the Soveraignty by making Tribunes by which Machiavel saies their Government was the more firm and secure and afterwards by introducing other Magistrates into the Soveraignty Nor were the Admissions and Covenants the Senate made in those cases ever declared void but observed with all punctuality which is Argument enough that the Soveraign power may admit limitations without any danger to it self or the People which is all that is contended for As there never was any such Person pag. 88. of whose acts a great multitude by mutual Covenant one with another have made themselves every one the author to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defence which is the definition he gives of his Common-wealth So if it can be supposed that any Nation can concur in such a designation and divesting themselves of all their right and liberty it could only be in reason obligatory to the present contractors nor do's it appear to us that their posterity must be bound by so unthrifty a concession of their Parents For tho Adam by his Rebellion against God forfeited all the privileges which his unborn posterity might have claimed if he had preserved his innocence and tho Parents may alienate their Estates from their Children and thereby leave them Beggars yet we have not the draught of any Contract nor is that which Mr. Hobbes hath put himself to the trouble to prepare valid enough to that purpose by which they have left impositions and penalties upon the Persons of their posterity nor is it probable that they would think themselves bound to submit thereunto And then the Soveraign would neither find himself the more powerful or the more secure for his contâ—â—â—tors having covenanted one with another and made themselves every one the author of all his actions and it is to be doubted that the People would rather look upon him as the Vizier Basha instituted by their Fathers then as Gods Lieutenant appointed to govern them under him It is to no purpose to examine the Prerogatives he grants to his Soveraign because he founds them all upon a supposition of a Contract and Covenant that never was in nature nor ever can reasonably be supposed to be yet he confesses it to be the generation pag. 87. of the great Leviathan and which falling to the ground all his Prerogatives must likewise fall too and so much to the dammage of the Soveraign power to which most of the Prerogatives are due that men will be apt to suppose that they proceed from a ground which is not true and so be the more inclined to dispute them Whereas those Prerogatives are indeed vested in the Soveraign by his being Soveraign but he do's not become Soveraign by vertue of such a Contract and Covenant but are of the Essence of his Soveraignty founded upon a better title then such an accidental convention and their designing a Soveraign by their Covenants with one another and none with or to him who is so absolutely to command them And here he supposes again that whatsoever a Soveraign is possessed of is of his Soveraignty and therefore he will by no means admit that he shall part with any of his power which he calls essential and inseparable Rights and that whatever grant he makes of such power the same is void and he do's believe that this Soveraign right was at the time when he published his Book so well understood that is Cromwel liked his Doctrine so well that it would be generally acknowledged in England at the next return of peace Yet he sees himself deceived it hath pleased God to restore a blessed and a general peace and neither King nor People believe his Doctrine to be true or consistent with peace How and why the most absolute Soveraigns may as they find occasion part with and deprive themselves of many branches of their power will be more at large discovered in another place yet we may observe in this the very complaisant humor of Mr. Hobbes and how great a Courtier he desir'd to appear to the Soveraign power that then govern'd by how odious and horrible a usurpation soever in that he found a way to excuse and justifie what they had already don in the lessening and diminution of their own Soveraign power which it concern'd them to have believ'd was very lawfully and securely don For they having as the most popular and obliging act they could perform taken away Wardships and Tenures he confesses after his enumeration of twelve Prerogatives which he saies pag. 92. are the rights which make the essence of the Soveraignty for these he saies are incommunicable and inseparable I say he confesses the power to coin mony to dispose of the estates and persons of infant heirs and all other Statute Prerogatives may be transferred by the Soveraign whereas he might have bin informed if he had bin so modest as to think he had need of any information that those are no Statute Prerogatives but as inherent and inseparable from the Crown as many of those which he declares to be of the Essence of the Soveraignty But both those were already entred upon and he was to support all their actions which were past as well as to provide for their future proceedings If Mr. Hobbes had known any thing of the constitution of the Monarchy of England supported by as firm principles of Government as any Monarchy in Europe and which enjoied a series of as long prosperity he could never have thought that the late troubles there proceeded from an opinion receiv'd of the greatest part of England that the power was divided between the King and the Lords and the House of Commons which was an opinion never heard of in England till the Rebellion was begun and against which all the Laws of England were most clear and known to be most positive But as he cannot but acknowledg that his own Soveraignty is obnoxious to the Lusts and other irregular passions of the People so the late execrable Rebellion proceeded not from the defect of the Law nor from the defect of the just and ample power of the King but from the power ill men rebelliously possessed themselves of by which they suppressed the strength of the Laws and wrested the power out of the hands of the King against which violence his Soveraign is no otherwise secure then by declaring that his Subjects proceed unjustly of which no body doubts but that all they who took up arms against the King were guilty in the highest degree And there is too much cause to fear that the unhappy publication of this doctrine against the Liberty and propriety of the Subject which others had the honor to declare before Mr. Hobbes tho they had not the good fortune to escape punishment as he hath don I mean Dr. Manwaring and Dr. Sibthorpe contributed too much thereunto For let him take what pains he will to render those
that God would inlarge him into the Tents of Shem and that Cham should be his servant to assure and confirm us that the Inundation which almost cover'd us of the Gothes and Vandals from Scythia and other Northern Nations whose original habitations we cannot to this day find were not of the Children of Cham which we might otherwise have suspected As Man-kind encreas'd and the age of man grew less so that they did not live to see so great a Progeny issue out of their own loins as formerly and their subjects growing less their kindred also grew at so great a distance that the account of their relations was not so easily or so carefully preserv'd hereby they who had the Soveraign Power exercis'd less of the Paternal Affection in their Government and look'd upon those they govern'd as their mere Subjects not as their Allies and by degrees according to the custom of exorbitant Power considering only the extent of their own Jurisdiction and what they might do they treated those who were under them not as Subjects but as slaves who having no right to any thing but what they gave them would allow them to possess nothing but what they had no mind to have themselves Estates they had none that they could call their own because when their Soveraign call'd for them they were his their persons were at his command when he had either occasion or appetite to use them and their Children inherited nothing but the subjection of their Parents so that they were happy or miserable as he who had the power and command over them exercised that power with more or less rigor or indulgence they submitting to both acknowledging the dominion to be naturally absolute and their subjection and obedience to be as natural Kings had not long delighted themselves with this exorbitant exercise of their power for tho the power had bin still the same the exercise of it had bin very moderate whilst there remain'd the tenderness or memory of any relation but they begun to discern according to their faculties of discerning as their parts were better or worse that the great strength they seem'd to be possess'd of must in a short time end in absoulte weakness and the plenty they seem'd to enjoy would become exceeding want and beggary that no man would build a House that his Children should not inherit nor cultivate Land with good husbandry and expence the fruit and profit whereof might be taken by another man that whilst their Subjects did not enjoy the convenience and delight of life they could not be sure of the affection and help of them when they should enter into a difference with one who is as absolute as themselves but they would rather chuse to be subject to him whose Subjeâ—ts liv'd with more satisfaction under him in a word that whilst they engross'd all power and all wealth into their own hands they should find none who would defend them in the possession of it and that there is great difference between the subjection that love and discretion paies and that which results only from fear and force and that despair puts an end to that duty which nature and it may be Conscience too would still perswade them to pay and to continue and therefore that it was necessary that the Subjects should find profit and comfort in obeying as well as Kings pleasure in commanding These wise and wholsom Reflexions prevail'd with Princes for their own benefit to restrain themselves to make their Power less absolute that it might be more useful to give their Subjects a property that should not be invaded but in such cases and with such and such circumstances and a liberty that should not be restrain'd but upon such terms as they could not but think reasonable And as they found the benefit to grow from those condescentions in the improvement of Civility and those additions of delight which makes Life and Government the more pleasant they inlarg'd the Graces and Concessions to their Subjects reserving all in themselves which they did not part with by their voluntary Grants and Promises And if we take a view of the several Kingdoms of the World we shall see another manner of beauty glory and lustre in those Governments where those condescentions concessions and contracts have bin most or best observ'd then in those Dominions where the Soveraigns retain to themselves all the Rights and Prerogatives which are invested in them by the original nature of Government upon which we shall inlarge hereafter This is the original and pedigree of Government equally different from that which the levelling fancy of some men would reduce their Soveraign to upon an imagination that Princes have no autority or power but what was originally given them by the People and that it cannot be presumed that they would give them so much as might be applied to their own destruction and from that which Mr. Hobbes hath instituted by framing formal Instruments by which an assembly of mankind which was never heard of nor can be conceiv'd practicable hath devolv'd from themselves into one man of their own choice an absolute Power by their own consent to exercise it in such a manner as to his pleasure is agreeable without the observation of the common rules of Justice or Sobriety whereas it cannot be imagin'd possible in nature that ever such an assembly of men of equal autority in themselves will ever agree to make one Man their Soveraign with such an absolute Jurisdiction over the rest as must devest them of all property as well as power for the future and whereas in truth all power was by God and Nature invested into one Man where still as much of it remains as he hath not parted with and shar'd with others for the good and benefit of those and the mutual security of both for whose benefit it was first intrusted to him the rest which is enough remains still in him and may be applied to the preservation of the whole against the fancies of those who think he hath nothing but what they have given him and likewise against those who believe that so much is given him that he hath power to leave no body else any thing to enjoy the last of which are no less enemies to Monarchy then the former I am very unwilling to enter into the lists with Mr. Hâ—bbes upon the interpretation of Scriptures which he handles as imperiously as he doth a Text of Aristotle putting such unnatural interpretation on the words as hath not before fallen into the thoughts of any other man and drawing very unnatural inferences from them insomuch as no man can think he is really in earnest when to prove that the Kings word is sufficient to take any thing from any Subject when there is need and that the King is Judg of that need he alledges the example of our Saviour who he saies as King of the Jews p. 106 commanded his Disciples to take the Asses Colt to
any Age or Climate had never read Aristotle or Cicero and I belive had Mr. Hobbes bin of this opinion when he taught Thucydides to speak English which Book contains more of the Science of Mutiny and Sedition and teaches more of that Oratory that contributes thereunto then all that Aristotle and Cicero have publish'd in all their Writings he would not have communicated such materials to his Country-men But if this new Phylosophy and Doctrine of Policy and Religion should be introduc'd taught and believ'd where Aristotle and Cicero have don no harm it would undermine Monarchy more in two months then those two great men have don since their deaths and men would reasonably wish that the Author of it had never bin born in the English Climate nor bin taught to write and read It is a very hard matter for an Architect in State and Policy who doth despise all Precedents and will not observe any Rules of practice to make such a model of Government as will be in any degree pleasant to the Governor or governed or secure for either which Mr. Hobbes finds and tho he takes a liberty to raise his Model upon a supposition of a very formal Contract that never was or ever can be in nature and hath the drawing and preparing his own form of Contract is forc'd to allow such a latitude in obedience to his Subject as shakes the very pillars of his Government And therefore tho he be contented that by the words of his Contract pag. 112. Kill me and my fellow if you please the absolute power of all mens lives shall be submitted to the disposal of the Governors will and pleasure without being oblig'd to observe any rules of Justice and Equity yet he will not admit into his Contract the other words pag. 112. I will kill my self or my fellow and therefore that he is not bound by the command of his Soveraign to execute any dangerous or dishonorable office but in such cases men are not to resort so much to the words of the submission as to the intention which distinction surely may be as applicable to all that monstrous autority which he gives the Governor to take away the Lives and Estates of his Subjects without any cause or reason upon an imaginary Contract which if never so real can never be supposed to be with the intention of the Contractor in such cases And the subtle Distinctions he finds out to excuse Subjects from yielding obedience to their Soveraigns and the Prerogative he grants to fear for a whole Army to run away from the Enemy without the guilt of treachery or injustice leaves us some hope that he will at last allow such a liberty to Subjects that they may not in an instant be swallowed up by the prodigious power which he pleases to grant to his Soveraign And truly he degrades him very dishonorably when he obliges him to be the Hang-man himself of all those Malefactors which by the Law are condemn'd to die for he gives every man autority without the violation of his duty or swerving from the rules of Justice absolutely to refuse to perform that office Nor hath he provided much better for his security then he hath for his honor when he allows it lawful for any number of men pag. 112. who have rebelled against the Soveraign or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expects death then to join together and defend each other because they do but defend their lives which the guilty man he saies may do as well as the innocent And surely no man can legally take his life from him who may lawfully defend it and then the murderer or any other person guilty of a capital Crime is more innocent and in a better condition then the Executioner of Justice who may be justly murdered in the just execution of his office And it is a very childish security that he provides for his Soveraign against this Rebellion and defence of themselves against the power of the Law pag. 113. that he declares it to be lawful only for the dâ—fence of their lives and that upon the offer of pardon for themselves that self-defence is unlawful as if a body that is lawfully drawn together with strength enough to defend their lives against the power of the Law are like to disband and lay down their Arms without other benefit and advantage then only of the saving of their lives But tho he be so cruel as to devest his Subjects of all that liberty which the best and most peaceable men desire to possess yet he liberally and bountifully confers upon them such a liberty as no honest man can pretend to and which is utterly inconsistent with the security of Prince and People which unreasonable Indulgence of his cannot but be thought to proceed from an unlawful affection to those who he saw had power enough to defend the transcendent wickedness they had committed tho they were without an Advocate to make it lawful for them to do so till he took that office upon him in his Leviathan as is evident by the instance he gives in the next Paragraph that he thinks it lawful for every man to have as many wives as he pleases if the King will break the silence of the Law and declare that he may do so which is a Prerogative he vouchsafes to grant to the Soveraign to balance that liberty he gave to the Subject to defend himself and his companion against him and is the only power that may inable him to be too hard for the other If Mr. Hobbes did not believe that the autority of his Name and the pleasantness of his Style would lull men asleep from enquiring into the Logic of his Discourse he could not but very well discern himself that this very liberty which he allows the Subject to have and which he doth without scruple enjoy to sue the Soveraign and to demand the hearing of his Cause and that Sentence be given according to the Law results only from that condescention and contract which the Soveraign hath made with his Subject and which can as well secure many other Liberties to them as their power to sue the King for there could be no Law precedent to that resignation of themselves and all they had at the institution of their supreme Governor and if there had bin it had bin void and invalid it being not possible that any man who hath right to nothing and from whom any thing that he hath may be taken away can sue his Soveraign for a debt which he might take if it were due from any other man but can by no means be due from him to whom all belongs and who hath power to forbid any Judg to proceed upon that complaint or any other person to presume to make that complaint were it not for the subsequent contract which he calls a precedent Law by which the Soveraign promises and obliges himself to appoint Judges to exercise
