The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
AN ANSWER, ETC.
But it is nowhere said, that he which keeps not Christ’s sayings shall never see death, nor be immortal: and yet they that say that the wicked, body and soul, shall be tormented everlastingly, do therein say they are immortal. Matth. x. 28: _Fear not them that can kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but fear him that is able to destroy both soul and body in hell_. Man cannot kill a soul; for the man killed shall revive again. But God can destroy the soul and body in hell, as that it shall never return to life. In the Old Testament (Gen. vii. 4) we read: _I will destroy every living substance that I have made, from off the face of the earth_; therefore, if the souls of them that perished in the Flood were substances, they were also destroyed in the Flood, and were not immortal. Matth. xxv. 41: _Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels_. These words are to be spoken in the day of judgment, which judgment is to be in the clouds. And there shall stand the men that are reprobated alive, where souls, according to his Lordship’s doctrine, were sent long before to hell.
Therefore at that present day of judgment they had one soul by which they were there alive, and another soul in hell. How his Lordship could have maintained this, I understand not. But by my doctrine, that the soul is not a separated substance, but that the man at his resurrection shall be revived by God, and raised to judgment, and afterwards body and soul destroyed in hell-fire, which is the second death, there is no such consequence or difficulty to be inferred. Besides, it avoids the unnecessary disputes about where the soul of Lazarus was for four days he lay dead. And the order of the divine process is made good, of not inflicting torments before the condemnation pronounced. Now as to the harmony of the two Testaments, it is said in the Old (Gen. ii. 17): _In the day that thou eatest of the tree of knowledge, dying thou shalt die: moriendo morieris_: that is, when thou art dead thou shalt not revive; for so hath Athanasius expounded it. Therefore Adam and Eve were not immortal by their creation. Then (Gen. iii. 22): _Behold the man is become as one of us: now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, &c._ Here they had had an immortality by the gift of God if they had not sinned. It was therefore sin that lost them eternal life. He therefore that redeemed them from sin was the author of their immortality, which consequently began in the day of judgment, when Adam and Eve were again made alive by admission to the new tree of life, which was Christ.
Now let us compare this with the New Testament; where we find these words (1 Cor. xv. 21): _since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead_. Therefore all the immortality of the soul, that shall be after the resurrection, is by Christ, and not by the nature of the soul. Verse 22: _As by Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive_. Therefore since we died by Adam’s sin, so we shall live by Christ’s redemption of us, that is, after the resurrection. Again (verse 23): _But every man in his own order; Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s, at his coming_. Therefore none shall be made alive till the coming of Christ. Lastly, as when God had said, _that day that thou eatest of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt die_, though he condemned him then, yet he suffered him to live a long time after; so when Christ had said to the thief on the cross, _this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise_, yet he suffered him to lie dead till the general resurrection, for no man rose again from the dead before our Saviour’s coming, and conquering death. If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture.
But though I have made it clear that it cannot be drawn by lawful consequence from Scripture, that man was created with a soul immortal, and that the elect only, by the grace of God in Christ, shall both bodies and souls from the resurrection forward be immortal; yet there may be a consequence well drawn from some words in the rites of burial, that prove the contrary, as these: _Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed_, &c. And these: _Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord_: which are words authorised by the church. I wonder his Lordship, that had so often pronounced them, took no notice of them here. But it often happens that men think of those things least, which they have most perfectly learnt by rote. I am sorry I could not, without deserting the sense of Scripture and mine own conscience, say the same. But I see no just cause yet, why the church should be offended at it.
For the church of England pretendeth not, as doth the church of Rome, to be above the Scripture; nor forbiddeth any man to read the Scripture; nor was I forbidden, when I wrote my _Leviathan_, to publish anything which the Scriptures suggested. For when I wrote it, I may safely say there was no lawful church in England, that could have maintained me in, or prohibited me from writing anything. There was no bishop; and though there was preaching, such as it was, yet no common prayer. For extemporary prayer, though made in the pulpit, is not common prayer. There was then no church in England, that any man living was bound to obey. What I write here at this present time I am forced to in my defence, not against the church, but against the accusations and arguments of my adversaries. For the church, though it excommunicates for scandalous life, and for teaching false doctrines, yet it professeth to impose nothing to be held as faith, but what may be warranted by Scripture: and this the church itself saith in the twentieth of the Thirty-nine Articles of religion. And therefore I am permitted to allege Scripture at any time in the defence of my belief.
