The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
AN ANSWER, ETC.
_J. D._ His fifth conclusion may be, that the sharpest and most successful sword, in any war whatsoever, doth give sovereign power and authority to him that hath it, to approve or reject all sorts of theological doctrines, concerning the kingdom of God, not according to their truth or falsehood, but according to that influence which they have upon political affairs. Hear him: _but because this doctrine will appear to most men a novelty, I do but propound it, maintaining nothing in this or any other paradox of religion, but attending the end of that dispute of the sword concerning the authority (not yet amongst my countrymen decided) by which all sorts of doctrine are to be approved or rejected_, &c. _For, the points of doctrine concerning the kingdom of God, have so great influence upon the kingdom of man, as not to be determined, but by them that under God have the sovereign power._ “———————— Careat successibus opto, Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.” Let him evermore want success who thinketh actions are to be judged by their events. This doctrine may be plausible to those who desire to fish in troubled waters. But it is justly hated by those which are in authority, and all those who are lovers of peace and tranquillity.
The last part of this conclusion smelleth rankly of Jeroboam (1 Kings xii. 26-28): _Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David, if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem; whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem, behold thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt_. But by the just disposition of Almighty God, this policy turned to a sin, and was the utter destruction of Jeroboam and his family. It is not good jesting with edge-tools, nor playing with holy things: where men make their greatest fastness, many times they find most danger. _T. H._ His Lordship either had a strange conscience, or understood not English. Being at Paris when there was no bishop nor church in England, and every man writ what he pleased, I resolved (when it should please God to restore the authority ecclesiastical) to submit to that authority, in whatsoever it should determine. This his Lordship construes for a temporizing and too much indifferency in religion; and says further, that the last part of my words do smell of Jeroboam. To the contrary, I say my words were modest, and such as in duty I ought to use. And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matter of faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, _that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins_. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them.
_J. D._ His sixth paradox is a rapper: _The civil laws are the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest; and therefore what the lawgiver commands, that is to be accounted good, what he forbids, bad_. And a little after: _Before empires were, just and unjust were not, as whose nature is relative to a command, every action in its own nature is indifferent_. That is, _just or unjust proceedeth from the right of him that commandeth. Therefore lawful kings make those things which they command just, by commanding them, and those things which they forbid, unjust by forbidding them._ To this add his definition of a sin, _that which one doth, or omitteth, saith, or willeth, contrary to the reason of the commonwealth, that is, the (civil) laws_. Where by the laws he doth not understand the written laws, elected and approved by the whole commonwealth, but the verbal commands or mandates of him that hath the sovereign power, as we find in many places of his writings. _The civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him, that is endowed with sovereign power in the commonwealth, concerning the future actions of his subjects. And the civil laws are fastened to the lips of that man who hath the sovereign power._ Where are we? In Europe? or in Asia, where they ascribed a divinity to their kings, and, to use his own phrase, made _them mortal gods; O king, live for ever_? Flatterers are the common moths of great palaces, where Alexander’s friends are more numerous than the king’s friends. But such gross, palpable, pernicious flattery as this is, I did never meet with, so derogatory both to piety and policy. What deserveth he who should do his uttermost endeavour to poison a common fountain, whereof all the commonwealth must drink? He doth the same who poisoneth the mind of a sovereign prince.
Are _the civil laws the rules of good and bad, just and unjust, honest and dishonest_? And what, I pray you, are the rules of the civil law itself? Even the law of God and Nature. If the civil laws swerve from these more authentic laws, they are Lesbian rules. _What the lawgiver commands is to be accounted good, what he forbids, bad._ This was just the garb of the Athenian sophisters, as they are described by Plato. Whatsoever pleased the great beast, the multitude, they call holy, and just, and good. And whatsoever the great beast disliked, they called evil, unjust, profane. But he is not yet arrived at the height of his flattery. _Lawful kings make those things, which they command, just by commanding them._ At other times, when he is in his right wits, he talketh of sufferings, and _expecting their reward in heaven. And going to Christ by martyrdom. And if he had the fortitude to suffer death he should do better._ But I fear all this was but said in jest. How should they expect their reward in heaven, if his doctrine be true, _that there is no reward in heaven_? Or how should they be martyrs, if his doctrine be true, that _none can be martyrs, but those who conversed with Christ upon earth_?