never break the peâ—ce but only sometimes awake the War which to use his own commendable expression is pag. 8. like â—anding of things from one to another with many words making nothing understood The Survey of Chapter 22. I Should pass over his two and twentieth Chapter of Systemes Subject Political and Private which is a title as difficult to be understood by a literal translation as most of those to any Chapter in Suarez as few Congregations when they meet in a Church to pay their devotions to God Almighty do know that they are an irregular systeme in which besides vulgar notions well worded every man will discover much of that which he calls signs of error and misreckoning to which he saies page 116. all mankind is too prone and with which that Chapter abounds and will require no confutation but that I find and wonder to find mention of Laws and Letters Patents Bodies Politic and Corporations as necessary Institutions for the carrying on and advancement of Trade which are so many limitations and restraints of the Soveraign power and so many entanglements under Covenants and Promises which as they are all declar'd to be void it is in vain to mention I did not think Mr. Hobbes had desir'd to establish trade or any industry for the private accumulation of riches in his Common-wealth For is it possible to imagine that any Merchant will send out Ships to Sea or make such a discovery of his Estate if it may be either seized upon before it go's out or together with the benefit of the return when it comes home If trade be necessary to the good of a Nation it must be founded upon the known right of Propriety not as against other Subjects only but against the Soveraign himself otherwise trade is but a trap to take the collected wealth of particular men in a heap and when it is brought into less room to have it seized on and confiscated by the omnipotent word of the King with less trouble and more profit And if any Laws Letters Patents Charters or any other obligations or promises can oblige the Soveraign power in these cases which refer to trade and foreign adventures why should they not be equally valid for the securing all the other parts and relations of Propriety However whatsoever rigor Mr. Hobbes thinks fit to exercise upon the Nobility and Gentry of the Nation he must give over all thoughts of trade if he doth not better provide to secure his Merchants both of their liberty and propriety It is a good observation and an argument for the preference of Monarchy before any other form of Government in that where the Government is popular and the depressing the interest and reputation of particular Subjects is an essential policy of that Government yet in the managing the affairs of their Colonies and Provinces at a distance from them they chuse to commit the same to a single person as they do the Government and conduct of their Armies which are to defend their Government which is a tacite implication if not confession that in their own judgment they think the Monarchical the best form of Government But he might have observ'd likewise that in all those Monarchical Commissions at what distance soever there are limits and bounds set by referring to instructions for the punctual observation and performance of what that State or Government hath bin bound by promise and contract to perform which hath the same force to evince that the performance of promises and conditions is very consistent with Monarchical Government for the hazards that may arrive from thence may be as dangerous to that Government if it be at a great distance as upon any supposition whatsoever yet is never left to the discretion of a Governor It is a wonderful latitude that Mr. Hobbes leaves to all his Subjects and contradictory to all the moral precepts given to the World and to all the notions of Justice that he who hath his private interest depending and to be debated and judg'd before any Judicatory may make as many Friends as he can amongst those Judges even by giving them mony as if tho it be a crime in a Judg to be corrupt the person who corrupts him may be innocent because he thinks his own cause just and desires to buy justice for mony which cannot be got without it and so the grossest and most powerful Bribery shall be introduc'd to work upon the weakness and poverty and corruption of a Judg because the party thinks his cause to be just and chuses rather to depend upon the affection of his Judg whom he hath corrupted then upon the integrity of his cause and the justice of the Law But he doth not profess to be a strict Casuist nor can be a good observer of the Rules of moral honesty who believes that he may induce another to commit a great Sin and remain innocent himself Nor is he in truth a competent Judg of the most enormous crimes when he reckons pag. 56. Theft Adultery Sodomy and any other vice that may be taken for an effect of power or a cause of pleasure to be of such a Nature as amongst men are taken to be against Law rather then against Honor. The Survey of Chapter 23. I Should with as little trouble have passed by his twenty third Chapter of his Public Ministers and the fanciful Similies contain'd therein not thinking it of much importance what public or private Ministers he makes for such a Soveraignty as he hath instituted but that I observe him in this place as most luxurious Fancies use to do demolishing and pulling down what he had with great care and vigilance erected and establish'd as undeniable truth before And whereas he hath in his eighteenth Chapter pag. 91. pronounced the right of Iudicatory of hearing and deciding all Controversies which concern Law either Civil or Natural or concerning Fact to be inseparably annexed to the Soveraignty and incapable of being aliened and transferred by him and afterwards declares That the judgments given by Iudges qualified and commission'd by him to that purpose are his own proper Iudgments and to be regarded as such which is a truth generally confess'd in this Chapter against all practice and all reason he degrades him from at least half that Power and fancies a Judg to be such a party that if the Litigant be not pleased with the opinion of his Judg in matter of Law or matter of Fact he may therefore pag. 125. because they are both Subjects to the Soveraign appeal from his Judg and ought to be tried before another for tho the Soveraign may hear and determine the Cause himself if he please yet if he will appoint another to be Judg it must be such a one as they shall both agree upon for as the Complainant hath already made choice of his own Judg so the Defendant must be allow'd to except against such of his Judges whose interest maketh him suspect them
own and will value it accordingly And he is much a better Counsellor who by his experience and observation of the nature and humor of the People who are to be govern'd and by his knowledg of the Laws and Rules by which they ought to be govern'd gives advice what ought to be don then he who from his speculative knowledg of man-kind and of the Rights of Government and of the nature of Equity and Honor attain'd with much study would erect an Engine of Government by the rules of Geometry more infallible then Experience can ever find out I am not willing now or at any time to accompany him in his sallies which he makes into the Scripture and which he alwaies handles as if his Soveraign power had not yet declared it to be the word of God and to illustrate now his Distinctions and the difference between Command and Counsel he thinks fit to fetch instances from thence Have no other Gods but me Make to thy self no graven Image c. he saies pag. 133. are commands because the reason for which we are to obey them is drawn from the will of God our King whom we are obliged to obey but these words Repent and be baptized in the name of Iesus arc Counsel because the reason why we should do so tendeth not to any benefit of God Almighty who shall be still King in what manner soever we rebel but of our selves who have no other means of avoiding the punishment hanging over us for our sins as if the latter were not drawn from the will of God as much as the former or as if the former tended more to the benefit of God then the latter An ordinary Grammarian without any insight in Geometry would have thought them equally to be commands But Mr. Hobbes will have his Readers of another talent in their understanding and another subjection to his dictates The Survey of Chapter 26. HOwever Mr. Hobbes enjoins other Judges to etract the judgments they have given when contrary to reason upon what autority or president soever they have pronounced them yet he holds himself obliged still tueâ—i opus to justify all he hath said therefore we have reason to expect that to support his own notions of Liberty and Propriety contrary to the notions of all other men he must introduce a notion of Law contrary to what the world hath ever yet had of it And it would be answer enough and it may be the fittest that can be given to this Chapter to say that he hath ere ed a Law contrary and destructive to all the Law that is acknowledg'd and establish'd in any Monarchy or Republic that is Christian and in this he hopes to secure himseâ—f by his accustomed method of definition and dâ—fiâ—es that Civil Law which is a term we do not dislike is to every Subject those Rules which the Common wealth hath commanded him by word writing or other sufficient sign of the Wâ—â—l to make use of for the distinction of right in whâ—ch he saies there is nothing that is not at first sight evident that is to say of what is contrary and what is noâ— contrary to the Rule From which definition his first deduction is that the Soveraign is the sole Legislator and that himself is not subject to Laws because he can make and repeal them which in truth is no necessary deduction from his own definition for it doth not follow from thence tho he makes them Rules only for Subjects that the Soveraign hath the sole power to repeal them but the true definition of a Law is that it is to every Subject the rule which the Common-wealth hath commanded him by word writing or other sufficient sign of the Will made and publish'd in that form and manner as is accustomed in that Common-wealth to make use of for the distinction of right that is to say of what is contrary and what is not to the Rule and from this definition no such deduction can be made since the form of making and repealing Laws is stated and agreed upon in all Common-wealths The opinions and judgments which are found in the Books of eminent Lawyers cannot be answer'd and controuled by Mr. Hobbes his wonder since the men who know least are apt to wonder most and men will with more justice wonder whence he comes by the Prerogative to controul the Laws and Government establish'd in this and that Kingdom without so much as considering what is Law here or there but by the general notions he hath of Law and what it is by his long study and much cogitation And it is a strange definition of Law to make it like his propriety to be of concernment only between Subject and Subject without any relation of security as to the Soveraign whom he exemts from any observation of them and invests with autority by repealing those which trouble him when he thinks fit to free himself from the observation thereof and by making new and consequently he saies he was free before for he is free that can be free when he will The instance he gives for his wonder and displeasure against the Books of the Eminent Lawyers is that they say that the Common Law hath no controuler but the Parliament that is that the Common Law cannot be chang'd or alter'd but by Act of Parliament which is the Municipal Law of the Kingdom Now methinks if that be the judgment of Eminent Lawyers Mr. Hobbes should be so modest as to believe it to be true till he hears others as Eminent Lawyers declare the contrary for by his instance he hath brought it now only to relate to the Law of England and then methinks he should be easily perswaded that the Eminent Lawyers of England do know best whether the Law be so or no. I do not wish that Mr. Hobbes should be convinc'd by a judgment of that Law upon himself which would be very severe if he should be accused for declaring that the King alone hath power to alter the descents and inheritances of the Kingdom and whereas the Common Law saies the Eldest shall inherit the King by his own Edict may declare and order that the younger Son shall inherit or for averring and publishing that the King by his own autority can repeal and dissolve all Laws and justly take away all they have from his Subjects I say if the judgment of Law was pronounc'd upon him for this Seditious discourse he would hardly perswade the World that he understood what the Law of England is better then the Judges who condemn'd him or that he was wary enough to set up a jus vagum and incognitum of his own to controul the establish'd Government of his own Country He saies the Soveraign is the only Legislator and I will not contradict him in that It is the Soveraign stamp and Royal consent and that alone that gives life and being and title of Laws to that which was before but counsel and advice and no
such constitution of his can be repeal'd and made void but in the same manner and with his consent But we say that he may prescribe or consent to such a method in the form and making these Laws that being once made by him he cannot but in the same form repeal or alter them and he is oblig'd by the Law of Justice to observe and perform this contract and he cannot break it or absolve himself from the observation of it without violation of justice and any farther obligation upon him then of justice I discourse not of For the better cleering of this to that kind of reason by which Mr. Hobbes is swai'd let us suppose this Soveraignty to reside and be fix'd in an assembly of men in which kind of Government it is possible to find more marks and foot-steps of such a deputing and assigning of interests as Mr. Hobbes is full of then we can possibly imagine in the original institution of Monarchy If the Soveraign power be deputed into the hands of fifteen and any vacant place to be suppli'd by the same Autority that made choice of the first fifteen may there not at that time of the election certain Rules be prescrib'd I do not say conditions for the better exercise of that Soveraign power and by the accepting the power thus explain'd doth not the Soveraign tho there should be no Oath administred for the observation thereof which is a circumstance admitted by most Monarchs tacitly covenant that he will observe those Rules and if he do's wilfully decline those Rules doth he not break the trust reposed in him I do not say forfeit the trust as if the Soveraignty were at an end but break that trust violate that justice he should observe If the Soveraign power of fifteen should raise an imposition for the defence of the Common-wealth if they should appoint this whole imposition to be paid only by those whose names are Thomas when Thomas was before in no more prejudice with the Common-wealth then any other appellation in Baptism may not this inequality be call'd a violation of Justice and a breach of trust since it cannot be suppos'd that such an irregular autority was ever committed to any man or men by any deputation Of the Prerogative of necessity to swerve from Rules prescrib'd or to violate Laws tho sworn to shall be spoken to in its due time It needs not be suppos'd but must be confess'd that the Laws of every Country contain more in them concerning the rights of the Soveraign and the common administration of Justice to the people then can be known to and understood by the person of the Soveraign and he can as well fight all his Battels with his own hand and sword as determine all causes of right by his own tongue and understanding The consequence of any confusion which Mr. Hobbes can suppose would not be more pernicious then that which would follow the blowing away all these maxims of the Law if the Kings breath were strong enough to do it It is a maxim in the Law as is said before that the eldest Son shall inherit and that if three or four Females are heirs the inheritance shall be equally divided between them Doth Mr. Hobbes believe that the word of the King hath power to change this course and to appoint that all the Sons shall divide the Estate and the Eldest Daughter inherit alone and must not all the confusion imaginable attend such a mutation All Governments subsist and are establish'd by firmness and constancy by every mans knowing what is his right to enjoy and what is his duty to do and it is a wonderful method to make this Government more perfect and more durable by introducing such an incertainty that no man shall know what he is to do nor what he is to suffer but that he who is Soveraign to morrow may cancel and dissolve all that was don or consented to by the Soveraign who was yesterday or by himself as often as he