_J. D._ But they that in one case are grieved, in another must be relieved. If perchance T. H. hath given his disciples any discontent in his doctrine of _heaven_ and the _holy angels_, and _the glorified souls of the saints_, he will make them amends in his doctrine of _hell_, and the _devils_, and the _damned spirits_. First of the devils; he fancieth that all those devils which our Saviour did cast out, were phrenzies; and all _demoniacs_, or persons possessed, _no other than madmen_: and to justify _our Saviour’s speaking to a disease as to a person_, produceth the example of enchanters. 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 Dæmonia, which are the feigned Gods of the heathen, and are neither bodies nor spiritual substances, but mere fancies, and fictions of terrified hearts, feigned by the Greeks, and other heathen people, which St. Paul calleth nothings._ So T. H. hath killed the great infernal Devil, and all his black angels, and left no devils to be feared, but devils incarnate, that is, wicked men.
_T. H._ As for the first words cited (_Leviathan_, vol. iii. p. 68) I refer the reader to the place itself; and for the words concerning Satan, I leave them to the judgment of the learned. _J. D._ And for _hell_, he describeth the _kingdom of Satan_, or the _kingdom of darkness_, to be _a confederacy of deceivers_. He telleth us that the places, which set forth the torments of hell in holy Scripture, _do design metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind, from the sight of that eternal felicity in others, which they themselves, through their own incredulity and disobedience, have lost_. As if metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them, as well as literal; as if final desperation were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent; and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion; as if it were a loss so easily to be borne, to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical vision; and lastly, as if the damned, besides that unspeakable loss, did not likewise suffer actual torments, proportionable in some measure to their own sins, and God’s justice. _T. H._ That metaphors bear sad truths in them, I deny not. It is a sad thing to lose this present life untimely. Is it not therefore much more a sad thing to lose an eternal happy life? And I believe that he which will venture upon sin, with such danger, will not stick to do the same notwithstanding the doctrine of eternal torture. Is it not also a sad truth, that the kingdom of darkness should be a confederacy of deceivers?
_J. D._ Lastly, for the damned spirits, he declareth himself every where, that their sufferings are not eternal. _The fire shall be unquenchable, and the torments everlasting; but it cannot be thence inferred, that he who shall be cast into that fire, or_ _be tormented with those torments, shall endure and resist them, so as to be eternally burnt and tortured, and yet never be destroyed nor die. 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 dross and corruptions, as gold in the fire, both the damned spirits and the devils themselves should be restored to a better condition; he might have found some ancients (who are therefore called _the merciful doctors_) to have joined with him; though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholic church.
_T. H._ Why does not his Lordship cite some place of Scripture here to prove, that all the reprobates which are dead, live eternally in torment? We read indeed, that everlasting torments were prepared for the Devil and his angels, whose natures also are everlasting; and that the _Beast_ and the _false prophet_ shall be tormented everlastingly; but not that every reprobate shall be so. They shall indeed be cast into the same fire; but the Scripture says plainly enough, that they shall be both body and soul destroyed there. If I had said that the devils themselves should be restored to a better condition, his Lordship would have been so kind as to have put me into the number of the _merciful doctors_. Truly, if I had had any warrant for the possibility of their being less enemies to the church of God than they have been, I would have been as merciful to them as any doctor of them all. As it is, I am more merciful than the Bishop.
