infinite, nothing can be added, neither time nor parts. Hear himself: _Nor do I understand what derogation it can be to the Divine perfection, to attribute to it potentiality, that is in English, power_ (so little doth he understand what potentiality is) _and successive duration_. And he chargeth it upon us as a fault, that we will not have eternity to be an _endless succession of time_. How, _successive duration, and an endless succession of time in God_? Then God is not infinite, then God is older to-day than he was yesterday. Away with blasphemies! Before, he destroyed the ubiquity of God, and now he destroyeth his eternity.
_T. H._ I shall omit both here and henceforth his preambulatory, impertinent, and uncivil calumnies. The thing he pretends to prove is this. That it is a derogation to the Divine power to attribute to it potentiality (that is in English power) and successive duration. One of his reasons is, God is infinite, and nothing can be added to infinite, neither of time nor of parts: it is true. And therefore I said, God is infinite and eternal, without beginning or end, either of time or place; which he has not here confuted, but confirmed. He denies potentiality and power to be all one, and says I little understand what potentiality is. He ought therefore in this place to have defined what potentiality is: for I understand it to be the same with _potentia_, which is in English power. There is no such word as potentiality in the Scriptures, nor in any author of the Latin tongue. It is found only in School-divinity, as a word of art, or rather as a word of craft, to amaze and puzzle the laity. And therefore I no sooner read than interpreted it. In the next place he says, as wondering: _How, an endless succession of time in God_!
Why not? _God’s mercy endureth for ever_, and surely God endureth as long as his mercy; therefore there is duration in God, and consequently endless succession of time. _God who in sundry times and divers manners spake in time past_, &c. But in a former dispute with me about free-will, he hath defined eternity to be _nunc stans_, that is an _ever standing now_, or _everlasting instant_. This he thinks himself bound in honour to defend. What reasonable soul can digest this? We read in Scripture, that a thousand years with God, is but as yesterday. And why? but because he sees as clearly to the end of a thousand years, as to the end of a day. But his Lordship affirms, that both a thousand years and a day are but one instant, the same _standing now_, or eternity. If he had showed an holy text for this doctrine, or any text of the book of _Common Prayer_ (in the Scripture and book of _Common Prayer_ is contained all our religion), I had yielded to him; but School-divinity I value little or nothing at all. Though in this he contradict also the School-men, who say the soul is eternal only _a parte post_, but God is eternal both _a parte post_, and _a parte ante_. Thus there are parts in eternity; and eternity being, as his Lordship says, the Divine substance, the Divine substance has parts, and _nunc stans_ has parts. Is not this darkness? I take it to be the kingdom of darkness, and the teachers of it (especially of this doctrine, that God, who is not only _optimus_, but also _maximus_, is no greater than to be wholly contained in the least atom of earth, or other body, and that his whole duration is but an instant of time) to be either grossly ignorant or ungodly deceivers.
_J. D._ Our God is a perfect, pure, simple, indivisible, infinite essence; free from all composition of matter and form, of substance and accidents. All matter is finite, and he who acteth by his infinite essence, needeth neither organs nor faculties (_id est_, _no power, note that_), nor accidents, to render him more complete. But T. H. his God is a divisible God, a compounded God, that hath matter, or qualities, or accidents. Hear himself. I argue thus: _The Divine substance is indivisible; but eternity is the Divine substance. The major is evident, because God is_ actus simplicissimus; _the minor is confessed by all men, that whatsoever is attributed to God, is God_. Now listen to his answer: _The major is so far from being evident, that_ actus simplicissimus _signifieth nothing. The minor is said by some men, thought by no man; whatsoever is thought is understood._ The major was this, _the Divine substance is indivisible_. Is this far from being evident? Either it is indivisible, or divisible. If it be not indivisible, then it is divisible, then it is materiate, then it is corporeal, then it hath parts, then it is finite by his own confession. _Habere partes, aut esse totum aliquid, sunt attributa finitorum._ Upon this silly conceit he chargeth me for saying, that _God is not just_, but justice itself; not eternal, but eternity itself; which he calleth _unseemly words to be said of God_. And he thinketh he doth me a great courtesy in not adding _blasphemous and atheistical_. But his bolts are so soon shot, and his reasons are such vain imaginations, and such drowsy phantasies, that no sober man doth much regard them. Thus he hath already destroyed the ubiquity, the eternity, and the simplicity of God. I wish he had considered better with himself, before he had desperately cast himself upon these rocks.