changes his mind It is the Kings Office to cause his Laws to be executed and to compel his Subjects to yield obedience to them and in order thereunto to make choice of Learned Judges to interpret those Laws and to declare the intention of them who pag. 140 by an artificial perfection of reason gotten by long study and experience in the Law must be understood to be more competent for that determination then Mr. Hobbes can be for the alteration of Law and Government by the artificial reason he hath attain'd to by long study of Arithmetic and Geometry No Eminent Lawyer hath ever said that the two Arms of a Common-wealth are Force and Justice the first whereof is in the King the other deposited in the hands of the Parliament but all Lawyers know that they are equally deposited in the hands of the King and that all justice is administred by him and in his name and all men acknowledg that all the Laws are his Laws his consent and autority only giving the power and name of a Law what concurrence or formality soever hath contributed towards it the question only is whether he can repeal or vacate such a Law without the same concurrence and formality And methinks the instance he makes of a Princes pag. 139. subduing another people and consenting that they shall live and be govern'd according to those Laws under which they were born and by which they were formerly govern'd should manifest to him the contrary For tho it be confess'd that those old Laws become new by this consent of his the Laws of the Legislator that is of that Soveraign who indulges the use of them yet he cannot say that he can by his word vacate and repeal those Laws and his own concession without dissolving all the ligaments of Government and without the violation of faith which himself confesses to be against the Law of Nature Notwithstanding that the Law is reason and pag. 139. not the letter but that which is according to the intention of the Legislator that is of the Soveraign is the Law yet when there is any difficulty in the understanding the Law the interpretation thereof may reasonably belong to Learn'd Judges who by their education and the testimony of their known abilities before they are made Judges and by their Oaths to judg according to Right are the most competent to explain those difficulties which no Soveraign as Soveraign can be presum'd to understand or comprehend And the judgments and decisions those Judges make are the judgments of the Soveraigns who have qualified them to be Judges and who are to pronounce their sentence according to the reason of the Law not the reason of the Soveraign And therefore Mr. Hobbes would make a very ignorant Judg when he would not have him versed in the study of the Laws but only a man of good natural reason and of a right understanding of the Law of Nature and yet he saies pag. 154. that
Principles against Law least he be obliged to stand or fall according to the rectitude or error thereof Tho every Instance he gives of his Soveraigns absolute power makes it the more unreasonable formidable and odious yet he gives all the support to it he can devise And indeed when he hath made his Soveraigns word a full and enacted Law he hath reason to oblige his Subject to do whatsoever he commands be it right or wrong and to provide for his security when he hath don and therefore he declares pag. 157. That whosoever doth any thing that is contrary to a former Law by the command of his Soveraign he is not guilty of any crime and so cannot be punished because when the Soveraign commands any thing to be don against a former Law the command as to that particular Fact is an abrogation of the Law which would introduce a licence to commit Murder or any other crime most odious and against which Laws are chiefly provided But he hath in another place given his Subject leave to refuse the Soveraigns command when he requires him to do an act or office contrary to his honor so that tho he will not suffer the Law to restrain him from doing what the Soveraign unlawfully commands yea his honor of which he shall be Judg himself may make him refuse that command tho lawfâ—l as if the Soveraign commands him to Prison as no doubt he lawfully may for a crime that deserves death he may in Mr. Hobbes's opinion refuse to obey that command Whereas Government and Justice have not a greater security then that he that executes a verbal command of the King against a known Law shall be punished And the Case which he puts in the following Paragraph that the Kings Will being a Law if he should not obey that there would appear two contradictory Laws which would totally excuse is so contrary to the common Rule of Justice that a man is obliged to believe when the King requires any thing to be don contrary to any Law that he did not know of that Law and so to forbear executing his Command And if this were otherwise Kings of all men would be most miserable and would reverse their most serious Counsels and Deliberations by incogitancy upon the suggestion and importunity of every presumtuous Intruder Kings themselves can never be punished or reprehended publicly that being a reproch not consistent with the reverence due to Majesty for their casual or wilful errors and mistakes let the ill consequence of them be what they will but if they who maliciously lead or advise or obey them in unjust resolutions and commands were to have the same indemnity there must be a dissolution of all Kingdoms and Governments But as Kings must be left to God whose Vice-gerents they are to judg of their breach of Trust so they who offend against the Law must be left to the punishment the Law hath provided for them it being in the Kings power to pardon the execution of the Sentence the Law inflicts except in those cases where the Offence is greater to others then to the King as in the murder of a Husband or a Father the offence is greater to the Wife and to the Son for their relation then to the King for a Subject and therefore upon an Appeal by them the Transgressor may suffer after the King hath pardon'd him It is a great prerogative which Mr. Hobbes doth in this Chapter indulge to his fear his precious bodily fear of corporal hurt that it shall not only extenuate an ill action but totally excuse and annihilate the worst he can commit that if a man by the terror of present death be compelled to do a Fact against the Law he is wholly excused because no Law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation and supposing such a Law were obligatory yet a man would reason pag. 157. If I do it not I die presently if I do it I die afterwards therefore by doing it there is time of life gain'd Nature therefore compels him to the Fact by which a man seems by the Law of Nature to be compell'd even for a short reprieve and to live two or three daies longer to do the most infamous and wicked thing that is imaginable upon which fertile soil he doth hereafter so much enlarge according to his natural method in which he usually plants a stock supposes a principle the malignity whereof is not presently discernable in a precedent Chapter upon which in a subsequent one he grafts new and worse Doctrine which he looks should grow and prosper by such cultivation as he applies to it in Discourse and therefore I shall defer my Considerations to the contrary till I wait upon him in that enlarged disquisition The Survey of Chapter 28. THe eight and twentieth Chapter being a Discourse of Punishments and Rewards it was not possible for him to forget in how weak a condition he had left his Soveraign for want of power to punish since want of power to punish and want of autority to cause his punishment to be inflicted is the same thing especially when the guilty person is not only not oblig'd to submit to the Sentence how just soever but hath a right to resist it and to defend himself by force against the Magistrate and the Law and therefore he thinks it of much importance to enquire by what door the right and autority of punishing in any case came in He is a very ill Architect that in building a House makes not doors to enter into every office of it and it is very strange that he should make his doors large and big enough in his institution to let out all the liberty and propriety of the Subject and the very end of his Institution being to make a Magistrate to compel men to their duty for he confesses they were before obliged by the Law of Nature to perform it one towards another but that there must be a Soveraign Sword to compel men to do that which they ought to do yet that he should forget to leave a door wide enough for this compulsion to enter in at by punishment and bringing the Offender to Justice since the end of making the Soveraign is disappointed and he cannot preserve the peace if guilty persons have a right to preserve themselves from the punishment he inflicts for their guilt It was very improvidently don when he had the draught of the whole Contracts and Covenants that he would not insert one by which every man should transfer from himself the right he had to defend himself against public Justice tho not against private violence And surely reason and Self-preservation that makes a man transfer all his Estate and Interest into the hands of the Soveraign and to be disposed by him that he may be secure against the robbery and rapine of his neighbors companions will as well dispose him to leave his life to his discretion that it may be
is one of the grounds and principles which he concludes to be against the express duty of Princes to let the People be ignorant of If Mr. Hobbes had a Conscience made and instructed like other mens and had not carefully provided that whilst his judgment is fix'd under Philosophical and Metaphysical notions his Conscience shall never be disturb'd by Religious speculations and apprehensions it might possibly smite him with the remembrance that these excellent principles were industriously insinuated divulged and publish'd within less then two years after Cromwels Usurpation of the Government of the three Nations upon the Murder of his Soveraign and that he then declar'd in this Book pag. 165. that against such Subjects who deliberately deny the autority of the Common wealth then and so established which God be thanked much the major part of the three Nations then did the vengeance might lawfully be extended not only to the Fathers but also to the third and fourth generation not yet in being and consequently innocent of the fact for which they are afflicted because the nature of this offence consists in renouncing of subjection which is a relapse into the condition of War commonly called Rebellion and they that so offend suffer not as Subjects but as Enemies And truly he may very reasonably believe surely more then many things which he doth believe that the veneme of this Book wrought upon the hearts of men to retard the return of their Allegiance for so many years and was the cause of so many cruel and bloody persecutions against those who still retain'd their duty and Allegiance for the King And methinks no man should be an Enemy to the renewing war in such cases but he who thinks all kind of war upon what occasion soever to be unlawful which Mr. Hobbes is so far from thinking that he is very well contented and believes it very lawful for his Soveraign in this Paragraph of cruelty to make war against any whom he judges capable to do him hurt The Survey of Chapter 30. MR. Hobbes having invested his Soveraign with so absolute Power and Omnipotence we have reason to expect that in this Chapter of his Office he will enjoin him to use all thâ— autority he hath given him and he gives him faiâ— warning that if any of the essential Rights of Soveraignty specified in his eighteenth Chapter which in a word is to do any thing he hath a mind to do and take any thing he likes from any of his Subjects be taken away the Common-wealth is dissolv'd and therefore that it is his office to preserve those Rights entire and against his duty to transfer any of them from himself And least he should forget the Rights and Power he hath bestowed upon him he recollects them all in three or four lines amongst which he puts him in mind that he hath power to leavy mony when and as much as in his own conscience he shall judg necessary and then tells him that it is agaist his duty to let the People be ignorant or mis-informed of the grounds and reasons of those his essential Rights that is that he is oblig'd to make his Leviathan Canonical Scripture there being no other Book ever yet printed that can inform them of those rights and the grounds and reason of them And how worthy they are to receive that countenance and autority will best appear by a farther examination of the Particulars and yet a man might have reasonably expected from the first Paragraph of this Chapter another kind of tenderness indeed as great as he can wish of the good and welfare of the Subject when he declares pag. 175. That the office of the Monarch consists in the end for which he was trusted with the Soveraign power namely the procuration of the safety of the People to which he is obliged by the Law of Nature and to render an account thereof to God the Author of that Law But by safety he saies is not meaâ—â— a bare preservation but also all other contentments of life which every man by lawful industry without danger or hurt to the Common-wealth can acquire to hâ—mself Who can expect a more blessed condition Who can desire a more gracious Soveraign No man would have thought this specious Building should have its Foundation after the manner of the foolish Indians upon sand that assoon as you come to rest upon it molders away to nothing that this safety safety improv'd with all the other contentments of life should consist in nothing else but in a mans being instructed and prepar'd to know that he hath nothing of his own and that when he hath by his lawful industry acquir'd to himself all the contentments of life which he can set his heart upon one touch of his Soveraigns hand one breath of his mouth can take all this from him without doing him any injury This is the Doctrine to be propagated and which he is confident will easily be receiv'd and consented to since if it were not according the principles of Reason he is sure it is a principle from autority of Scripture and will be so acknowledg'd if the Peoples minds be not tainted with dependance upon the Potent or scribled over with the opinions of their Doctors One of the reasons which he gives why his grounds of the rights of his Soveraign should be diligently and truly taught is a very good reason to believe that the grounds are not good because he confesses pag. 175. that they cannot be maintain'd by any Civil Law or terror of legal punishment And as few men agree with Mr. Hobbes in the essential Rights of Soveraignty so none allows nor doth he agree with himself that all resistance to the rights of the Soveraignty be they never so essential is Rebellion He allows it to be a priviledg of the Subject that he may sue the King so there is no doubt but that the Soveraign may sue the Subject who may as lawfully defend as sue and every such defence is a resistance to the Soveraign right of demanding and yet I suppose Mr. Hobbes will not say it is Rebellion He that doth positively refuse to pay mony to the King which he doth justly owe to him and which he shall be compell'd to pay doth resist an essential Right of the King yet is not guilty of Rebellion which is constituted in having a force to support his resistance and a purpose to apply it that way And as the Law of Nature is not so easily taught because not so easily understood as the Civil Law so I cannot comprehend why Mr. Hobbes should imagine the Soveraign power to be more secure by the Law of Nature then by the Civil Law when he confesses That the Law of Nature is made Law only by being made part of the Civil Law and if the Civil Law did not provide a restraint from the violation of Faith by the terror of the punishment that must attend it the obligation from the Law