He addeth, _before empires were, just and unjust were not_. Nothing could be written more false in his sense, more dishonourable to God, more inglorious to the human nature; than that God should create man, and leave him presently without any rules, to his own ordering of himself, as the ostrich leaveth her eggs in the sand. But in truth there have been empires in the world ever since Adam. And Adam had a law written in his heart by the finger of God, before there was any civil law. Thus they do endeavour to make goodness, and justice, and honesty, and conscience, and God himself, to be empty names, without any reality, which signify nothing, further than they conduce to a man’s interest. Otherwise he would not, he could not, say, that _every action as it is invested with its circumstances, is indifferent in its own nature_.
_T. H._ My sixth paradox he calls a rapper. A rapper, a swapper, and such like terms, are his Lordship’s elegancies. But let us see what this rapper is: it is this; the civil laws are the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest. Truly, I see no other rules they have. The Scriptures themselves were made law to us here, by the authority of the commonwealth, and are therefore part of the law civil. If they were laws in their own nature, then were they laws over all the world, and men were obliged to obey them in America, as soon as they should be shown there, though without a miracle, by a friar. What is unjust, but the transgression of a law? _Law_ therefore was before unjust: and the law was made known by sovereign power before it was a law: therefore _sovereign power_ was antecedent both to _law_ and _injustice_. Who then made unjust but sovereign kings or sovereign assemblies? Where is now the wonder of this rapper, _that lawful kings make those things which they command just, by commanding them, and those things which they forbid unjust, by forbidding them_? Just and unjust were surely made. If the king made them not, who made them else?
For certainly the breach of a civil law is a sin against God. Another calumny which he would fix upon me, is, that I make the King’s verbal commands to be laws. How so? Because I say, _the civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him that hath the sovereign power, concerning the future actions of his subjects_. What verbal command of a king can arrive at the ears of all his subjects, which it must do ere it be a law, without the seal of the person of the commonwealth, which is here the Great Seal of England? Who, but his Lordship, ever denied that the command of England was a law to Englishmen? Or that any but the King had authority to affix the Great Seal of England to any writing? And who did ever doubt to call our laws, though made in Parliament, the King’s laws? What was ever called a law, which the King did not assent to? Because the King has granted in divers cases not to make a law without the advice and assent of the lords and commons, therefore when there is no parliament in being, shall the Great Seal of England stand for nothing?
What was more unjustly maintained during the Long Parliament, besides the resisting and murdering of the King, than this doctrine of his Lordship’s? But the Bishop endeavoured here to make the multitude believe I maintain, that the King sinneth not, though he bid hang a man for making his apparel otherwise than he appointed, or his servant for negligent attendance. And yet he knew I distinguished always between the King’s natural and politic capacity. What name should I give to this wilful slander? But here his Lordship enters into passion, and exclaims: _Where are we, in Europe or in Asia? Gross, palpable, pernicious flattery, poisoning of a commonwealth, poisoning the King’s mind._ But where was his Lordship when he wrote this? One would not think he was in France, nor that this doctrine was written in the year 1658, but rather in the year 1648, in some cabal of the King’s enemies. But what did put him into this fit of choler? Partly, this very thing, that he could not answer my reasons; but chiefly, that he had lost upon me so much School-learning in our controversy touching _Liberty and Necessity_: wherein he was to blame himself, for believing that the obscure and barbarous language of School-divinity, could satisfy an ingenuous reader, as well as plain and perspicuous English. Do I flatter the King? Why am I not rich? I confess his Lordship has not flattered him here.
_J. D._ Something there is which he hath a confused glimmering of, as the blind man sees _men walking like trees_, which he is not able to apprehend and express clearly. We acknowledge, that though the laws or commands of a sovereign prince be erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as a subject cannot approve for good in themselves; yet he is bound to acquiesce, and may not oppose or resist, otherwise than by prayers and tears, and at the most by flight. We acknowledge that the civil laws have power to bind the conscience of a Christian, in themselves, but not from themselves, but from him who hath said, _Let every soul be subject to the higher powers_. Either they bind Christian subjects to do their sovereign’s commands, or to suffer for the testimony of a good conscience. We acknowledge that in doubtful cases, _semper præsumitur pro rege et lege_, the sovereign and the law are always presumed to be in the right. But in plain evident cases, which admit no doubt, it is always better to obey God than man. Blunderers, whilst they think to mend one imaginary hole, make two or three real ones. They who derive the authority of the Scriptures or God’s law from the civil laws of men, are like those who seek to underprop the heavens from falling, with a bulrush. Nay, they derive not only the authority of the Scripture, but even the law of nature itself, from the civil law. _The laws of nature_ (which need no promulgation) _in the condition of nature are not properly laws, but qualities which dispose men to peace and obedience. When a commonwealth is once settled, then are they actually laws, and not before._ God help us, into what times are we fallen, when the immutable laws of God and nature are made to depend upon the mutable laws of mortal men, just as one should go about to control the sun by the authority of the clock.
