of St. Thomas My Lord and my God This Controversie presently amongst the Inhabitants and Souldiers of Alexandria became a Quarrel and was the cause of much Bloudshed in and about the City and was likely then to spread further as afterwards it did This so far concerned the Emperours Civil Government that he thought it necessary to call a General Council of all the Bishops and other eminent Divines throughout the Roman Empire to meet at the City of Nice When they were assembled they presented the Emperour with Libels of Accusation one against another When he had received these Libels into his hands he made an Oration to the Fathers assembled exhorting them to agree and to fall in hand with the settlement of the Articles of Faith for which cause he had assembled them saying Whatsoever they should decree therein he would cause to be observed This may perhaps seem a greater indifferency than would in these days be approved of But so it is in the History and the Articles of Faith necessary to Salvation were not thought then to be so many as afterwards they were defined to be by the Church of Rome When Constantine had ended his Oration he caused the aforesaid Libels to be cast into the fire as became a wise King and a charitable Christian. This done the Fathers fell in hand with their business and following the method of a former Creed called now The Apostles Creed made a Confession of Faith viz. I believe in one God the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible in which is condemned the Polytheism of the Gentiles And in one Lord Iesus Christ the onely begotten Son of God against the many sons of the many gods of the Heathen Begotten of his Father before all worlds God of God against the Arians Uery God of very God against the Valentinians and against the Heresie of Apelles and others who made Christ a meer Phantasm Light of Light This was put in for explication and used before to that purpose by Tertullian Begotten not made being of one substance with the Father In this again they condemn the Doctrine of Arius for this word Of one substance in Latine Consubstantialis but in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Of one Essence was put as a Touchstone to discern an Arian from a Catholick And much ado there was about it Constantine himself at the passing of this Creed took notice of it for a hard word but yet approved of it saying That in a divine Mystery it was fit to use divina arcana Verba that is divine words and hidden from humane understanding calling that word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divine not because it was in the divine Scripture for it is not there but because it was to him Arcanum that is not sufficiently understood And in this again appeared the indifferency of the Emperour and that he had for his end in the calling of the Synod not so much the Truth as the Uniformity of the Doctrine and peace of his People that depended on it The cause of the obscurity of this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 proceeded chiefly from the difference between the Greek and Roman Dialect in the Philosophy of the Peripateticks The first Principle of Religion in all Nations is That God is that is to say that God really is Something and not a meer fancy but that which is really something is considerable alone by it self as being somewhere In which sence a man is a thing real for I can consider him to be without considering any other thing to be besides him And for the same reason the Earth the Air the Stars Heaven and their parts are all of them things real And because whatsoever is real here or there or in any place has Dimensions that is to say Magnitude and that which hath Magnitude whether it be visible or invisible is called by all the Learned a Body if it be finite and Body or Corporeal if it be infinite it followeth that all real things in that they are somewhere are Corporeal On the contrary Essence Deity Humanity and such-like names signifie nothing that can be considered without first considering there is an Ens a God a Man c. So also if there be any real thing that is white or black hot or cold the same may be considered by it self but whiteness blackness heat coldness cannot be considered unless it be first supposed that there is some real thing to which they are attributed These real things are called by the Latine Philosophers Entia subjecta substantiae and by the Greek Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The other which are Incorporeal are called by the Greek Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but most of the Latine Philosophers use to convert 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into substantia and so confound real and corpororeal things with incorporeal which is not well for Essence and substance signifie divers things And this mistake is received and continues still in these parts in all Disputes both of Philosophy and Divinity for in truth Essentia signifies no more than if we should talk ridiculously of the Isness of the thing that Is. By whom all things were made This is proved out of St. John cap. 1. vers 1 2 3. and Heb. cap. 1. vers 3. and that again out of Gen. 1. where God is said to create every thing by his sole Word as when he said Let there be Light and there was Light And then that Christ was that Word and in the beginning with God may be gathered out of divers places of Moses David and other of the