which maketh some grimaces callâ—d Laughter and is caused either by some suddain act of their own that pleaseth them or by the apprehension of some deformâ—d thing in another by comparison whereof they suddainly applaud themselves In which kind of Illustrations those Chapters and in truth his whole Book abounds and discovers a master faculty in making easie things hard to be understood and men will probably with the more impatience and curiosity tho with the less reverence enter upon the third part of his Book which is to define Christian Politics after he hath so well defin'd and describ'd Religion to be Fear of Power invisible feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed p. 26. all which I leave to his Friends of the Universities Nor shall I spend more time upon the seventh eighth aâ—d ninth Chapters leaving them to the Schole-men to examine who are in his debt for much mirth which he hath made out of them I for my part being very indifferent between them as believing that the Schole-men have contributed very little more to the advancement of any noble or substantial part of Learning then Mr. Hobbes hath don to the reformation or improvement of Philosophy and Policy Yet I may reasonably say so much on their behalf that if Mr. Hobbes may take upon him to translate all those terms of Art the proper signification whereof is unanimously understood and agreed between all who use them and which in truth are a cipher to which all men of moderate Learning have the Key into the vulgar Language by the assistance of Ryders Dictionary he hath found a way to render and expose the worthiest Professors of any Science and all Science it self to the cheap laughter of all illiterate men which is contrary to Mr. Hobbes's own rule and determination pag. 17. where he saies That when a man upon the hearing any Speech hath those thoughts which the words of that Speech and their connexion were ordained and constituted to signifie then he is said to understand it And surely the signification of words and terms is no less ordain'd and constituted by custom and acceptation then by Grammar and Etymologies If it were otherwise Mr. Hobbes himself would be as much exposed to ignorant Auditors when he reads a Lecture upon the Optics or even in his ador'd Geometry if a pleasant Translator should render all his terms as literally as he hath don the Title of the sixth Chapter of Suarez for every Age as new things happen finds new words in all Languages to signifie them The Civilians who are amongst the best Judges of Latine can hardly tell how investitura came into their Books to signifie that which it hath ever signified since the Quarrel begun between the Emperor and the Pope upon that subject which is now as well understood in Latine as any word in Tully And if Bombarda had no original but from the sound as Petavius a very good Grammarian besides his other great Learning saies it had not we have no reason to be offended with the Schole-men for finding words to discover their own Conceptions which equally serveour own turn The Survey of Chapters 10 11 12. I Do acknowledg that in the tenth eleventh and twelfth Chapters many things are very well said and tho somethings as ill with reference to Religion and to the Clergy as if there were a combination between the Priests of the Gentiles Aristotle the Schole-men and the Clergy of all Professions to defame pervert and corrupt Religion yet he resumes that Argument so frequently that I shall chuse to examine the reason and justice of all his Allegations rather in another place then upon either of these three Chapters to which I shall only add that according to his natural delight in Novelties of all kinds in Religion as well as Policy he hath supplied the Gentiles with a new God which was never before found in any of their Catalogues The God Chaos pag. 55. to which he might as warrantably have made them an additional present of his own Idol Confusion And he will as hardly find a good autority for the aspersion with which he traduces the Policy of the Roman Common-wealth in all its greatness and lustre pag. 57. that it made no scruple of tolerating any Religion whatsoever in the City of Rome it self unless it had somthing in it that could not consist with their Civil Government Which how untrue soever was a very unseasonable intimation of the wisdom of Olivers's Politics at that time when he published his Leviathan whereas in truth that great People were not more solicitous in any thing then in preserving the unity and integrity of their Religion from any mixtures and the Institution of the Office of Pontifex Maximus was principally out of that jealousie and that he might carefully watch that no alteration or innovation might be made in their Religion And tho they had that general awe for Religion that they would not suffer the Gods of their Enemies whom they did not acknowledg for Gods to be rudely treated and violated and therefore they both punished their Consul for having robb'd the Temple of Proserpine and caused the full damages to be restored to the injur'd Goddess yet they neither acknowledg'd her Divinity nor suffer'd her to have a Temple or to have any Devotion paid to her within their Dominions nor indeed any other God or Goddess to be ador'd then those to whom Sacrifices were made by the Autority of the State Nor will Mr. Hobbes be able to name one Christian Kingdom in the World where it is believed that the King hath not his Autority from Christ unless a Bishop Crown him tho all Christian Kingdoms have had that reverence for Bishops as to assign the highest Ecclesiastical Functions to be alwaies perform'd by them but they well know the King to have the same Autority in all respects before he is crown'd as after And what extravagant Power soever the Court of Rome hath in some evil Conjunctures heretofore usurp'd and would be as glad of the like opportunities again yet in those Kingdoms where that Autority is own'd and acknowledg'd there want not those who loudly protest against that Doctrine That a King may be depos'd by a Pope or that the Clergy and Regulars shall be exemt from the Jurisdiction of their King And yet upon these unwarrantable suggestions he presumes to declare That all the changes of Religion may be attributed to one and the same Cause and that is unpleasing Priests and those not only amongst Papists but even in that Church that hath presumed most of Reformation by which he intends the Church of England at that time under the most severe and barbarous Persecution and therefore it was the more enviously and maliciously as well as dishonestly alledged The Survey of Chapters 13 14 15 16. THE thirteenth fourteenth fifteenth and sixteenth Chapters will require a little more disquisition since under the pretence of examining or rather
precious words unvaluable and of no signification a better Philosopher then he and one who understood the rules of Government better having lived under just such a Soveraign as Mr. Hobbes would set up I mean Seneca will be believed before him who pronounces Errat siquis existimat tutum esse ibi Regem ubi nihil à Rege tutum est Securitas securitate mutua paciscenda est And he go's very far himself towards the confessing this truth when he is forced to acknowledg pag. 96. That the riches power and honor of a Monarch arise only from the riches strength and reputation of his subjects for no King can be rich nor glorious nor secure whose Subjects are either poor or contemtible which assertion will never be supported by saying that that condition shall be made good and preserv'd to them by the justice and bounty of the Soveraign For riches and strength and reputation are not aëry words without a real and substantial signification nor do consist so much in the present enjoying especially if it shall depend upon the casual pleasure of any man as in the security for the future that being a mans property that cannot be taken from him but in that manner and by those Rules as are generally looked upon as the fundamentals of Government And when he is transported by his passion and his appetite and for making good his Institution to cancel and tread under foot all those known obligations and make the precious terms of Property and Liberty absurd and insignificant words to be blown away by the least breath of his monstrous Soveraign without any violation of justice or doing injury to those he afflicts I say when he is thus warmed by the flame of his passions which he confesses pag. 96. alwaies dazles never enlightens the understanding he is so puzled by his own notions that he make himself a way out by distinctions of his own modelling and devising and so he is compell'd to acknowledg that tho his illimited Soveraign whatsoever he doth can do no injury to his Subjects nor be by any of them accused of injustice yet that he p. 90. may commit iniquity tho not injustice or injury in the proper signification which is far more intelligible then the Beatifical vision for the obscurity and absurdity whereof he is so merry with the Scholemen As Mr. Hobbes his extraordinary and notorious ignorance in the Laws and constitution of the Government of England makes him a very incompetent judg or informer of the cause or original of the late woful calamities in England of which he knows no more the every other man of Malmesbury doth and upon which there will be other occasion hereafter to inlarge so his high arrogance and presumtion that he doth understand them makes him triumph in the observation and wonder that so manifest a truth should of late be so little observed that in a Monarchy he that had the Soveraignty from a descent of six hundred years was alone called Soveraign had the title of Majesty from every one of his Subjects and was unquestionably taken by them for their King was notwithstanding never considered as their Representative that name without contradiction passing for the title of those men which at his command were sent up by the People to carry their Petitions and give him if he permitted it their advice which he saies pag. 95. may serve as an admonition for those that are the true and absolute Representative of a People which he hath made his Soveraign to be to take heed how they admit of any other general Representative upon any occasion whatsoever all which is so unskilful and illiterate a suggestion as could not fall into the conception of any man who is moderately versed in the principles of Soveraignty And if Mr. Hobbes did not make war against all modesty he would rather have concluded that the title of the Representative of the people was not to be affected by the King then that for want of understanding his Majesty should neglect to assume it or that his faithful Counsel and his Learned Judges who cannot be supposed to be ignorant of the Regalities of the Crown should fail to put him in mind of so advantageous a Plea when his fundamental rights were so foully assaulted and in danger But tho the King knew too well the original of his own power to be contented to be thought the Representative of the People yet if Mr. Hobbes were not strangely unconversant with the transactions of those times he would have known which few men do not know that the King frequently and upon all occasions reprehended the two Houses both for assuming the Style and appellation of Parliament which they were not but in and by his Majesties conjunction with them and for calling themselves the Representative of the People which they neither were or could be to any other purpose then to present their Petitions and humbly to offer their advice when and in what his Majesty required it and this was as generally understood by men of all conditions in England as it was that Rebellion was Treason But they who were able by false pretences and under false protestations to raise an Army found it no difficult matter to perswade that Army and those who concured with them that they were not in rebellion The Survey of Chapter 19. I Shall heartily concur with Mr. Hobbes in the preference of Monarchy before all other kind of Government for the happiness of the people which is the end of Government and surely the people never enjoied saving the delight they have in the word Equality which in truth signifies nothing but keeping on their hats Liberty or Property or received the benefit of speedy and impartial Justice but under a Monarch but I must then advise that Monarch for his greatness and security never so far to lessen himself as to be considered as the peoples Representative which would make him a much less man then he is His Majesty is inherent in his office and neither one or other is conferred upon him by the people Let those who are indeed the Deputies of the people in those occasions upon which the Law allows them to make Deputies be called their Representative which term can have no other legitimate interpretation then the Law gives it which must have more autority then any Dictionary that is or shall be made by Mr. Hobbes whose animadversion or admonition will never prevail with any Prince to change his Soveraign Title for Representative of the people and much the less for the pains which he hath taken pag. 95. to instruct men in the nature of that Office and how he comes to be their Representative I cannot leave this Chapter without observing Mr. Hobbes his very officious care that Cromwell should not fall from his greatness and that his Country should remain still captive under the Tyranny of his vile Posterity by his so solemn Declaration that he who is in possession
forgotten And in what degrees of grace and favor that high calling hath bin ever since with him appears by the mention of them throughout the whole current of Scripture by the Prerogatives he hath granted to them and by his imparting to them even his own appellation They who will in the next place deduce the extent of the absolute and illimited power of Kings from that declaration by Samuel which indeed seems to leave neither Property or Liberty in their subjects and could be only intended by Samuel to terrify them from that mutinous and seditious clamor since it hath no foundation from any other part of Scripture nor was ever practic'd or exercis'd by any good King who succeeded over them and was blessed and approv'd by God and therefore when those State Empirics of what degree or quality soever will take upon them to prescribe a new diet and exercise to Soveraign Princes and invite them to assume new power and prerogatives over the people by the Precepts Warrants and Prescriptions of the Scripture they should not presume to make the sacred writ subject to their own private fancies And if according to the more authentic method of interpreting doubtful places they had recourse to that place where the same matter is first handled they would then have found by resorting to the before mention'd place in Deuteronomy another their kind of Scheme for the power and government of Kings There when God intended that they should be governed by a King whom he would himself chuse he prescrib'd what he should not do and what he should do He should not multiply Horses to himself c. which only concern'd that people that they might have no temtation to return to Egypt Ye shall henceforth no more return that may c. Nor shall he multiply Wives c. Tho multiplying of Wives seem'd to be permitted yet he was to have a care that the number of them did not turn his heart away Nor should he greatly multiply unto himself Silver and Gold c. not so affect and set his heart upon being rich to be temted to oppress his Subjects or to injure his Neighbors and so far the negative directed Then for the affirmative That he should write a copy of the Law in a Book c. Deut. 17. 18 19 20. that it should be with him and he should read therein all the daies of his life that he might learn to fear the Lord his God and to keep all the words of the Law and these Statutes to do them that his heart be not lifted up and that he turn not aside from the Commandment to the right hand or to the left and from this Text the Rabbins concluded that he was to write a Book of the Law for himself and if he had none before he was King he was obliged assoon as he was King to have two one whereof he was to have alwaies whith him sive cum vadit ad praelium sive cum sedet in judicio â—ut in mensa c Those were the injunctions which God prescrib'd to his King and were observ'd by all those who were bless'd and approv'd by him for David seems by the words of Nathan to have some particular allowance for the great number of his Wives and multiplying gold and silver was for the building of the Temple and no private use of his one and Solomons excessive greatness was from the immediate bounty of God himself but he no sooner violated those Precepts and exceeded that moderation that was prescrib'd to him towards his Subjects and with reference to the multiplying Wives then his heart turn'd away from God and God turn'd away from him This pleasant suggestion by which he would discountenance that importunate and impertinent demand of an example of such a Government as he would institute that tho in all places of the world men should lay the foundation of their houses in sand it could not thence be inferr'd that so it ought to be will never perswade men to change a Government they have bin for many hundred years happy under tho with some vicissitudes of fortune for an imaginary Government by his Rules of Arithmetic and Geometry of which no Nation hath ever yet had the experiment and if there be any Country where is a Sand of that nature that hath supported the greatest edifices for hundreds of years against all the storms of wind and rage of tempests he shall be much too nice and scrupulous a person who will by any Rules of Architecture forbear to buildâ— his House there because he will not lay his foundation upon Sand which by experience is found to be of equal firmness with a Rock The Survey of Chapter 21. MR. Hobbes is so great an enemy to freedom that he will not allow Man that which God hath given him the Freedom of his Will but he shall not entangle me in that Argument which he hath enough exercis'd himself in with a more equal Adversary who I think hath bin much too hard for him at his own weapon Reason the Learned Bishop of Derry who was afterwards Arch-Bishop of Armagh and by which he hath put him into greater choler then a Philosopher ought to subject himself to the terrible strokes whereof I am not willing to undergo and therefore shall keep my self close to that freedom and liberty only that is due to Subjects and of which his business in this Chapter is to deprive them totally A man would have expected from Mr. Hobbes's Inventory of the several rights and powers of his Soveraign in his eighteenth Chapter of which one was to prescribe Rules pag. 91. whereby every man might know what goods he may enjoy and what actions he might do without being molested by any of his fellow Subjects which he saies Men call Propriety that some such Rule should be established as might secure that Porpriety how little soever but he hath now better explain'd himself and finds that Liberty and Property are only fences against the Invasion or force of fellow Subjects but towards the Soveraign of no use or signification at all No man hath a Propriety in any thing that can restrain the King from taking it from him and the liberty of a Subjâ—ct pag. 109. â—eth only in those things which in regulating their actions the Soveraign hath pretermitted such as is the liberty to buy and sell and otherwise contract with one another to chuse their own abode their own diet their own trade of life and to institute their children as they think fit and the like I wonder he did not insert the liberty to wear his Clothes of that fashion which he likes best which is as important as most of his other Concessions And yet he seems to be jealous that even this liberty should make men imagine that the Soveraign power should be in any degree limited or that any thing he can do to a Subject and upon what pretence soever may be called injustice or