_T. H._ Hitherto he never offered to mend any of the doctrines he inveighs against; but here he does. He says I have a glimmering of something I was not able to apprehend and express clearly. Let us see his Lordship’s more clear expression. _We acknowledge_, saith he, _that though the laws or commands of a sovereign prince be erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as a subject cannot approve for good in themselves, yet he is bound to acquiesce, and may not oppose or resist otherwise than by prayers and tears, and at the most by flight_. Hence it follows clearly, that when a sovereign has made a law, though erroneous, then, if his subject oppose it, it is a sin. Therefore I would fain know, when a man has broken that law by doing what it forbad, or by refusing to do what it commanded, whether he have opposed this law or not. If to break the law be to oppose it, he granteth it. Therefore his Lordship has not here expressed himself so clearly, as to make men understand the difference between breaking a law and opposing it.
Though there be some difference between breaking of a law, and opposing those that are sent with force to see it executed; yet between breaking and opposing the law itself, there is no difference. Also, though the subject think the law just, as when a thief is by law condemned to die, yet he may lawfully oppose the execution, not only by prayers, tears, and flight, but also (as I think) any way he can. For though his fault were never so great, yet his endeavour to save his own life is not a fault. For the law expects it, and for that cause appointeth felons to be carried bound and encompassed with armed men to execution. Nothing is opposite to law, but sin: nothing opposite to the sheriff, but force. So that his Lordship’s sight was not sharp enough to see the difference between the law and the officer. Again, _We acknowledge_, says he, _that the laws have power to bind the conscience of a Christian in themselves, but not from themselves_. Neither do the Scriptures bind the conscience because they are Scriptures, but because they were from God.
So also the book of English Statutes bindeth our consciences in itself, but not from itself, but from the authority of the king, who only in the right of God has the legislative powers. Again he saith, _We acknowledge that in doubtful cases, the sovereign and the law are always presumed to be in the right_. If he presume they are in the right, how dare he presume that the cases they determine are doubtful? _But_, saith he, _in evident cases which admit no doubt, it is always better to obey God than man_. Yes, and in doubtful cases also, say I. But not always better to obey the inferior pastors than the supreme pastor, which is the king. But what are those cases that admit no doubt? I know but very few, and those are such as his Lordship was not much acquainted with. _J. D._ But it is not worthy of my labour, nor any part of my intention, to pursue every shadow of a question which he springeth. It shall suffice to gather a posy of flowers (or rather a bundle of weeds) out of his writings, and present them to the reader, who will easily distinguish them from healthful plants by the rankness of their smell. Such are these which follow. _T. H._ As for the following posy of flowers, there wants no more to make them sweet, than to wipe off the venom blown upon some of them by his Lordship’s breath.