But _paulo majora canamus_. My next charge is, that he destroys the very being of God, and leaves nothing in his place, but an empty name. For by taking away all incorporeal substances, he taketh away God himself. The very name, saith he, of an incorporeal substance, is a _contradiction_. And _to say that an angel or spirit, is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect, that there is no angel or spirit at all_. By the same reason to say, that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say there is no God at all. Either God is incorporeal; or he is finite, and consists of parts, and consequently is no God. This, that there is no incorporeal spirit, is that main root of atheism, from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up.
_T. H._ God is indeed a perfect, pure, simple, infinite substance; and his name incommunicable, that is to say, not divisible into this and that individual God, in such manner as the name of man is divisible into Peter and John. And therefore God is individual; which word amongst the Greeks is expressed by the word indivisible. Certain heretics in the primitive church, because special and individual are called particulars, maintained that Christ was a particular God, differing in number from God the Father. And this was the doctrine that was condemned for heresy in the first council of Nice, by these words, _God hath no parts_. And yet many of the Latin fathers, in their explications of the Nicene creed, have expounded the word _consubstantial_, by the community of nature, which different species have in their genus, and different individuals in the species; as if Peter and John were _consubstantial_, because they agree in one human nature; which is contrary, I confess, to the meaning of the Nice fathers. But that in a substance infinitely great, it should be impossible to consider any thing as not infinite, I do not see it there condemned. For certainly he that thinks God is in every part of the church, does not exclude him out of the churchyard.
And is not this a considering of him by parts? For dividing a thing which we cannot reach nor separate one part thereof from another, is nothing else but considering of the same by parts. So much concerning indivisibility from natural reason; for I will wade no further, but rely upon the Scriptures. God is nowhere said in the Scriptures to be indivisible, unless his Lordship meant division to consist only in separation of parts, which I think he did not. St. Paul indeed saith (1 Cor. i. 13): _Is Christ divided?_ Not that the followers of Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, followed some one part, some another of Christ; but that thinking differently of his nature, they made as it were different kinds of him. Secondly, his Lordship expounds simplicity, by not being compounded of matter and form, or of substance and accidents, unlearnedly. For nothing can be so compounded. The matter of a _chair_ is _wood_; the form is the figure it hath, apt for the intended use. Does his Lordship think the chair compounded of the wood and the figure? A man is rational: does it therefore follow that reason is a part of the man?
It was Aristotle deceived him, who told him that _a rational living creature_, is the definition of a man, and that the definition of a man was his essence; and therefore the Bishop and other Schoolmen, from this that the word rational is a part of these words, _man is a rational living creature_, concluded that the essence of man was a part of the man, and a _rational man_ the same thing with a rational soul. I should wonder how any man, much more a doctor of divinity, should be so grossly deceived, but that I know naturally the generality of men speak the words of their masters by rote, without having any ideas of the things, which the words signify. Lastly, he calls God an _essence_. If he mean by _essence_ the same with _ens_, τὸ ὄν, I approve it. Otherwise, what is _essence_? There is no such word in the Old Testament. The Hebrew language, which has no word answerable to the copulative _est_, will not bear it. The New Testament hath οὐσία, but never for _essence_, nor for _substance_, but only for riches. I come now to his argument in mood and figure, which is this, _the Divine substance is indivisible_.
That is the _major_. _Eternity is the Divine substance._ That is the _minor_. _Ergo_, the Divine substance is indivisible. The major, he says, is evident, because God is _actus simplicissimus_. The minor is confessed, he thinks, by all men, because whatsoever is attributed to God, is God. To this I answered, that the major was so far from being evident, that _actus simplicissimus_ signifieth nothing, and that the minor was understood by no man. First, what is _actus_ in the _major_? Does any man understand _actus_ for a substance, that is, for a thing subsisting by itself? Is not _actus_, in English, either an _act_ or an _action_, or nothing? Or is any of these _substance_? If it be evident, why did he not explain _actus_ by a definition? And as to the minor, though all men in the world understand that the _Eternal_ is God, yet no man can understand that the _eternity_ is God. Perhaps he and the Schoolmen mean by _actus_, the same that they do by _essentia_. What is the _essence_ of a _man_, but his _humanity_; or of God, but his _Deity_; of _great_, but _greatness_; and so of all other denominating attributes? And the words, God and Deity, are of different signification. John Damascene, a father of the church, expounding the Nicene creed, denies plainly that the Deity was incarnate; but all true Christians hold that God was incarnate. Therefore God and the Deity signify divers things; and therefore _eternal_ and _eternity_ are not the same, no more than a wise man and his wisdom are the same; nor God and his justice the same thing: and universally it is false, that the attribute in the abstract is the same with the substance, to which it is attributed. Also it is universally true of God, that the attribute in the concrete, and the substance to which it is attributed, is not the same thing.