Justice even where himself is party and that he will be sued before those Judges if he doth not pay what he ow's to his Subjects This is the Contract which gives that capacity of suing and which by his own consent and condescention lessens his Soveraignty that his Subjects may require Justice from him And yet all these promises and lessenings he pronounces as void and to amount to contradictions that must dissolve the whole Soveraign power and leave the people in confusion and war Whereas the truth is these condescentions and voluntary abatements of some of that original power that was in them have drawn a cheerful submission and bin attended by a ready obedience to Soveraignty from the time that Subjects have bin at so great a distance from being consider'd as Children and that Soveraigns have bin without those natural tendernesses in the exercise of their power and which in the rigor of it could never have bin supported And where these obligations are best observ'd Soveraignty flourishes with the most lustre and security Kings having still all the power remaining in them that they have not themselves parted with and releas'd to their Subjects and theiâ— Subjects having no pretence to more liberty or power then the King hath granted and given to them and both their happiness and security consists in containing themselves within their own limits that is King not to affect the recovery of that exorbitant power which their Ancestors wisely parted with as well for their own as the peoples benefit and Subjects to rejoice in those liberties which have bin granted to them and not to wish to lessen the power of the King which is not greater then is necessary for their own perservation And to such a wholsom division and communication of power as this is that place of Scripture with which Mr. Hobbes is still too bold a Kingdom dâ—vided in it self cannot stand cannot be applied But that this Supreme Soveraign whom he hath invested with the whole property and liberty of all his Subjects and so invested him in it that he hath not power to part with any of it by promise or donation or release may not be too much exalted with his own greatness he hath humbled him sufficiently by giving his Subjects leave to withdraw their obedience from him when he hath most need of their assistance for the pag. 114. obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood he saies to last as long and no longer then the power lasts to protect them So that assoon as any Town City or Province of any Princes Dominions is invaded by a Foreign Enemy or possessed by a Rebellious Subject that the Prince for the present cannot suppress the Power of the one or the other the people may lawfully resort to those who are over them and for their Protection perform all the Offices and duties of good Subjects to them pag 114. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them can by no covenant be relinquish'd and the end of obedience is protection which wherever a man seeth it either in his own or in an others sword nature applieth his obedience to it and his endeavours to maintain it And truly it is no wonder if they do so and that Subjects take the first opportunity to free themselves from such a Soveraign as he hath given them and chuse a better for themselves Whereas the duty of Subjects is and all good Subjects believe they owe another kind of duty and obedience to their Soveraign then to withdraw their subjection because he is oppress'd and will prefer poverty and death it self before they will renounce their obedience to their natural Prince or do any thing that may advance the service of his Enemies And since Mr. Hobbes gives so ill a testimony of his Government which by the severe conditions he would oblige mankind to submit to for the support of it ought to be firm and not to be shaken pag. 114. that it is in its own nature not only subject to violent death by foreign war but also from the ignorance and passion of men that it hath in it from the very institution many seeds of natural mortality by intestine discord worse then which he cannot say of any Government we may very reasonably prefer the Government we have and under which we have enjoi'd much happiness before his which we do not know nor any body hath had experience of and which by his own confession is liable to all the accidents of mortality which any others have bin and reject his that promises so ill and exercises all the action of War in Peace and when War comes is liable to all the misfortunes which can possibly attend or invade it Whether the relation of Subjects be extinguisht in all those cases which Mr. Hobbes takes upon him to prescribe as Imprisonment Banishment and the like I leave to those who can instruct him better in the Law of Nations by which they must be judged notwithstanding all his Appeals to the Law of Nature and I presume if a banish'd Person p. 114 during which he saies he is not subject shall join in an action under a Foreign power against his Country wherein he shall with others be taken prisoner the others shall be proceeded against as Prisoners of War when he shall be judg'd as a Traitor and Rebel which he could not be if he were not a Subject and this not only in the case of an hostile action and open attemt but of the most secret conspiracy that comes to be discover'd And if this be true we may conclude it would be very unsafe to conduct our selves by what Mr. Hobbes p. 105. finds by speculation and deduction of Soveraign rights from the nature need and designs of men Surely this woful desertion and defection in the cases above mention'd which hath bin alwaies held criminal by all Law that hath bin current in any part of the World receiv'd so much countenance and justifications by Mr. Hobbes his Book and more by his conversation that Cromwel found the submission to those principles produc'd a submission to him and the imaginary relation between Protection and Allegiance so positively proclam'd by him prevail'd for many years to extinguish all visible fidelity to the King whilst he perswaded many to take the Engagement as a thing lawful and to become Subjects to the Usurper as to their legitimate Soveraign of which great service he could not abstain from bragging in a Pamphlet set forth in that time that he alone and his doctrine had prevail'd with many to submit to the Government who would otherwise have disturb'd the public Peace that is to renounce their fidelity to their true Soveraign and to be faithful to the Usurper It appears at last why by his institution he would have the power and security of his Soveraign wholly and only to depend upon the Contracts and Covenants which the people make one with
against him by his own judgment pag. 152. upon the man that comes from the Indies hither and perswades men here to receive a new Religion or teach them any thing that tends to disobedience to the Laws of this Country tho he be never so well perswaded of the truth of what he teacheth he commits a crime and may be justly punished not only because his Doctrine is false but because he do's that which he would not approve in another that coming from hence should endeavor to alter Religion there And how far this Declaration of his own judgment may operate to his own condemnation and to the condemnation of most of his Doctrines in his Leviathan which are so contrary to all the Laws established in his Country he should have don well to have consider'd before he committed the transgression for he doth acknowledg that in a Common-wealth where by the negligence or unskilfulness of Governors and Teachers false Doctrines are by time generally receiv'd the contrary truths may be generally offensive and prudent men are seldom guilty of doing any thing at least when it is in their own election to do it or not to do it which they foresee will be offensive to the Government or Governors whom they are subject to and must live under especially when he confesses pag. 91. that tho the most suddain and rough bustling in of a new truth that can be do's never break the peace yet it doth somtimes wake the war and if the secure and sound sleep of Peace be once broken and that fierce and brutish Tyger War is awakened when or how he will be lulled into a new sleep the wisest Magistrate cannot fore-tell and therefore will with the more vigilance discountenance and suppress such bustlers who impudently make their way with their elbows into modest company to dispose them to suspect and then to censure the wisdom of their Fore-fathers for having bin swaied by their own illiterate experience so as to prefer it before the cleer reason of thinking and Learned Men who by cogitation have found a surer way for their security and there cannot be a more certain Expedient found out for the dissolving the Peace of any Nation how firmly soever establish'd then by giving leave or permitting men of parts and unrestrain'd fancy to examine the constitution of the Government both Ecclesiastical and Civil and to vent and publish what their wit and inventions may suggest to them upon or against the same which would expose the gravity and wisdom of all Government the infallibility of Scripture and the Omnipotence of God himself by their light and scurrilous questions and instances to the mirth and contemt of all men who are without an awful veneration for either of which there needs not be a more convincing evidence then the presumtion of Mr. Hobbes throughout his Leviathan of which it will not be possible not to give some in the progress we shall make He is over subtle in his Distinction that every crime is a sin but not every sin a crime that from the relation of sin to the Law and of crime to the Civil Law may be inferr'd that where the Law ceaseth sin ceaseth that the Civil Law ceasing crimes cease and yet that violation of Covenants Ingratitude Arrogance can never cease to be sin yet are no crimes because there is no place for accusation every man being his own Judg and accused only by his own conscience and cleer'd by the uprightness of his own intention and when his intention is right his fact is no sin if otherwise his fact is sin but no crime that when the Soveraign power ceaseth that is when the King is so oppressed that he cannot exercise his power crime also ceaseth there being no protection where there is no power which he is careful to repete whether it be to the purpose or as sure it is not very pertinent in the difference between sin and crime And to all that huddle of words in that whole Paragraph I shall say no more but that it looks like the Discourse of some men which himself saies pag. 39. may be numbred amongst the sorts of madness namely when men speak such words as put together have in them no signification at all by their non-coherence and contradiction False Principles of right and wrong cannot but produce many crimes and the greater the presumtion of those is who publish them the confusion that results thereby must be the greater and yet notwithstanding this bundle of false Principles which are contain'd in this Book the strength of the Laws and the good constitution of the Government hath hitherto for ought appears resisted the operation and malignity of the Institution of his Soveraignty with how much confidence soever offered by him and a true and lawful Soveraign could never be induc'd to affect that power which Mr. Hobbes so frankly assign'd to the Soveraign whom he intended to institute And without doubt that unreasonable Proposition That Justice is but a vain word can never be established for Reason so unanswerably as by the establishment of his Principles which would make all Laws Cobwebs to be blown away by the least breath of the Governor nor by his ratiocination did Marius or Sylla or Cesar ever commit any crime since they were all Soveraigns by acquisition and so in his own judgment possessed of all those powers which arise from his Institution whereby they might do all those acts which they did and no man could complain of injury or injustice every man being the Author of whatever dammage he sustain'd or complain'd of nor will he be able to lay any crime to any of their charges tho he seems to condemn them and at that same time to support his Institution of a Common-wealth But it is the less wonder since from his own constitution according to his first model and knowing from whence his own obedience proceeds he concludes that of all passions that which least inclines men to break the Laws is fear He provides such terrible Laws as no body can love and must fear too much to be willing to be subject to them which want of willingness must make them glad of any alteration which can bring no security to the Soveraign And I cannot enough recommend to Mr. Hobbes that he will revolve his own judgment and determination in this Chapter pag. 158. That he whose error proceedeth from a peremtory pursuit of his own Principles and reasonings is much more faulty then he whose error proceeds from the autority of a Teacher or an Interpreter of the Law publicly autoriz'd and that he that groundeth his actions on his private judgment ought according to the rectitude or error thereof to stand or fall And if his fear be so predominant in him as he conceives it to be in most men it will dispose him first to enquire what the opinion of the Judges is who are the autoriz'd Interpreters of Law before he publishes his seditious
according to his own discretion In the last place he hath very much obliged his Soveraign in telling him so plainly why he hath compared him to Leviathan because he hath raised him to the same greatness and given him the same power which Leviathan is described to have in the 41 Chapter of Iob There is nothing on Earth to be compared with him he is made so as not to be afraid be seeth every high thing to be below him and is King of all the children of pride Job 41. 33 34. And if he had provided as well to secure his high station as he hath for the abatement of the pride of the Subject whom he hath sufficiently humbled he might more glory in his work but the truth is he hath left him in so weak a posture to defend himself that he hath reason to be afraid of every man and the remedies he prescribes afterwards to keep his prodigious power from dissolution are as false and irrational as any other advice in his Institution as will appear hereafter The Survey of Chapter 29. MR. Hobbes takes so much delight in reiterating the many ill things he hath said for fear they do not make impression deep enough in the minds of men that I may be pardon'd if I repete again somtimes what hath bin formerly said as this Chapter consisting most of the same pernicious doctrines which he declar'd before tho in an other dress obliges me to make new or other reflexions upon what was I think sufficiently answer'd before and it may be repete what I have said before He is so jealous that the strength of a better composition of Soveraignty may be superior and be preferr'd before that of his institution that be devises all the way he can to render it more obnoxious to dissolution and like a Mountebank Physician accuses it of diseases which it hath not that he may apply Remedies which would be sure to bring those or worse diseases and would weaken the strongest parts and support of it under pretence of curing its defects So in the first place he finds fault pag. 167. that a man to obtain a Kingdom is sometimes content wâ—th lâ—ss power then to the peace and defence of the Common-wealth is necessarily required that is that he will observe the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom which by long experience have bin found necessary for the Peace and defence of it And to this he imputes the insolence of Thomas Beckett Arch-Bishop of Canterbury pag. 168. who was supported against Harry the Second by the Pope the Subjection of Ecclesiastics to the Common-wealth having he saies bin dispensed with by William the Conquerour at his reception when he took an Oath not to infringe the liberty of the Church And this extravagant power of the Pope he imputes to the Universities and the doctrine taught by them which reproch to the Universities being in a Paragraph of his next Chapter I chuse to join in the answer with the case of Thomas Beckett and Henry the Second Mr. Hobbes hath so great a prejudice to the reading Histories as if they were all enemies to his Government that he will not take the pains carefully to peruse those from which he expects to draw some advantage to himself presuming that men will not believe that a man who so warily weighs all he saies in the balance of reason will ever venture to alledg any matter of fact that he is not very sure of But if he had vouchsafed to look over the Records of his own Country before the time of King Henry the Eight he would have found the Universities alwaies opposed the power of the Pope and would have no dependance upon him and that the Kings alone introduc'd his autority and made it to be submitted to by their Laws Nor did the Church of England owe their large priviledges to any donation of the Popes whose jurisdiction they would never admit but to the extreme devotion and superstition of the People and the piety and bounty of the Kings which gave greater donatives and exemtions to the Church and Clergy then any other Kingdom enjoied or then the Pope gave any where Christianity in the infancy of it wrought such prodigious effects in this Island upon the barbarous affections of the Princes and People who then were the inhabitants of it that assoon as they gave any belief to the History of our Saviour they thought they could not do too much to the Persons of those who preached him and knew best what would be most acceptable to him From hence they built Churches and endow'd them liberally submitted so entirely to the Clergy whom they look'd upon as Sacred persons that they judged all differences and he was not look'd upon as a good Christian who did not entirely resign himself to their disposal they gave great exemtion to the Church and Church men and annex'd such Priviledges to both as testified the veneration they had for the Persons as well as for the Faith And when they suspected that the Licentiousness of succeeding ages might not pay the same devotion to both they did the best they could to establish it by making Laws to that purpose and obliging the several Princes to maintain and defend the rights and priviledges of the Church rights and priviledges which themselves had granted and of which the Pope knew nothing nor indeed at that time did enjoy the like himself It is true that by this means the Clergy was grown to a wonderful power over the People who look'd upon them as more then mortal men and had surely a greater autority then any Clergy in Christendom assum'd in those ages and yet it was generally greater then in other Kingdoms then it hath ever bin since Nor could it be otherwise during the Heptarchy when those little Soveraigns maintain'd their power by the autority their Clergy had with their people when they had little dependence upon the Prince But when by the courage and success of two or three couragious Princes and the distraction that had bin brought upon them by strangers the Government of the whole Island was reduced under one Soveraign the Clergy which had bin alwaies much better united then the Civil state had bin were not willing to part with any autority they had enjoied nor to be thought of less value then they had bin formerly esteemed and so grew troublesom to the Soveraign power somtimes by interrupting the progress of their Councils by delaies and somtimes by direct and positive contradictions The Princes had not the confidence then to resort to Mr. Hobbes's original institution of their right the manners of the Nation still remained fierce and barbarous and whatsoever was pliant in them was from the result of Religion which was govern'd by the Clergy They knew nothing yet of that primitive contract that introduced Soveraignty nor of that Faith that introduced subjection they thought it would not be safe for them to oppose the power of the