_J. D._ But his shooting is not at rovers, but altogether at random, without either precedent 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 sin committed, saving that God promised a redeemer to Adam and not to them_: adding, _that they shall live as they did formerly, marry and give in marriage; and consequently engender children perpetually after the resurrection, as they did before_: which he calleth _an immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men_. It is to be presumed, that in those their second lives, knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of redemption for them from corporal death upon their well-doing, nor fear of any torments after death for their ill-doing, they will pass their times here as pleasantly as they can. This is all the damnation which T. H. fancieth. _T. H._ This he has urged once before, and I answered to it, that the whole paragraph was to prove, that for any text of Scripture to the contrary, men might, after the resurrection, live as Adam did on earth; and that, notwithstanding the text of St. Luke, (chap. xx. 34-36), _Marry and propagate_. But that they shall do so, is no assertion of mine. His Lordship knew I held, that after the resurrection there shall be at all no wicked men; but the elect (all that are, have been, and hereafter shall be) shall live on earth. But St. Peter (2 Epist. iii. 13) says, there shall then be _a new heaven and a new earth_.
_J. D._ In sum I leave it to the free judgment of the understanding reader, by these few instances which follow, to judge what the Hobbian principles are in point of religion. _Ex ungue leonem._ First, that no man needs to put himself to any hazard for his faith, but may safely comply with the times. _And for their faith it is internal and invisible. They have the licence that Naaman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it._ Secondly, he alloweth subjects, being commanded by their sovereign, to deny Christ. _Profession with the tongue is but an external thing, and no more than any other gesture, whereby we signify our obedience: and wherein a Christian, holding firmly in his heart the faith of Christ, hath the same liberty which the prophet Elisha allowed to Naaman, &c. who by bowing before the idol Rimmon, denied the true God as much in effect, as if he had done it with his lips._ Alas, why did St. Peter weep so bitterly for denying his master, out of fear of his life or members? It seems he was not acquainted with these Hobbian principles. And in the same place he layeth down this general conclusion: _This we may say, that whatsoever a subject is compelled to, in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he, that in this case denieth Christ before men, but his governor and the law of his country_. His instance, in a Mahometan commanded by a Christian prince to be present at divine service, is a weak mistake, springing from his gross ignorance in case-divinity, not knowing to distinguish between an erroneous conscience, as the Mahometan’s is, and a conscience rightly informed.
_T. H._ In these his two first instances, I confess his Lordship does not much belie me. But neither does he confute me. Also I confess my ignorance in his case-divinity, which is grounded upon the doctrine of the Schoolmen; who to decide cases of conscience, take in, not only the Scriptures, but also the decrees of the popes of Rome, for the advancing of the dominion of the Roman church over consciences; whereas the true decision of cases of consciences ought to be grounded only on Scripture, or natural equity. I never allowed the denying of Christ with the tongue in all men, but expressly say the contrary (_Leviathan_, vol. iii. p. 656) in these words: _For an unlearned man that is in the power of an idolatrous king or state, if commanded on pain of death to worship before an idol, he detesteth the idol in his heart, he doth well; though if he had the fortitude to suffer death rather than worship it, he should do better. But if a pastor, who as Christ’s messenger has undertaken to teach Christ’s doctrine to all nations, should do the same, it were not only a sinful scandal in respect of other Christian men’s consciences, but a perfidious forsaking of his charge._ Therefore St. Peter, in denying Christ, sinned, as being an apostle. And it is sin in every man that should now take upon him to preach against the power of the Pope, to leave his commission unexecuted for fear of the fire; but in a mere traveller, not so. The three children and Daniel were worthy champions of the true religion. But God requireth not of every man to be a champion. As for his Lordship’s words of _complying with the times_, they are not mine, but his own spiteful paraphrase.