I come now to his next period or paragraph, wherein he would fain prove, that by denying incorporeal substance, I take away God’s existence. The words he cites here are mine: _to say an angel or spirit is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no angel nor spirit at all_. It is true also, that to say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture. But the Bishop, trusting to his Aristotelian and Scholastic learning, hath hitherto made no use of Scripture, save only of these texts: 1 Cor. ix. 7: _Who hath planted a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof; or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?_ and Rev. iv. 11: _Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honour, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they were created_: thereby to prove that the right of God to govern and punish mankind is not derived from his omnipotence.
Let us now see how he proves incorporeity by his own reason without Scripture. _Either God_, he saith, _is incorporeal or finite_. He knows I deny both, and say he is _corporeal_ and _infinite_: against which he offers no proof, but only, according to his custom of disputing, calls it the root of atheism; and interrogates me, what real thing is left in the world, if God be incorporeal, but body and accidents? I say there is nothing left but corporeal substance. For I have denied, as he knew, that there is any reality in accidents; and nevertheless maintain God’s existence, and that he is a most pure, and most simple corporeal spirit. Here his Lordship catching nothing, removes to the eternity of the Trinity, which these my grounds, he says, destroy. How so? I say the Trinity, and the persons thereof, are that one pure, simple, and eternal corporeal spirit; and why does this destroy the Trinity, more than if I had called it incorporeal? He labours here and seeketh somewhat to refresh himself in the word _person_; _by the same grounds_, he saith, _every king hath as many persons as there be justices of peace in his kingdom, and God Almighty hath as many persons as there be kings_. Why not?
For I never said that all those kings were that God; and yet God giveth that name to the kings of the earth. For the signification of the word _person_, I shall expound it by and by in another place. Here ends his Lordship’s School-argument; now let me come with my Scripture-argument. St. Paul, concerning Christ (Col. ii. 9) saith thus: _In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_. This place Athanasius, a great and zealous doctor in the Nicene Council, and vehement enemy of Arius the heretic, who allowed Christ to be no otherwise God, than as men of excellent piety were so called, expoundeth thus: _The fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily_, (Greek σωματικῶς), _id est_ θεϊκῶς, _id est, realiter_. So there is one Father for corporality, and that God was in Christ in such manner as body is in body. Again, there were in the primitive church a sort of heretics who maintained that Jesus Christ had not a true real body, but was only a phantasm or spright, such as the Latins call _spectra_.
Against the head of this sect, whose name I think was Apelles, Tertullian wrote a book, now extant amongst his other works, intituled _De Carne Christi_; wherein after he had spoken of the nature of phantasms, and showed that they had nothing of reality in them, he concludeth with these words, “whatsoever is not _body_, is _nothing_.” So here is on my side a plain text of Scripture, and two ancient and learned Fathers. Nor was this doctrine of Tertullian condemned in the Council of Nice; but the division of the divine substance into God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. For these words, _God has no parts_, were added, for explication of the word _consubstantial_, at the request of the dissenting Fathers, and are further explained both in Athanasius his creed, in these words, _not three Gods but one God_, and by the constant attribute ever since of the _individual_ Trinity. The same words nevertheless do condemn the Anthropomorphites also; for though there appeared no Christians that professed that God had an organical body, and consequently that the persons were three individuals, yet the Gentiles were all Anthropomorphites, and there condemned by these words, _God has no parts_. And thus I have answered his accusation concerning the eternity and existence of the Divine substance, and made it appear that in truth, the question between us, is whether God be a phantasm (_id est_, an idol of the fancy, which St. Paul saith is nothing) or a corporeal spirit, that is to say, something that has magnitude.