Sacred Clergy with a mere secular profane force and therefore thought how they might lessen and divide their own troublesome Clergy by a conjunction with some religious and Ecclesiastical combination The Bishops of Rome of that age had a very great name and autority in France where there being many Soveraign Princes then reigning together he exercis'd a notable Jurisdiction under the Style of Vicar of Christ. The Kings in England by degrees unwarily applied themselves to this spiritual Magistrate and that he might assist them to suppress a power that was inconvenient to them at home they suffer'd him to exercise an autority that proved afterwards very mischievous to themselves and for which they had never made pretence before and which was then heartily opposed by the Universities and by the whole Clergy till it was impos'd upon them by the King So that it was not the Universities and Clergy that introduc'd the Popes autority to shâ—ke and weaken that of the King but it was the King who introduc'd that power to strengthen as he thought his own howsoever it fell out And if the precedent Kings had not call'd upon the Pope and given him autority to assist them against some of their own Bishops Alexander the Third could never have pretended to exercise so wild a jurisdiction over Henry the Second nor he ever have submitted to so infamous a subordination nor could the Pope have undertaken to assist Beckett against the King if the King had not first appeal'd to him for help against Beckett For the better manifestation of that point which Mr. Hobbes his speculation and Geometry hath not yet made an enquiry into it will not be amiss to take a short Survey of the Precedent times by which it will be evident how little influence the Popes autority had upon the Crown or Clergy or Universities of England and how little ground he hath for that fancy from whence soever he took it pag. 168. that William the Conquerour at his reception had dispens'd with the subjection of the Ecclesiastics by the Oaâ—h he took not to infringe the liberty of the Church whereas they who know any thing of that time know that the Oath he took was the same and without any alteration that all the former Kings since the Crown rested upon a single head had taken which was at his Coronation after the Bishops and the Barons had taken their Oath to be his true and faithful Subjects The Arch-Bishop who crown'd him presented that Oath to him which he was to take himself which he willingly did to defend the Holy Church of God and the Rectors of the same To govern the universal people subject to him justly To establish equal Laws and to see them justly executed Nor was he more wary in any thing then as hath bin said before that the people might imagine that he pretended any other title to the Government then by the Confessor tho it is true that he did by degrees introduce many of the Norman Customes which were found very useful or convenient and agreeable enough if not the same with what had bin formerly practis'd And the common reproch of the Laws being from time to time put into French carries no weight with it for there was before that time so rude a collection of the Laws and in Languages as foreign to that of the Nation British Saxon Danish and Latine almost as unintelligible as either of the other that if they had bin all digested into the English that was then spoken we should very little better have understood it then we do the French in which the Laws were afterwards render'd and it is no wonder since a reduction into Order was necessary that the King who was to look to the execution took care to have them in that Language which himself best understood and from whence issued no inconvenience the former remaining still in the Language in which they had bin written Before the time of William the First there was no pretence of jurisdiction from Rome over the Clergy and the Church of England tho the infant Christianity of some of the Kings and Princes had made some journies thither upon the fame of the Sanctity of many of the Bishops who had bin the most eminent Martyrs for the Christian Faith and when it may be they could with more ease and security make a journy thither then they could have don to any other Bishop of great notoriety out of their own Country for Christianity was not in those times come much neerer England then Dauphine Provence and Languedoc in France and those Provinces had left their bountiful testimonies of their devotion which grew afterwards to be exercis'd with the same piety in Pilgrimages first and then expeditions to the Holy Land without any other purpose of transferring a Superiority over the English Nation to Rome then to Ierusalem And after the arrival of Austin the Monk and his Companions who were sent by Pope Gregory and who never enjoy'd any thing in England but by the donation of the Kings the British Clergy grew so jealous of their pretences that tho the Nation was exceedingly corrupted by the person and the doctrine of Pelâ—gius which had bin spred full two hundred years before Austin came the reformation and suppression of that Heresy was much retarded by those mens extolling or mentioning the Popes autority which the Brittish Bishops were so far from acknowledging that they would neither meet with them nor submit to any thing that was propos'd by them and declar'd very much against the pride and insolence of Austin for assuming any autority and because when any of them came to him he would not so much as rise to receive them I can hardly contain my self from enlarging upon this subject at this time but that it will â—eem to many to be foreign to the argument now in debate and Mr. Hobbes hath little resignation to the autority of matter of fact by which when he is pressed he hath an answer ready that if it were so or not so it should have bin otherwise I shall therefore only restrain my discourse to the time of William the Conqueror and when I have better inform'd him of the State of the Clergy and Universities of that time I shall give him the best satisfaction I can to the instance of Thomas of Beckett in which both the Clergy and the Universities will be easily absolv'd from the guilt of adhering to the Pope When William found himself in possession of England whatever application he had formerly made to the Pope who was then in France and as some say had receiv'd from him a consecrated Banner with some other relique beside one single hair of St Peter for the better success of his expedition he was so far from discovering any notable respect towards him that he expresly forbad all his Subjects from acknowledging any man to be Pope but him whom he declar'd to be so And there was a President
Mr. Hobbes an occasion to reproch me with impertinency in this digression tho he hath given me a just provocation to it and since the Roman Writers are so solicitous in the collecting and publishing the Records of that odious Process and strangers are easily induc'd to believe that the exercise of so extravagant a jurisdiction in the Reign of so Heroical a Prince who had extended his Dominions farther by much then any of his Progenitors had don must be grounded upon some fix'd and confess'd right over the Nation and not from an original Usurpation entred upon in that time and when the Usurper was not acknowledged by so considerable a part of Christendom it may not prove ungrateful to many men to make a short view of that very time that we may see what unheard of motives could prevail with that high spirited King to submit to so unheard of Tyranny That it was not from the constitution of the Kingdom or any preadmitted power of the Pope formerly incorporated into the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom is very evident by the like having bin before attemted For tho the Clergy enjoied those great priviledges and immunities which are mention'd before whereby they had so great an influence upon the hearts of the people that the Conqueror himself had bin glad to make use of them and William the Second Henry the First and King Stephen had more need of them to uphold their Usurpation yet those priviledges how great soever depended not at all upon the Bishop of Rome nor was any rank of men more solicitous then the Clergy to keep the Pope from a pretence of power in the Kingdom And the Bishops themselves had in the beginning of that Arch-bishops contumacious and rebellious contests with the King don all they could to discountenance and oppose him and had given their consent in Parliament that for his disobedience all his goods and moveables should be at the Kings mercy and it was also enacted with their consent after the Arch-bishop had fled out of the Kingdom and was known to make some application to the Pope that if any were found carrying a Letter or Mandate from the Pope or the Arch-bishop containing any interdiction of Christianity in England he should be taken and without delay executed as a Traitor both to the King and Kingdom that whatsoever Bishop Priest or Monk should have and retain any such Letters should forfeit all their Possessions Goods and Chattels to the King and be presently banish'd the Realm with their kin that none should appeal to the Pope and many other particulars which enough declare the temper of that Catholic time and their aversion to have any dependance upon a foreign jurisdiction And after the death of Beckett and that infamous submission of the King to the Popes Sentence thereupon which yet was not so scandalous as it is vulgarly reported as if it had bin made and undergon by the King in Person when the same King desir'd to assist the Successor of that Pope Lucius the Third who was driven out of Rome and to that purpose endeavour'd to raise a collection from the Clergy which the Popes Nuntio appear'd in and hoped to advance the Clergy was so jealous of having to do with the Pope or his Ministers that they declar'd and advised the King that his Majesty would supply the Pope in such a proportion as he thought fit and that whatever they gave might be to the King himself and not to the Popes Nuntio which might be drawn into example to the detriment of the King The King himself first shewed the way to Thomas a Beckett to apply himself to the Pope till when the Arch-bishop insisted only upon his own Ecclesiastical rights and power in which he found not the concurrence of the other Bishops or Clergy and the King not being able to bear the insolence of the man and finding that he could well enough govern his other Bishops if they were not subjected to the autority and power of that perverse Arch bishop was willing to give the Pope autority to assist him and did all he could to perswade him to make the Arch-bishop of York his Legate meaning thereby to devest the other Arch-bishop of that Superiority over the Clergy that was so troublesom to him and which he exercis'd in his own right as Metropolitan But the Pope durst not gratifie the King therein knowing the spirit of Beckett and that he would contemn the Legate and knew well the Ecclesiastical superiority in that Kingdom to reside in his person as Arch-bishop of Canterbury who had bin reputed tanquam alterius Orbis Papa yet he sent to him to advise him to submit to the King whereupon the haughty Prelate then fled out of the Kingdom and was too hard for the King with the Pope who was perswaded by him to make use of this opportunity to enlarge his own power and to curb and subdue that Clergy that was indevoted to him and so by his Bull he suspended the Arch-bishop of York and the other Bishops who adher'd to the King in the execution of his commands which so much incens'd the King that he let fall those words in his passion that encouraged those rash Gentlemen to commit that assassination that produc'd so much trouble It must also be remembred that the King when he bore all this from the Pope was indeed but half a King having caused his son Henry to be crown'd King with him who thereupon gave him much trouble and join'd with the French King against him and that he had so large and great Territories in France that as the Popes power was very great there so his friendship was the more behovefull and necessary to the King Lastly and which it may be is of more weight then any thing that hath bin said in this disquisition it may seem a very natural judgment of God Almighty that the Pope should exercise that unreasonable power over a King who had given him an absurd and unlawful power over himself and for an unjust end when he obtain'd from our Country-man Pope Adrian who immediatly preceded Alexander a Dispensation not to perform the Oath which he had taken that his Brother Geoffery should enjoy the County of Anjoy according to the Will and desire of his Father and by vertue of that Dispensation which the Pope had no power to grant defrauded his Brother of his inheritance and broke his Oath to God Almighty and so was afterwards forced himself to yield to the next Pope when he assum'd a power over him in a case he had nothing to do with and where he had no mind to obey And this unadvised address of many other Princes to the Pope for Dispensations of this kind to do what the Law of God did not permit them to do hath bin a principal inlet of his Supremacy to make them accept of other Dispensations from him of which they stand not in need and to admit other his incroachments from
him which have proved very mischievous to them Of the condition of King Iohn we need not speak whose Usurpation Murders and absence of all Virtue made him fit to undergo all the reproches and censures which Pope Innocent the Third exercis'd him with when he usurped upon France with equal Tyranny The succeeding Kings no sooner found it necessary to expel or restrain that power which the Popes had so inconveniently bin admitted to and which they had so mischievously improv'd but the Universities not only submitted to but advanced those Acts which tended thereunto as appears by the Writings of Occam and other Learned men in the University of Oxford in the Reigns of those Kings both Edward the First and Edward the Third in which times as much was don against the power of the Pope as was afterwards don by Henry the Eighth himself And the Gallican Church would not at this time have preserved their liberties and priviledges to that degree as to contemn the power of the universal Bishop if the University of the Sorbone had not bin more vigilant against those incroachments then the Crown it self So far have the Universities bin from being the Authors or promoters of those false doctrines which he unjustly laies to their charge And I presume they will be as vigilant and resolute to preserve the Civil Autority from being invaded and endangered by their receiving and subscribing to his pernicious and destructive principles which his modesty is induced to believe may be planted in the minds of men because whole Nations have bin brought to acquiesce in the great mysteries of Christian Religion which are above reason and millions of men have bin made to believe that the same body may be in innumerable places at one and the same time which is against reason and therefore he would have the Soveraign power to make his Doctrine so consonant to reason to be taught and preached But his Doctrine is fit only to be taught by his own Apostles who ought to be looked upon as Seducers and false Prophets and God forbid that the Soveraign powers should contribute to the making those principles believed which would be in great danger to be destroied if it were but suspected that they affected to have that power which he would have to belong to them And such Princes who have bin williâ—g to believe they have it have bin alwaies most jealous that it should be known or thought that they do believe so since they know there would be a quick determination of their power if all their Subjects knew that they believed that all they have doth in truth belong to them and that they may dispose of it as they please Pag. 168. He saies a Common-wealth hath many diseases which proceed from the poison of Seditious doctrines whereof one is That every private man is Iudg of good and evil actions which is a doctrine never allow'd in any Common-wealth the Law being the measure of all good or evil actions under every Government and where that Law permits a liberty to the Subject to dispute the commands of the Soveraign no inconvenience can arise thereby but if the Soveraign by his own autority shall vacate and cancel all Laws the Common-wealth must need be distracted or much weakned Mr. Hobbes will have too great an advantage against any adversary if he will not have his Government tried by any Law nor his Religion by any Scripture and he could never think that the believing that pag. 168. whatsoever a man doth against his conscience is sin is a Doctrine to civil Society repugnant if he thought any of the Apostles good Judges of Conscience who all upon all occasions and in all actions commend themselves to every mans conscience 2. Cor. 4. 2. as also Our rejoicing is this the Testimony of our conscience 2 Cor. 1 12. and throughout the whole New Testament the conscience is made the Judg of all we do And if Mr. Hobbes had not so often excepted against Divines for being good Judges in Religion I could tell him of very good ones who are of opinion that it is a sin to do any thing against an erroneous conscience which is his own best excuse that he will not depart from his own judgment which is his conscience how erroneous soever it is But this liberty of Conscience is restrain'd only to those Cases where the Law hath prescribed no rule for where the Law enjoins the duty no private conscience can deny obedience In case of misperswasion it looks upon the action as sinful in him and so chuses to submit to the penalty which is still obedience or removes into another Climate as more agreeable to his constitution If Mr. Hobbes proposes to himself to answer all extravagant discourses or private opinions of seditious men which have no countenance from public Autority he will be sure to chuse such as he can easily confute All sober men agree that tho Faith and Sanctity are not to be attain'd only by study and reading yet that study and reading are means to procure that grace from God Almighty that is necessary thereunto And himself confesseth that with all his education discipline correction and other natural waies it is God that worketh that Faith and Sanctity in those he thinks fit So that if he did not think men the more unlearn'd for being Divines it is probable that there is very little difference between what those unlearned Divines and himself say upon this point saving that they may use inspiring and infusing which are words he cannot endure as insignificant speech tho few men are deceiv'd in the meaning of them If all Soveraigns are subject to the Laws of Nature as he saies they are because such Laws are divine and cannot by any man or Common-wealth be abrogated they then are oblig'd to observe and perform those Laws which themselves have made and promised to observe for violation of faith is against the Law of Nature by his own confession Nor doth this obligation set any Judg over the Soveraign nor doth any civil Law pretend that there is any power to punish him it is enough that in justice he ought to do it and that there is a Soveraign in Heaven above him tho not on Earth The next indeed is a Doctrine that troubles him and tends as he saies pag. 169. to the dissolution of a Common-wealth That every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods such as excludes the right of the Soveraign which if true he saies p. 170. he cannot perform the Office they have put him into which is to defend them both from Foreign Enemies and from the injuries of one another and consequently there is no longer a Common wealth And I say if it be not true there is nothing worth the defending from Foreign Enemies or from one another and consequently it is no matter what becomes of the Common-wealth Can he defend them any other way then by their own help with