Prophets Nor was it ever questioned amongst Christians except by the Arians but that Christ was God Eternal and his Incarnation eternally decreed But the Fathers all that write Expositions on this Creed could not forbear to philosophize upon it and most of them out of the Principles of Aristotle which are the same the School-men now use as may partly appear by this that many of them amongst their Treatises of Religion have affected to publish Logick and Physick Principles according to the sense of Aristotle as Athanasius and Damascene And so some later Divines of Note as Zanchius still confounding the Concret with the Abstract Deus with Deitas Ens with Essentia Sapiens with Sapientia Aeternus with Aeternitas If it be for exact and rigid Truth sake why do they not say also that Holiness is a Holy man Covetousness a Covetous man Hypocrisie an Hypocrite and Drunkenness a Drunkard and the like but that it is an Error The Fathers agree that the Wisdome of God is the eternal Son of God by whom all things were made and that he was incarnate by the Holy Ghost if they meant it in the Abstract For if Deitas abstracted be Deus we make two Gods of one This was well understood by Damascene in his Treatise De Fide Orthodoxâ which is an Exposition of the Nicene
AN Historical Narration Concerning HERESIE And the Punishment thereof BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMSBVRY LONDON Printed in the Year 1680. AN HISTORICAL NARRATION Concerning HERESIE And the PUNISHMENT thereof THe word Heresie is Greek and signifies a taking of any thing and particularly the taking of an Opinion After the study of Philosophy begun in Greece and the Philosophers disagreeing amongst themselves had started many Questions not onely about things Natural but also Moral and Civil because every man took what Opinion he pleased each several Opinion was called a Heresie which signified no more than a private Opinion without reference to truth or falshood The beginners of these Heresies were chiefly Pythagoras Epicurus Zeno Plato and Aristotle men who as they held many Errours so also found they out many true and useful Doctrines in all kinds of Learning and for that cause were well esteemed of by the greatest Personages of their own times and so also were some few of their Followers But the rest ignorant men and very often needy Knaves having learned by heart the Tenets some of Pythagoras some of Epicurus some of Zeno some of Plato some of Aristotle and pretending to take after them made use thereof to get their Living by the teaching of Rich mens Children that happened to be in love with these famous Names But by their ignorant Discourse sordid and ridiculous Manners they were generally despised of what Sect or Heresie soever they were whether they were Pythagoreans or Epicureans or Stoicks who followed Zeno or Academicks Followers of Plato or Peripateticks Followers of Aristotle For these were the names of Heresies or as the Latines call them Sects à sequendo so much talkt of from after the time of Alexander till this present day and that have perpetually troubled or deceived the people with whom they lived and were never more numerous than in the time of the Primitive Church But the Heresie of Aristotle was more predominant than any or perhaps than all the rest nor was the name of Heresie then a disgrace nor the word Heretick at all in use though the several Sects especially the Epicureans and the Stoicks hated one another and the Stoicks being the fiercer men used to revile those that differed from them with the most despightful words they could invent It cannot be doubted but that by the preaching of the Apostles and Disciples of Christ in Greece and other parts of the Roman Empire full of these Philosophers many thousands of men were converted to the Christian Faith some really and some feignedly for factious ends or for need for Christians lived then in common and were charitable and because most of these Philosophers had better skill in Disputing and Oratory than the Common people and thereby were better qualified both to defend and propagate the Gospel there is no doubt I say but most of the Pastors of the Primitive Church were for that reason chosen out of the number of these Philosophers who retaining still many Doctrines which they had taken up on the authority of their former Masters whom they had in reverence endeavoured many of them to draw the Scriptures every one to his own Heresie And thus at first entred Heresie into the Church of Christ. Yet these men were all of them Christians as they were when they were first baptized Nor did they deny the Authority of those Writings which were left them by the Apostles and Evangelists but interpreted them many times with a bias to their former Philosophy And this Dissention amongst themselves was a great scandal to the Unbelievers and which not onely obstructed the way of the Gospel but also drew scorn and greater persecution upon the Church For remedy whereof the chief Pastors of Churches did use at the rising of any new Opinion to assemble themselves for the examining and determining of the same wherein if the Author of the Opinion were convinced of his Errour and subscribed to the Sentence of the Church assembled then all was well again but if he still persisted in it they laid him aside and considered him but as an Heathen man which to an unfeigned Christian was a great ignominy and of force to make