_J. D._ 1. _To be delighted in the imagination only of being possessed of another man’s goods, servants, or wife, without any intention to take them from him by force or fraud, is no breach of the law which saith: Thou shalt not covet._ _T. H._ What man was there ever, whose imagination of anything he thought would please him, was not some delight? Or what sin is there, where there is not so much as an intention to do injustice? But his Lordship would not distinguish between delight and purpose, nor between a wish and a will. This was venom. I believe that his Lordship himself, even before he was married, took some delight in the thought of it, and yet the woman then was not his own. All love is delight, but all love is not sin. Without this love of that which is not yet a man’s own, the world had not been peopled. _J. D._ 2. _If a man by the terror of present death be compelled to do a fact against the law, he is totally excused, because no law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation; nature compelleth him to the fact._ The like doctrine he hath elsewhere. _When the actor doth anything against the law of nature by the command of the author, if he be obliged by former covenants to obey him, not he, but the author breaketh the law of nature._
_T. H._ The second flower is both sweet and wholesome. _J. D._ 3. _It is a doctrine repugnant to civil society, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin._ _T. H._ It is plain, that to do what a man thinks in his own conscience to be sin, is sin; for it is a contempt of the law itself; and from thence ignorant men, out of an erroneous conscience, disobey the law, which is pernicious to all government. _J. D._ 4. _The kingdom of God is not shut but to them that sin, that is, to them who have not performed due obedience to the laws of God; nor to them, if they believe the necessary articles of the Christian faith._ 5. _We must know that the true acknowledging of sin is repentance itself._ 6. _An opinion publicly appointed to be taught cannot be heresy; nor the sovereign princes that authorized the same, heretics._ _T. H._ The fourth, fifth, and sixth smell well. But to say, that the sovereign prince in England is a heretic, or that an act of parliament is heretical, stinks abominably; as it was thought _primo Elizabethæ_. _J. D._ 7. _Temporal and spiritual government are but two words to make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign, &c. There is no other government in this life, neither of state nor religion, but temporal._
8. _It is manifest, that they, who permit a contrary doctrine to that which themselves believe and think necessary_ (to salvation), _do against their consciences, and will, as much as in them lieth, the eternal destruction of their subjects_. _T. H._ The seventh and eighth are roses and jessamine. But his leaving out the words (_to salvation_) was venom. _J. D._ 9. _Subjects sin if they do not worship God according to the laws of the commonwealth._ _T. H._ The ninth he hath poisoned, and made it not mine. He quotes my book _De Cive_, cap. XV. 19, where I say, _regnante Deo per solam rationem naturalem_, that is, _before the Scripture was given_, they sinned that refused to worship God, according to the rites and ceremonies of the country; which hath no ill scent, but to undutiful subjects. _J. D._ 10. _To believe in Jesus (in Jesum), is the same as to believe that Jesus is Christ._ _T. H._ And so it is always in the Scripture. _J. D._ 11. _There can be no contradiction between the laws of God, and the laws of a Christian commonwealth._ Yet, we see Christian commonwealths daily contradict one another. _T. H._ The eleventh is also good. But his Lordship’s instance, _that Christian commonwealths contradict one another_, has nothing to do here. Their laws do indeed contradict one another, but contradict not the law of God. For God commands their subjects to obey them in all things, and his Lordship himself confesseth that their laws, though erroneous, bind the conscience. But Christian commonwealths would seldom contradict one another, if they made no doctrine law, but such as were necessary to salvation.
_J. D._ 12. _No man giveth but with intention of some good to himself. Of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good._ Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of his mind. _T. H._ That which his Lordship adds to the twelfth, namely, that Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of my mind, is false. For the two former did what they did for a good to themselves, which was eternal life; and the Decii for a good fame after death. And his Lordship also, if he had believed there is an eternal happiness to come, or thought a good fame after death to be anything worth, would have directed all his actions towards them, and have despised the wealth and titles of the present world. _J. D._ 13. _There is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after death, much less of reward which is then to be given to breach of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men’s saying, that they know it supernaturally, or that they know those that knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally._ _T. H._ The thirteenth is good and fresh. _J. D._ 14. _David’s killing of Uriah was no injury to Uriah; because the right to do what he pleased, was given him by Uriah himself._
_T. H._ David himself makes this good, in saying, _to thee only have I sinned_. _J. D._ 15. _To whom it belongeth to determine controversies which may arise from the divers interpretations of Scripture, he hath an imperial power over all men, which acknowledge the Scripture to be the word of God._ 16. _What is theft, what is murder, what is adultery, and universally what is an injury, is known by the civil law, that is, by the commands of the sovereign._ _T. H._ For the fifteenth, he should have disputed it with the head of the church. And as to the sixteenth, I would have asked him by what other law his Lordship would have it determined what is theft, or what is injury, than by the laws made in parliament, or by the laws which distinguish between _meum_ and _tuum_? His Lordship’s ignorance smells rankly ('tis his own phrase in this and many other places, which I have let pass) of his own interest. The King tells us what is sin, in that he tells us what is law. He hath authorized the clergy to dehort the people from sin, and to exhort them, by good motives both from Scripture and reason, to obey the laws; and supposeth them (though under forty years old), by the help they have in the university, able, in case the law be not written, to teach the people, old and young, what they ought to follow in doubtful cases of conscience; that is to say, they are authorized to expound the laws of nature; but not so as to make it a doubtful case, whether the King’s laws be to be obeyed or not. All they ought to do, is from the King’s authority. And therefore this my doctrine is no weed.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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