The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
AN ANSWER, ETC.
_J. D._ 17. He admitteth incestuous _copulations_ of the heathens, _according to their heathenish laws, to have been lawful marriages_. Though the Scripture teach us (Levit. xviii. 28) expressly, that for those abominations the land of Canaan spued out her inhabitants. _T. H._ The seventeenth he hath corrupted with a false interpretation of the text. For in that chapter, from the beginning to verse twenty, are forbidden marriages in certain degrees of kindred. From verse twenty, which begins with _Moreover_, to the twenty-eighth, are forbidden sacrificing of children to Moloch, and profaning of God’s name, and buggery with man and beast, with this cause expressed, (_For all these abominations have the men of the land done which were before you, and the land is defiled_,) _that the land spue not you out also_. As for marriages within the degrees prohibited, they are not referred to the abominations of the heathen. Besides, for some time after Adam, such marriages were necessary. _J. D._ 18. _I say that no other article of faith besides this, that Jesus is Christ, is necessary to a Christian man for salvation._ 19. _Because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, therefore neither can his ministers, unless they be kings, require obedience in his name. They have no right of commanding, no power to make laws._ _T. H._ These two smell comfortably, and of Scripture. The contrary doctrine smells of ambition and encroachment of jurisdiction, or rump of the Roman tyranny.
_J. D._ 20. I pass by his errors about oaths, about vows, about the resurrection, about the kingdom of Christ, about the power of the keys, binding, loosing, excommunication, &c., his ignorant mistakes of _meritum congrui_ and _condigni_, active and passive obedience, and many more, for fear of being tedious to the reader. _T. H._ The terms of School divinity, of which number are _meritum congrui_, _meritum condigni_, and _passive obedience_, are so obscure, as no man living can tell what they mean; so that they that use them may admit or deny their meaning, as it shall serve their turns. I said not that this was their meaning, but that I thought it was so. For no man living can tell what a Schoolman means by his words. Therefore I expounded them according to their true signification. Merit _ex condigno_, is when a thing is deserved by pact; as when I say the labourer is worthy of his hire, I mean _meritum ex condigno_. But when a man of his own grace throweth money among the people, with an intention that what part soever of it any of them could catch he should have, he that catcheth merits it, not by pact, nor by precedent merit, as a labourer, but because it was congruent to the purpose of him that cast it amongst them. In all other meaning these words are but jargon, which his Lordship had learnt by rote. Also _passive obedience_ signifies nothing, except it may be called _passive obedience_ when a man refraineth himself from doing what the law hath forbidden. For in his Lordship’s sense, the thief that is hanged for stealing, hath fulfilled the law; which I think is absurd.
_J. D._ His whole works are a heap of mis-shapen errors, and absurd paradoxes, vented with the confidence of a juggler, the brags of a mountebank, and the authority of some Pythagoras, or third Cato, lately dropped down from heaven. Thus we have seen how the Hobbian principles do destroy the existence, the simplicity, the ubiquity, the eternity, and infiniteness of God, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, the hypostatical union, the kingly, sacerdotal, and prophetical office of Christ, the being and operation of the Holy Ghost, heaven, hell, angels, devils, the immortality of the soul, the Catholic and all national churches; the holy Scriptures, holy orders, the holy sacraments, the whole frame of religion, and the worship of God; the laws of nature, the reality of goodness, justice, piety, honesty, conscience, and all that is sacred. If his disciples have such an implicit faith, that they can digest all these things, they may feed with _ostriches_.
_T. H._ He here concludes his first chapter with bitter reproaches, to leave in his reader, as he thought, a sting; supposing perhaps that he will read nothing but the beginning and end of his book, as is the custom of many men. But to make him lose that petty piece of cunning, I must desire of the reader one of these two things. Either that he would read with it the places of my _Leviathan_ which he cites, and see not only how he answers my arguments, but also what the arguments are which he produceth against them; or else, that he would forbear to condemn me, so much as in his thought: for otherwise he is unjust. The name of Bishop is of great authority; but these words are not the words of a bishop, but of a passionate Schoolman, too fierce and unseemly in any man whatsoever. Besides, they are untrue. Who that knows me, will say that I have the confidence of a juggler, or that I use to brag of anything, much less that I play the mountebank? What my works are, he was no fit judge.
But now he has provoked me, I will say thus much of them, that neither he, (if he had lived), nor I, if I would, could extinguish the light which is set up in the world by the greatest part of them: and for these doctrines which he impugneth, I have few opposers, but such whose profit, or whose fame in learning is concerned in them. He accuses me first of destroying the existence of God; that is to say, he would make the world believe I were an atheist. But upon what ground? Because I say, that God is a spirit, but _corporeal_. But to say that, is allowed me by St. Paul, that says (1 Cor. xv. 44): _There is a spiritual body, and there is an animal body_. He that holds there is a God, and that God is really somewhat, (for _body_ is doubtlessly a _real substance_), is as far from being an atheist, as it is possible to be. But he that says God is an _incorporeal substance_, no man can be sure whether he be an atheist or not. For no man living can tell whether there be any _substance_ at all, that is not also _corporeal_.
For neither the word _incorporeal_, nor _immaterial_, nor any word equivalent to it, is to be found in Scripture, or in reason. But on the contrary, that _the Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ_, is found in Colos. ii. 9; and Tertullian maintains that God is either a _corporeal substance_ or _nothing_. Nor was he ever condemned for it by the church. For why? Not only Tertullian, but all the learned, call _body_, not only that which one can see, but also whatsoever has magnitude, or that is somewhere; for they had greater reverence for the divine substance, than that they durst think it had no _magnitude_, or was _nowhere_. But they that hold God to be a phantasm, as did the exorcists in the Church of Rome, that is, such a thing as were at that time thought to be the sprights, that were said to walk in churchyards and to be the souls of men buried, do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts they thought God a substance, and would also, if they had known what _substance_ and what _corporeal_ meant, have said he was a corporeal substance.
So that this _atheism by consequence_ is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church. He also that says that God is _wholly here_, and _wholly there_, and _wholly every where_, destroys by consequence the unity of God, and the infiniteness of God, and the simplicity of God. And this the Schoolmen do, and are therefore _atheists by consequence_, and yet they do not all say in their hearts that there is no God. So also his Lordship by exempting the will of man from being subject to the necessity of God’s will or decree, denies by _consequence_ the Divine prescience, which also will amount to _atheism by consequence_. But out of this, that God is a _spirit corporeal_ and _infinitely pure_, there can no unworthy or dishonourable consequence be drawn. Thus far to his Lordships first chapter, in justification of my _Leviathan_ as to matter of religion; and especially to wipe off that unjust slander cast upon me by the Bishop of Derry. As for the second chapter, which concerns my civil doctrines, since my errors there, if there be any, will not tend very much to my disgrace, I will not take the pains to answer it. Whereas his Lordship has talked in his discourse here and there ignorantly of heresy, and some others have not doubted to say publicly, that there be many heresies in my _Leviathan_; I will add hereunto, for a general answer, an historical relation concerning the word Heresy, from the first use of it amongst the Grecians till this present time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------- “Nam veluti pueri trepidant, atque omnia cæcis In tenebris metuunt: sic nos in luce timemus Interdum, nihilo quæ sunt metuenda magis, quam Quæ pueri in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura.” LUCRETIUS, Lib. II. 54-57. HÆRESEɷS LARVAS, SECTARUM IMMANIA MONSTRA HOBBIUS INVICTO DISPULIT INGENIO.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.