scandaliz'd that such monstrous and seditious Discourses have so long escaped a judicial Examination and Punishment must know that Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan was printed and publish'd in the highest time of Cromwell's wicked Usurpation for the vindication and perpetuating whereof it was contriv'd and design'd and when all Legal power was suppress'd and upon his Majesties blessed return that merciful and wholsom Act of Oblivion which pardon'd all Treasons and Murders Sacriledg Robbery Heresies and Blasphemies as well with reâ—erence to their Writings as their Persons and other Actions did likewise wipe out the memory of the Enormities of Mr. Hobbes and his Leviathan And this hath bin the only reason why the last hath bin no more enquired into then the former it having bin thought best that the impious Doctrines of what kind soever which the license of those times produc'd should rather expire by neglect and the repentance of the Authors then that they should be brought upon the Stage again by a solemn and public condemnation which might kindle some parts of the old Spirit with the vanity of contradiction which would otherwise in a short time be extinguish'd and it is only in Mr. Hobbes his own power to reverse the security that Act hath given him by repeting his former Errors by making what was his Off-spring in Tyrannical Times when there was no King in Israel his more deliberate and legitimate Issue and Productions in a time when a lawful Government flourishes which cannot connive at such bold Transgressors and Transgressions and he will then find that it hath fallen into the hands of a Soveraign that hath consider'd it very well not by allowing the public teaching it but by a declared detestation and final snppression of it and enjoining the Author a public recantation We shall conclude here our disquisition of his Policy and Government of his Commonwealth with the recollecting and stating the excellent Maximes and Principles upon which his Government is founded and supported that when they appear naked and uninvolv'd in his magisterial Discourses men may judg of the liberty and security they should enjoy if Mr. Hobbes Doctrine were inculcated into the minds of men by their Education and the Industry of those Masters under whom they are to be bred as he thinks it necessary it should be which Principles are in these very terms declared by him 1. That the Kings word is sufficient to take any thing from any Subject when there is need and that the King is Iudg of that need pag. 106. cap. 20. part 2. 2. The Liberty of a subject lieth only in those things which in regulating their actions the Soveraign hath pretermitted such as is the liberty to buy and sell and otherwise to contract with one another to chuse their own abode their own diet their own trade of life and institute their children as they themselves think fit and the like pag. 109. cap. 21. par 2. 3. Nothing the Soveraign can do to a subject on what pretence soever can properly be called injustice or injury pag. 109. 4. When a Soveraign Prince putteth to death an innocent subject tho the action be against the Law of Nature as being contrary to Equity yet it is not an injury to the subject but to God pag. 109. 5. No man hath liberty to resist the word of the Soveraign but in case a great many men together have already resisted the Soveraign power unjustly or committed some capital crime for which every one of them expecteth death they have liberty to join together and to assist and defend one another pag. 112. 6. If a Soveraign demand or take any thing by pretence of his power there lieth in that case no action at Law pag. 112. 7. If a subject be taken prisoner in War or his person or his means of life be within the guards of the Enemy and hath his life and corporal liberty given him on condition to be subject to the Victor he hath liberty to accept the condition and having accepted it is the subject of him that took him pag. 114. 8. If the Soveraign banish the subject during the banishment he is no subject pag. 114. 6. The obligation of subjects to the Soveraign is as long and no longer then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them pag. 124. 10. Whatever Promises or Covenants the Soveraign makes are void pag. 89. 11. He whose private interest is to be judged in an assembly may make as many friends as he can and tho he hires such friends with mony yet it is not injustice pag. 122. cap. 22. part 2. 12. The propriety which a subject hath in his Lands consisteth in a right to exclude all other subjects from the use of them and not to exclude their Soveraign pag. 128. cap. 24. part 2. 13. When the Soveraign commandeth a man to do that which is against Law the doing of it is totally excus'd when the Soveraign commandeth any thing to be don against Law the command as to that particular fact is an abrogation of the Law pag. 157. cap. 27. part 2. 14. Tho the right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguish'd by the act of another yet the obligation of the members may for he that wants protection may seek it any where and when he hath it is oblig'd without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himself out of fear to protect his Protector as long as he is able pag. 174. cap. 29. part 2. If upon the short reflexions we have made upon these several Doctrines as they lie scattered over his Book and involv'd in other Discourses which with the novelty administers some pleasure to the unwary Reader the contagion thereof be not enough discover'd and the ill consequence and ruine that must attend Kings and Princes who affect such a Government as well as the misery insupportable to Subjects who are compelled to submit to it it may be the view of the naked Propositions by themselves without any other clothing or disguise of words may better serve to make them oqious to King and People and that the first will easily discern to how high a pinnacle of power soever he would carry him he leaves him upon such a Precipice from whence the least blast of Invasion from a Neighbor or from Rebellion by his Subjects may throw him headlong to irrecoverable ruine and the other will as much abhor an Allegiance of that temper that by any misfortune of their Prince they may be absolv'd from and cease to be Subjects when their Soveraign hath most need of their obedience And surely if these Articles of Mr. Hobbes's Creed be the product of right Reason and the effects of Christian Obligations the great Turk may be look'd upon as the best Philosopher and all his Subjects as the best Christians The Third Part. The Survey of Chapters 32 33 34. AS we had no reason to expect a rational discourse of civil Government and Policy when the opinion and
judgment of all Lawyers were excluded and all establish'd Laws contradicted so we may well look for a worse of Christian Politics when the advice of all Divines is positively protested against and new notions of Divinity introduc'd as rules to restrain our conceptions and to regulate our understandings And as he hath not deceiv'd us in the former he will as little disappoint us in the latter But having taken a brief survey of the dangerous opinions and determinations in Mr. Hobbes his two first parts of his Leviathan concerning the constitution nature and right of Soveraigns and concerning the duty of Subjects which he confesses contains doctrine very different from the practice of the greatest part of the world and therefore ought to be watched with the more jealousy for the novelty of it I shall not now accompany him through his remaining two parts in the same method by taking a view of his presumtion in the interpretation of several places of Scripture and making very unnatural deductions from thence to the lessening the dignity of Scripture and to the reproch of the highest actions don by the greatest Persons by the immediate command of God himself For if those marks and conditions which he makes necessary to a true Prophet and without which he ought not to be believed were necessary Moses was no true Prophet nor had the Children of Israel any reason to believe and follow him when he would carry them out of Egypt for he concludes from the thirteenth Chapter of Deuâ—eronomy and the five first verses thereof pag. 197. that God will not have Miracles alone serve for Argument to prove the Prophets calling for the works of the Egyptian Sorcerers tho not so great as those of Moses yet were great Miracles and that how great soever the Miracles are yet if the intent be to stir up revolt against the King or him that governeth by the Kings Autority he that doth such Miracles is not to be consider'd otherwise then as sent to make trial of their Allegiance for he saies those words in the text revolt from the Lord your God are in this place equivalent to revolt from the King for they had made God their King by pact at the foot of Mount Sinaâ— whereas Moses had no other credit with the People but by the Miracles which he wrought in their presence and in their sight and that which he did perswade them to was to revolt and withdraw themselves from the obedience of Pharaoh who was during their abode in Egypt the only King they knew and acknowledged So that in Mr. Hobbes's judgment the People might very well have refused to believe him and all those Prophets afterwards who prophesied against several of the Kings ought to have bin put to death and the Argumentation against the Prophet Ieremy was very well founded when the Princes said unto the King Ier. 38. 4. We beseech thee let this man be put to death for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war when he declar'd that the City should surely be given into the hands of the King of Babylon But Mr. Hobbes is much concern'd to weaken the credit of Prophets and of all who succeed in their places and he makes great use of that Prophets being deceiv'd by the old Prophet in the first of Kings when he was seduced to eat and drink with him Whereas he might have known that that Prophet was not so much deceiv'd by an other as by his own willfulness in closing with the temtation of refreshing himself by eating and drinking chusing rather to believe any man of what quality soever against the express command that he had received from God himself What his design was to make so unnecessary an enquiry into the Authors of the several parts of Scripture and the time when they were written and his more unnecessary inference that Moses was not the Author of the five Books which the Christian World generally believe to be written by him tho the time of his death might be added afterwards very warrantably and the like presumtion upon the other Books he best knows but he cannot wonder that many men who observe the novelty and positiveness of his assertions do suspect that he found it necessary to his purpose first to lessen the reverence that was accustom'd to be paid to the Scriptures themselves and the autority thereof before he could hope to have his interpretation of them hearken'd unto and received and in order to that to allow them no other autority but what they receive from the Declaration of the King so that in every Kingdom there may be several and contrary Books of Scripture which their Subjects must not look upon as Scripture but as the Soveraign power declares it to be so which is to shake or rather overthrow all the reverence and submission which we pay unto it as the undoubted word of God and to put it in the same scale with the Alcoran which hath as much autority by the stamp which the Grand Signior puts upon it in all his Dominion and all the differences and Controversies which have grown between the several Sects of Mahometans which are no fewer in number nor prosecuted with less animosity between them then the disputes between Christians in matter of Religion have all proceeded from the several glosses upon and readings of the Alcoran which are prescribed or tolerated by the several Princes in their respective Dominions they all paying the same submission and reverence to Mahomet but differing much in what he hath said and directed and by this means the Grand Signior and the Persian and the petty Princes under them have run into those Schisms which have given Christianity much ease and quiet This is a degree of impiety Mr. Hobbes was not arrived at when he first published his Book de Cive where tho he allowed his Soveraign power to give what Religion it thought fit to its Subjects he thought it necessary to provide it should be Christiaâ—â— which was a caution too modest for his Leviathan Nor can it be preserved when the Scriptures from whence Christianity can only be prov'd and taught to the people are to depend only for the validity 〈◊〉 upon the will understanding and autority of the Prince which with all possible submission reverence and resignation to that Earthly power and which I do with all my heart acknowledg to be instituted by God himself for the good of mankind hath much greater dignity in it self and more reverence due to it then it can receive from the united Testimony and Declaration of all the Kings and Princes of the World With this bold Prologue of the uncertain Canon of Scripture he takes upon him as the foundation of his true ratiocination pag. 207. to determine out of the Bible the meaning of such words as by their ambiguity may he saies render what he is to infer upon them obscure and disputable And with this licence he presumes to give such unnatural