_J. D._ Thirdly, if this be not enough, he giveth licence to a Christian to commit idolatry, or at least to do an idolatrous act, for fear of death or corporal danger. _To pray unto a king voluntarily for fair weather, or for anything which God only can do for us, is Divine worship, and idolatry. On the other side, if a king compel a man to it by the terror of death, or other great corporal punishment, it is not idolatry._ His reason is, because _it is not a sign, that he doth inwardly honour him as a God, but that he is desirous to save himself from death, or from a miserable life_. It seemeth T. H. thinketh there is no Divine worship but internal: and that it is lawful for a man to value his own life or his limbs more than his God. How much is he wiser than the three children, or Daniel himself, who were thrown, the first into a fiery furnace, the last into the lions' den, because they refused to comply with the idolatrous decree of their sovereign prince? _T. H._ Here also my words are truly cited. But his Lordship understood not what the word _worship_ signifies; and yet he knew what I meant by it. To think highly of God, as I had defined it, is to honour him. But _to think_ is internal. To worship, is to signify that honour, which we inwardly give, by signs _external_. This understood, as by his Lordship it was, all he says to it, is but a cavil.
_J. D._ A fourth aphorism may be this, _that, which is said in the Scripture, it is better to obey God than man, hath place in the kingdom of God by pact, and not by nature_. Why? Nature itself doth teach us it is better to obey God than men. Neither can he say that he intended this only of obedience in the use of indifferent actions and gestures, in the service of God, commanded by the commonwealth: for that is to obey both God and man. But if Divine law and human law clash one with another, without doubt it is evermore better to obey God than man. _T. H._ Here again appears his unskilfulness in reasoning. Who denies, but it is always, and in all cases, better to obey God than man? But there is no law, neither Divine nor human, that ought to be taken for a law, till we know what it is; and if a Divine law, till we know that God hath commanded it to be kept. We agree that the Scriptures are the word of God. But they are a law by pact, that is, to us who have been baptized into the covenant. To all others it is an invitation only to their own benefit. It is true that even nature suggesteth to us that the law of God is to be obeyed rather than the law of man. But nature does not suggest to us that the Scripture is the law of God, much less how every text of it ought to be interpreted. But who then shall suggest this? Dr. Bramhall? I deny it. Who then? The stream of divines? Why so? Am I, that have the Scripture itself before my eyes, obliged to venture my eternal life upon their interpretation, how learned soever they pretend to be, when no counter-security, that they can give me, will save me harmless? If not the stream of divines, who then?
The lawful assembly of pastors, or of bishops? But there can be no lawful assembly in England without the authority of the King. The Scripture, therefore, what it is, and how to be interpreted, is made known unto us here, by no other way than the authority of our sovereign lord both in temporals and spirituals, the King’s Majesty. And where he has set forth no interpretation, there I am allowed to follow my own, as well as any other man, bishop or not bishop. For my own part, all that know me, know also it is my opinion, that the best government in religion is by episcopacy, but in the King’s right, not in their own. But my Lord of Derry, not contented with this, would have the utmost resolution of our faith to be into the doctrine of the Schools. I do not think that all the bishops be of his mind. If they were, I would wish them to stand in fear of that dreadful sentence, _all covet, all lose_. I must not let pass these words of his Lordship, _if Divine law and human law clash one with another, without doubt it is better evermore to obey God than man_.
Where the king is a Christian, believes the Scripture, and hath the legislative power both in church and state, and maketh no laws concerning Christian faith, or Divine worship, but by the counsel of his bishops whom he trusteth in that behalf; if the bishops counsel him aright, what clashing can there be between the Divine and human laws? For if the civil law be against God’s law, and the bishops make it clearly appear to the king that it clasheth with Divine law, no doubt he will mend it by himself, or by the advice of his parliament; for else he is no professor of Christ’s doctrine, and so the clashing is at an end. But if they think that every opinion they hold, though obscure and unnecessary to salvation, ought presently to be law, then there will be clashings innumerable, not only of laws, but also of swords, as we have found it too true by late experience. But his Lordship is still at this, that there ought to be, for the Divine laws, that is to say for the interpretation of Scripture, a legislative power in the church, distinct from that of the King, which under him they enjoy already. This I deny. Then for clashing between the civil laws of infidels with the law of God, the apostles teach that those their civil laws are to be obeyed, but so as to keep their faith in Christ entirely in their hearts; which is an obedience easily performed. But I do not believe that Augustus Cæsar or Nero was bound to make the holy Scripture law; and yet unless they did so, they could not attain to eternal life.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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