him consider better of his own Doctrine and sometimes brought him to the acknowledgment of the Truth But other punishment they could inflict none that being a right appropriated to the Civil Power So that all the punishment the Church could inflict was onely Ignominy and that among the faithful consisting in this that his company was by all the Godly avoided and he himself branded with the name of Heretick in opposition to the whole Church that condemned his Doctrine So that Catholick and Heretick were terms relative and here it was that Heretick became to be a Name and a name of disgrace both together The first and most troublesome Heresies in the Primitive Church were about the Trinity For according to the usual curiosity of Natural Philosophers they could not abstain from disputing the very first Principles of Christianity into which they were baptized In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost Some there were that made them allegorical Others would make one Creator of Good and another of Evil which was in effect to set up two Gods one contrary to another supposing that causation of evil could not be attributed to God without Impiety From which Doctrine they are not far distant that now make the first cause of sinful actions to be every man as to his own sin Others there were that would have God to be a body with parts organical as Face Hands Fore-parts and Back-parts Others that Christ had no real body but was a meer Phantasm for Phantasms were taken then and have been ever since by unlearned and superstitious men for things real and subsistent Others denied the Divinity of Christ. Others that Christ being God and Man was two Persons Others confest he was one Person and withal that he had but one Nature And a great many other Heresies arose from the too much adherence to the Philosophy of those times whereof some were supprest for a time by St. John's publishing his Gospel and some by their own unreasonableness vanished and some lasted till the time of Constantine the Great and after When Constantine the Great made so by the assistance and valour of the Christian Souldiers had attained to be the onely Roman Emperour he also himself became a Christian and caused the Temples of the Heathen gods to be demolished and authorized Christian Religion onely to be publick But in the latter end of his time there arose a Dispute in the City of Alexandria between Alexander the Bishop and Arius a Presbyter of the same City wherein Arius maintained first That Christ was inferiour to his Father and afterwards That he was no God alleadging the words of Christ My Father is greater than I. The Bishop on the contrary alleadging the words of St. John And the Word was God and the words
Creed where he denies absolutely that Deitas is Deus lest seeing God was made man it should follow the Deity was made man which is contrary to the Doctrine of all the Nicene Fathers The Attributes therefore of God in the Abstract when they are put for God are put Metonymically which is a common thing in Scripture for Example Prov. 8.28 where it is said Before the mountains were settled before the Hills was I brought forth the Wisdome there spoken of being the Wisdome of God signifies the same with the wise God This kinde of speaking is also ordinary in all Languages This considered such abstracted words ought not to be used in Arguing and especially in the deducing the Articles of our Faith though in the Language of God's eternal Worship and in all Godly Discourses they cannot be avoided and the Creed it self is less difficult to be assented to in its own words than in all such Expositions of the Fathers Who for us men and our Salvation came down from Heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Uirgin Mary and was made Man I have not read of any exception to this For where Athanasius in his Creed says of the Son He was not made but begotten it is to be understood of the Son as he was God Eternal whereas here it is spoken of the Son as he is man And of the Son also as he was man it may be said he was begotten of the Holy Ghost for a woman conceiveth not but of him that begetteth which is also confirmed Mat. 1.20 That which is begotten in her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is of the Holy Ghost And was also Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate He suffered and was buried And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father And he shall come again with Glory to judge both the Quick and the Dead Whose Kingdome shall have no end Of this part of the Creed I have not met with any doubt made by any Christian. Hither the Council of Nice proceeded in their general Confession of Faith and no further This finished some of the Bishops present at the Council seventeen or eighteen whereof Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea was one not sufficiently satisfied refused to subscribe till this Doctrine of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should be better explained Thereupon the Council Decreed that whosoever shall say that God hath parts shall be Anathematized to which the said Bishops subscribed And Eusebius by Order of the Council wrote a Letter the Copies whereof were sent to every absent Bishop that being satisfied with the reason of their subscribing they also should subscribe The reason they gave of their Subscription was this That they had now a form of words prescribed