In this place I think it not amiss, leaving for a little while this theological dispute, to examine the signification of those words which have occasioned so much diversity of opinion in this kind of doctrine. The word _substance_, in Greek ὑπόστασις, ὑποσταν, ὑποσταμενον, signify the same thing, namely, a ground, a base, any thing that has existence or subsistence _in itself_, anything that upholdeth that which else would fall, in which sense God is properly the hypostasis, base, and substance that upholdeth all the world, having subsistence not only _in himself_, but _from himself_; whereas other substances have their subsistence only in themselves, not from themselves. But metaphorically, faith is called (Heb. xi. 1) a substance, because it is the foundation or base of our hope; for faith failing, our hope falls. And (2 Cor. ix. 4) St. Paul having boasted of the liberal promise of the Corinthians towards the Macedonians, calls that promise the ground, the hypostasis of that his boasting. And (Heb. i. 3) Christ is called the image of the substance (the hypostasis) of his Father, and for the proper and adequate signification of the word hypostasis, the Greek Fathers did always oppose it to apparition or phantasm; as when a man seeth his face in the water, his real face is called the hypostasis of the phantastic face in the water.
So also in speaking, the thing understood or named is called hypostasis, in respect of the name; so also a body coloured is the hypostasis, substance and subject of the colour; and in like manner of all its other accidents. Essence and all other abstract names, are words artificial belonging to the art of logic, and signify only the manner how we consider the substance itself. And of this I have spoken sufficiently in my _Leviathan_ (vol. III. page 672). _Body_ (Latin, _corpus_, σῶμα) is that substance which hath magnitude indeterminate, and is the same with corporeal substance; but _a body_ is that which hath magnitude determinate, and consequently is understood to be _totum_ or _integrum aliquid_. _Pure_ and _simple body_, is body of one and the same kind, in every part throughout; and if mingled with body of another kind, though the total be compounded or mixed, the parts nevertheless retain their simplicity, as when water and wine are mixed, the parts of both kinds retain their simplicity. For water and wine can not both be in one and the same place at once. _Matter_ is the same with _body_; but never without respect to a body which is made thereof. _Form_ is the aggregate of all accidents together, for which we give the matter a new name; so _albedo_, _whiteness_, is the form of _album_, or _white body_. So also humanity is the essence of man, and Deity the essence of Deus.
Spirit is thin, fluid, transparent, invisible body. The word in Latin signifies breath, air, wind, and the like. In Greek πνεῡμα from πνέω, _spiro_, _flo_. I have seen, and so have many more, two waters, one of the river, the other a mineral water, so like that no man could discern the one from the other by his sight; yet when they have been both put together, the whole substance could not by the eye be distinguished from milk. Yet we know that the one was not mixed with the other, so as every part of the one to be in every part of the other, for that is impossible, unless two bodies can be in the same place. How then could the change be made in every part, but only by the activity of the mineral water, changing it every where to the sense, and yet not being every where, and in every part of the water? If then such gross bodies have so great activity, what shall we think of spirits, whose kinds be as many as there be kinds of liquor, and activity greater? Can it then be doubted, but that God, who is an infinitely fine Spirit, and withal intelligent, can make and change all species and kinds of body as he pleaseth? But I dare not say, that this is the way by which God Almighty worketh, because it is past my apprehension: yet it serves very well to demonstrate, that the omnipotence of God implieth no contradiction; and is better than by pretence of magnifying the fineness of the Divine substance, to reduce it to a spright or phantasm, which is nothing.
A _person_ (Latin, _persona_) signifies an intelligent substance, that acteth any thing in his own or another’s name, or by his own or another’s authority. Of this definition there can be no other proof than from the use of that word, in such Latin authors as were esteemed the most skilful in their own language, of which number was Cicero. But Cicero, in an epistle to Atticus, saith thus: _Unus sustineo tres personas, mei, adversarii, et judicis_: that is, “I that am but one man, sustain three persons; mine own person, the person of my adversary, and the person of the judge.” Cicero was here the substance intelligent, one man; and because he pleaded for himself, he calls himself his own person: and again, because he pleaded for his adversary, he says, he sustained the person of his adversary: and lastly, because he himself gave the sentence, he says, he sustained the person of the judge. In the same sense we use the word in English vulgarly, calling him that acteth by his own authority, his own person, and him that acteth by the authority of another, the person of that other. And thus we have the exact meaning of the word _person_.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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