by which as a Rule they might guide themselves so as not to violate the Peace of the Church By this it is manifest that no man was an Heretick but he that in plain and direct words contradicted that Form by the Church prescribed and that no man could be made an Heretick by Consequence And because the said Form was not put into the body of the Creed but directed only to the Bishops there was no reason to punish any Lay-person that should speak to the contrary But what was the meaning of this Doctrine That God has no parts Was it made Heresie to say that God who is a real substance cannot be considered or spoken of as here or there or any where which are parts of places Or that there is any real thing without length every way that is to say which hath no Magnitude at all finite nor infinite Or is there any whole substance whose two halves or three thirds are not the same with that whole Or did they mean to condemn the Argument of Tertullian by which he confuted Apelles and other Hereticks of his time namely Whatsoever was not Corporeal was nothing but Fantasm and not Corporeal for Heretical No certainly no Divines say that They went to establish the Doctrine of One individual God in Trinity to abolish the diversity of species in God not the distinction of here and there in substance When St. Paul asked the Corinthians Is Christ divided he did not think they thought him impossible to be considered as having hands and feet but that they might think him according to the manner of the Gentiles one of the Sons of God as Arius did but not the only begotten Son of God And thus also it is expounded in the Creed of Athanasius who was present in that Council by these words Not confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substances that is to say that God is not divided into three Persons as man is divided into Peter James and John nor are the three persons one and the same person But Aristotle and from him all the Greek Fathers and other Learned Men when they distinguish the general Latitude of a word they call it Division as when they divide Animal into Man and Beast they call these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Species and when they again divide the species Man into Peter and John they call these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 partes individuae And by this confounding the division of the substance with the distinction of words divers men have been led into the Error of attributing to God a Name which is not the name of any substance at all viz. Incorporeal By these words God has no parts thus explained together with the part of the Creed which was at that time agreed on many of those Heresies which were antecedent to that first General Council were condemned as that of Menes who appeared about thirty years before the Reign of Constantine by the first Article I believe in one God though in other words it seems to me to remain still in the Doctrine of the Church of Rome which so ascribeth a Liberty of the Will to Men as that their Will and Purpose to commit sin should not proceed from the Cause of all things God but originally from themselves or from the Devil It may seem perhaps to some that by the same words the Anthropomorphites also were then Condemned And certainly if by Parts were meant not persons Individual but Pieces they were Condemned for Face Arms Feet and the like are pieces But this cannot be for the Anthropomorphites appeared not till the time of Valens the Emperour which was after the Council of Nice between fourty and fifty years and was not condemned till the second General Council at Constantinople Now for the Punishment of Hereticks ordained by Constantine we read of none but that Ecclesiastical Officers Bishops and other Preachers if they refused to subscribe to this Faith or taught the contrary Doctrine were for the first Fault Deprived of their Offices and for the second Banished And thus did Heresie which at first was the name of private Opinion and no Crime by vertue of a Law of the Emperour
made only for the Peace of the Church become a Crime in a Pastor and punishable with Deprivation first and next with Banishment After this part of the Creed was thus established there arose presently many new Heresies partly about the Interpretation of it and partly about the Holy Ghost of which the Nicene Council had not determined Concerning the part established there arose Disputes about the Nature of Christ and the word Hypostasis id est Substance for of Persons there was yet no mention made the Creed being written in Greek in which Language there is no word that answereth to the Latine word Persona And the Union as the Fathers called it of the Humane and Divine Nature in Christ Hypostatical caused Eutyches and after him Dioscorus to affirm there was but one Nature in Christ thinking that whensoever two things are united they are one and this was condemned as Arianism in the Councils of Constantinople and Ephesus Others because they thought two living and rational Substances such as are God and Man must needs be also two Hypostases maintained that Christ had two Hypostases But these were two Heresies condemned together Then concerning the Holy Ghost Nestorius Bishop of Constantinople and some others denied the Divinity thereof And whereas about seventy years before the Nicene Council there had been holden a Provincial Council at Carthage wherein it was Decreed that those Christians which in the Persecutions had denied the Faith of Christ should not be received again into the Church unless they were again baptized This also was condemned though the President in that Council were that most sincere and pious Christian Cyprian But at last the Creed was made up entire as we have it in the Calcedonian Council by addition of these words And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord and Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father and the Son Who with the Father the Son together is Worshipped and Glorified Who spake by the Prophets And I believe one Catholick Apostolick Church I acknowledge one Baptism for the Remission of Sins And I look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to come In this addition are condemned first the Nestorians and others in these words Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified And secondly the Doctrine of the Council of Carthage in these words I believe one Baptism for the Remission of Sins For one Baptism is not there put as opposite to several sorts or manners of Baptism but to the iteration of it St. Cyprian was a better Christian than to allow any Baptism that was not in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost In the General Confession of Faith contained in the Creed called the Nicene Creed there is no mention of Hypostasis nor of Hypostatical Union nor of Corporeal nor of Incorporeal nor of Parts the understanding of which words being not required of the Vulgar but only of the Pastors whose disagreement else might trouble the Church nor were such Points necessary to Salvation but set abroach for ostentation of Learning or else to dazle men with design to lead them towards some ends of their own The Changes of prevalence in the Empire between the Catholicks and the Arians and how the great Athanasius the most fierce of the Catholicks was banished by Constantine and afterwards restored and again banished I let pass only it is to be remembred that Athanasius composed his Creed then when banished he was in Rome Liberius being Pope by whom as is most likely the word Hypostasis as it was in Athanasius's Creed was disliked For the Roman Church could never be brought to receive it but instead thereof used their own word Persona But the first and last words of that Creed the Church of Rome refused not for they make every Article not only those of the body of the Creed but all the Definitions of the Nicene Fathers to be such as a man cannot be saved unless he believe them all stedfastly though made only for Peace sake and to unite the mindes of the Clergy whose Disputes were like to trouble the Peace of the Empire After these four first General Councils the Power of the Roman Church grew up apace and either by the negligence or weakness of the succeeding Emperours the Pope did what he pleased in Religion There was no Doctrine which tended to the Power Ecclesiastical or to the Reverence of the Clergy the contradiction whereof was not by one Council or another made Heresie and punished arbitrarily by the Emperours with Banishment or Death And at last Kings themselves and Commonwealths unless they purged their Dominions of Hereticks were Excommunicated Interdicted and their Subjects let loose upon them by the Pope insomuch as to an ingenuous and serious Christian there was nothing so dangerous as to enquire concerning his own Salvation of the Holy Scripture the careless cold Christian was safe and the skilful Hypocrite a Saint But this is a Story so well known as I need not insist upon it any longer but proceed to the Hereticks here in England and what Punishments were ordained for them by Acts of Parliament All this while the Penal Laws against Hereticks were such as the several Princes and States in their own Dominions thought fit to enact The Edicts of the Emperours made their Punishments Capital but for the manner of the Execution left it to the Prefects of Provinces and when other Kings and States intended according to the Laws of the Roman Church to extirpate Hereticks they ordained such Punishment as they pleased And the first Law that was here made for the punishments of Hereticks called Lollards and mentioned in the Statutes was in the fifth year of the Reign of Richard the Second occasioned by the Doctrine of John Wickliff and his Followers which Wickliff because no Law was yet ordained for his punishment in Parliament by the favour of John of Gaunt the Kings Son escaped But in the fifth year of the next King which was Richard the Second there passed an Act of Parliament to this effect That Sheriffs and some others should have Commissions to apprehend such as were certified by the Prelates to be Preachers of Heresie their Fautors Maintainers and Abettors and to hold them in strong Prison till they should justifie themselves according to the Law of Holy Church So that hitherto there was no Law in England by which a Heretick could be put to Death or otherways punished than by imprisoning him till he was reconciled to the Church After this in the next Kings Reign which was Henry the Fourth Son of John of Gaunt by whom Wickliffe had been favoured and who in his aspiring to the Crown had needed the good Will of the Bishops was made a Law in the second Year of his Reign wherein it was Enacted That every Ordinary may convene before him and imprison any person suspected of Heresie and that an obstinate Heretick shall be