upon the Kingdom of God so often us'd in Scripture as if thereby is properly and only meant the Commonwealth of the Iews pag. 218 instituted by the consent of those who were to be Subject thereunto for their civil Government and regulating their behaviour towards God their King whom they rejected and depos'd when they demanded a King from Samuel and to confirm this by so many glosses upon several Texts of Scripture is worthy only of the confidence of the Author of the Leviathan But he will make all this good when he comes to Mount Sinai where he saies this Covenant was renewed There indeed after all their murmurings for Bread and for Flesh and for Water that they might not imagine that all the Promises which God had made to their Fore-fathers gave them a Title to the continuance of their Protection and Blessing in spight of all their back-sliding and Rebellion and as a Preface to his Ten Commandments and the Law which he then publish'd to them God commanded Moses to put them in mind of the great Deliverances he had wrought for them to tell them that if they would obey his voice indeed and keep his Covenant then they should be a peculiar Treasure unto him above all people and they should be unto him a Kingdom of Priests an holy Nation the natural signification whereof according to all Interpreters is that he would in a more peculiar maner make himself known to them by giving them Laws whereby they might know how to please him and assigning them a Priesthood to offer such Sacrifices for them to him as would be acceptable And their answering together All that the Lord hath spoken we will do and what they said afterwards to Moses in the fright and consternation they were in upon the Thunder and Lightning from the Mount Speak thou to us and we will hear but let not God speak with us least we die contained no more upon the matter then the same professions which they had often made before upon their recollection after their several loud transgression God was not from that time more gracious to them or reckoned them more his own chosen people then before when he fed them with Manna and Quailes nor did they think that they had entred into a new and stricter obligation to him as appears by their making the Golden calf and worshipping it so soon after even before God had finish'd his speaking to them So that the Contract on their behalf whereby God himself was more their King then he had bin formerly or they more the Kingdom of God then they were before is drawn up only by Mr. Hobbes above three thousand years after the transaction The Survey of Chapter 37. I should make no reflexion upon the thirty seventh Chapter of Miracles and their use tho it may be some men may imagine that he hath a mind to lessen the faith of the greatest Miracles which have bin wrought if to express the humility of his resignation to his Soveraign he did not make him the sole Judg of all Miracles which shall be wrought within his Dominions and in this extasie of his Allegiance in spight of all the Demonstrations he hath made in his Kingdom of Darkness the fourth part of his Institâ—tes of the absurdity contradiction and impossibility in the Roman Doctrine of the Sacrament he very frankly bestows upon the King the sole power of determining the Point of Transubstantiation which if he concludes in the Affirmative no Subject must presume to contradict it By which he hath made the Pope and the Roman Church amends for the many merry reproches he hath cast upon them in allowing it to be good Divinity in all those Dominions where the Soveraign is Popish and of which no private reason or conscience but the public reason the reason of the King is Judg. And tho he preserves to himself and other private men the prerogative of believing or not believing in his heart because thought is free yet that must not be discover'd because he makes it the obligation of Subjects not only to do but to say all that their Soveraign commands them to say or do by which he introduces such a licence of dissimulation and hypocrisie as is odious in the civil actions of our life but most detestable in the eies and judgment of God and Man in all acts which concern Religion and the Worship of his Divine Majesty And it is very reasonably to be doubted that this loose determination in matters of Faith by a man who is thought to have digged very deep in all the Mines of Natural Reason hath contributed very much to that uncontroulable spirit which by the extravagance of fancy invention and imagination hath made such confusion both in the speculation and practice of Religion in this distracted Kingdom and by his making that which God hath manifestly commanded liable to be controul'd or to receive autority from the pleasure of the King that both God and the King are less reverenced and their Precepts less regarded then they have us'd to be in this Nation That he may the better draw himself out of those intricacies into which he is involved by this unnecessary discourse of Miracles he resorts to his Soveraign power in his definitions and tho he had before confess'd pag. 197. That the works of the Egyptian Sorcerers tho noâ— so great as those of Moses were yet great Miracles now he defines a Miracle pag. 235. to be the work of God besides his operation by the way of Nature ordain'd in the Creation don for the making manifest to his Elect the mission of an extraordinary Minister for their salvation which definition of his own and his own alone is all his proof he makes pag. 235. that the Devil or an Angel or other created spiriâ— cannot do a Miracle which as the Soveraign of Logic too he makes good by as strange an Argument It must be by virtue of some natural Science or by Incantation if it be by their own power independent there is some power that proceedeth not from God which all men deny and if they do it by power given them then is the work not from the immediate hand of God but natural and consequently no Miracle which is agreeable to his Definition But if it be by the permission of God why is it natural and therefore no Miracle Hath not God frequently permitted the Devil to do Miracles and if his Providence did not restrain him he would work Miracles enough to do more mischief And if the Devil turn'd himself into the Serpent or taught the Serpent so to speak like an Orator for the seduction and cozenage of poor Eve neither was natural and cannot be look'd upon as less then a Miracle which hath furnish'd a Modern fanciful Divine with an excuse for Eves being deluded that not imagining a Serpent could speak and having never heard of the Devil she concluded it to be an Angel whom she knew God
the commandment of God that which in the name of God was commanded him in a dream or vision and to deliver it to his Family and cause them to observe the same Yet notwithstanding this great addition tho Abraham and all the Soveraigns who succeeded him were qualified to govern and prescribe to their Subjects what Religion they should be of and to tell them what is the word of God and to punish all those who should countenance any doctrine which he should forbid from which he concludes that pag. 250 as none but Abraham in his family so none but the Soveraign in a Christian Common-wealth can take notice what is or what is not the word of God Yet I say neither that nor the renewing the same Covenant with Isaac and afterwards with Jacob he saies now did make that people the peculiar People of God but dates that Privilege which before he dated from the Covenant with Abraham to begin only from the renewing it by Moses at the mount Sinai by which he corrects his former fancy by a new one as extravagant upon the peoples contract in those words which he had mention'd before without that observation and gloss that he makes upon it nor did God at that time promise more to them by Moses then he had before as expresly promis'd to Abraham Isaac and Iacob This shall suffice to what he hath so often urg'd or shall hereafter infer from the Covenant with Abraham and by Moses and of the peculiar dominion over that People by vertue of that Contract Nor will I hereafter enlarge any more upon their pretended rejection of God when they desir'd a King which he now confirm's by a new piece of History or a new Commentary upon the Text by his Soveraign power of interpreting for he saies pag. 254. that when they said to Samuel make us a King to judg us like all the Nations they signified that they would no more be govern'd by the commands that should be laid upon them by the Priest in the name of God and consequently in deposing the High Priest of Roial autority they deposed that peculiar Government of God pag. 255. And yet he confesses in the very next page that when they had demanded a King after the manner of the Nations they had no design to depart from the worship of God their King but despairing of the justice of the Sons of Samuel they would have a King to Iudg them in civil actions but not that they would allow their King to change the Religion which was recommended to them by Moses By which he hath again cancell'd and demolish't all that power and jurisdiction which he would derive to all Soveraigns from that submission and contract which he saies they made at Mount Sinai for he confesses that they had no intention that the King should have autority to alter their Religion and then it passed not by that contract And thus when his unruly invention suggests to him an addition to the Text or an unwarrantable interpretation of it it alwaies involves him in new perplexities and leaves him as far from attaining his end as when he began It is upon his usual presumtion that from the 17. Chapter of Numbers he concludes that after Moses his death the supreme power of making war and peace and the Supreme power of judicature belonged also to the High Priest and thus Ioshuah was only General of the Army whereas no more was said in that place to Eleazar then had bin before said to Aaron his Father to perform the Priestly Office nor doth it ever appear that Eleazar offered to assume the Soveraignty in either of the cases but was as much under Ioshuah as Aaron had ever bin under Moses God appear'd unto Ioshuah upon the decease of Moses and deputed him to exercise the same charge that Moses had don As I was with Moses so will I be with thee This Book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth that thou maiest observe to do all that is written therein Then Ioshuah commanded the Officers of the People Josh. 1 2. 5 8 10. The people made another covenant with Ioshuah All that thou commandest us we will do and whither soever thou sendest us we will go As we hearkned unto Moses in all things so will we hearken unto thee Whosoever doth rebel against thy Commandment and will not hearken to thy words in all that thou commandest him shall be put to death ver 16 17 18. And the Lord said unto Joshuah this day will I magnify thee in the sight of all Israel as I was with Moses so will I be with thee And thou shalt command the Priests c. Josh. 3. 7 8. All the orders and commands to the Priests were given by Ioshuah Joshua built an Altar to the Lord God of Israel in Mount Ebal He wrote upon the stones a copy of the Law He read all the Law the cursings and the blessings c. Josh. 8. 30 32 34. Ioshuah divided the Land and when any doubtful cause did arise they repair'd to him for judgment And when the two Tribes and the half returned to the other side of Iordan where Moses had assign'd their portions it was Ioshuah who blessed them and sent them away There is no mention of any Soveraignty of Eleazar What the jurisdiction of the High-Priest was and whether the Office was limited or any way suspended during the time of the Judges is not otherwise pertinent to this discourse then as it contradicts Mr. Hobbes in which where it is not necessary I take no delight and therefore shall not enlarge upon those particulars The Survey of Chapter 41. MR. Hobbes hath committed so many errors in the institution and view which he hath made of all Offices hitherto that there was reason to believe he would have the same presumtion if he came to handle the Office of our Saviour himself and I think he hath made it good when he allows no other autority or power to our Saviour even when he comes in the glory of his Father with his Angels to reward every man according to his works Matâ—h 16. 27. then pag. 260. as Vice-gerent of God his Father in the same manner that Moses was in the Wilderness and as the High Priests were before the Reign of Saul and as the Kings were after it which is degrading him below the model of Socinus and in no degree equal to the description of his Power in Scripture yet large enough if the end of his coming was no other then he assigns and the Office he is to manage no greater then he seems to describe p. 264. the giving immortality in the Kingdom of the Son of man which is to be exercis'd by our Saviour upon Earth in his human nature which seems to be much inferior to that inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away which St. Peter assures us is reserved in Heaven for us 1 Pet. 1. 4. And how his
what must be don to him and that all that was don and suffered by him which was fore told His admirable Life and Doctrine was well known to them all they had bin present at his trial and at his death and had with their eies seen the terrible circumstances of it they had seen him buried and the Jews had providently appointed a guard of Soldier who had without remorse beheld his Passion to watch his Tomb and yet after all this vigilance the Body was not found but as he had promised himself and what had bin by the Prophets fore-told of him the third day he was risen of which there were so many eie-witnesses who had seen and conferr'd with him for many daies and had at last beheld with their bodily eies his Body ascend in the air towards Heaven And besides that the greatest part of all this was seen and known by all the People the Preachers and Declarers of it appear'd to be very extraordinary men by the daily Mâ—racles they wrought by which such multitudes were compell'd could not reâ—ist believing all they said and promis'd to observe the Precepts they enjoin'd But all this is nothing others and much greater numbers did and lawfully might refuse to do either for Mr. Hobbes saies positively pag. 281. that the people had liberty to interpret the Scriptures to themselves till such time as there should be Pastors that could autorize an Interpreter whose interpretation should be geneâ—ally stood to but that could not be till Kings were Pastors or Pastors Kings So that what the Apostles or our Saviour himself had said laid no obligation upon those who heard them We have now the reason why he was concern'd so much to extend those plain words of the Children of Israel in their fright to Moses Speak thou to us and we will hear thâ—e to such an absolute obligation of their obedience since without it he saies pag. 283. they had not bin obliged to have receiv'd the ten Commandments since they were forbid to approach the mountain by which they might have heard what God said to Moses but that obligation that they would hear Moses made all sure again and so they came to receive them Yet he confesses pag. 282. that they could not but acknowledg the second Table for Gods Laws because they were all the Laws of Nature but for those of the first Table that were peculiar to the Israelites which gives him occasion to enlarge his Commentary upon the third Commandment in which he saies the meaning of those words They shall not take the name of God in vain is that they should not speak rashly of their King nor dâ—spute his râ—ght nor the Commissions of Moles and Aaron his Lieutenants it was their own obligation Speak thou to us and we will hear c. by which they were to receive them as Laws and pag. 283. the Iudicial Law which Godprescrib'd to the Magistrates of Israel for the rule of the administration of Iustice and the Levitical Law the rule prescrib'd touching the rites and ceremonies of the Priests and Leviâ—es because Laws he saies only by virtue of the same promise of obâ—dience to Moses And so he proceeds to a new enquiâ—y into the authenticalness of the Old and New Testament in which chase I am weary of following him and concludes pag. 284. that whoever offers us any other rules which the Soveraign rule hath not prâ—scrâ—b'd they are but counsel and advice which whether good or bad he that is counsel'd may without injustice refuse to observe And pag. 285. that the Scripture of the New Testament is there only Law where the lawful Civil Powâ—r hath made it so Since the reception of the New Testament as a Law that is within the Canon of Scripture depends wholly upon the word of the Soveraign and by that word is receiv'd and acknowledg'd to be the word of God and from thence is obeied as such it must likewise by his rule still subsist by the sole autority of the Soveraign for he can by his word to morrow abrogate that which this day he made a Law So that if a Christian Soveraign be succeeded by a Soveraign who is a Jew or an evil Christian he may abrogate that Law by which the New Testament was declar'd to be within the Canon of Scripture and then the Subjects must neither pag. 285. in their actions or discourse observe the same and can only privatly wish that they had liberty to practice them by which the confessed word of God must be made void and controul'd by the commandments of man And he hath the confidence to aver that the very Council held by the Apostles in which they use this style It seem'd good to the Holy Ghost and to us c. hath no autority to oblige any body pag. 286. since the Apostles could have no other power then that of our Saviour who could only perswade not command for they who have no Kingdom can make no Laws And so I hope Leviathan hath now laid about him and perform'd his full function which makes him worthy to receive a more reasonable answer then is in the power of any private Person or of the Universities to give him and is very fit for the State it self to reward him for to the full extent of his desert Mr. Hobbes hath invested the Soveraign with his absolute independent power by the example of Moses and David and Solomon both in Church and State and being obliged to confess that for some hundred of years after the preaching of the Gospelâ— there was no Civil Soveraign to meddle with it but that the direction of all Ecclesiastical Affairs appertain'd to the Apostles and their successors and those who were ordain'd by them he finds a way to invest his Christian Monarch with that Jurisdiction and Supremacy by the right all Heathen Soveraigns had who had the name of Pastors of the People because there was no Subject that could lawfully teach the People but by their permission and autority and that no body can think that the right of Heathen Kings is taken away by their conversion to the Faith of Christ who never ordain'd that Kings for believing in him should be deposed that is subjected to any but himself And therefore Christian Princes are still the supreme Pastors of their People and have power to ordain what Pastors they please to teach the Church But to make their title the more unquestionable he resorts to the title he found out for his Soveraign by institution that from the paâ—t and covenant which the people made to and with each other he becomes the Representative of the people which he confesses that he that makes himself Soveraign by his irresistible Power without any election pact or covenant likewise is the Representative of the people and so hath the same power and authority as if he were by their election He finds now that the Christian Soveraign assoon as he is Christian becomes the
keep the Protestant Religion from entring into his Disciples to instruct those who were under his charge to be good Subjects to him that seed brought up very little fruit but the Elements of Duty and Allegiance to their absent banished lawful Soveraign were sucked in greedily by them and flourished accordingly In a word these were the men who were look'd upon with esteem and reverence by all the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom who retain'd their affection and duty towards the King entirely in their hearts and thereby the opportunity to perform many notable Services to the King and to give him useful Advertisements and having unquestioned credit in a treacherous and perfidious season when Children betrayed their Fathers Servants their Masters and Friends one another were trusted by all men and so having no farther care for themselves then to live very meanly they became Treasurers and Almoners for all indigent Gentlemen who had served the King or desired so to do and relieved very many of that kind that they might be ready upon a good opportunity to serve his Majesty and not be forced to go to him who had not wherewith to relieve them They discharged the expense of many expresses which were frequently sent to the King and from him which amounted to a great charge and contributed much to the maintenance of those of the Clergy who faithfully attended his Majesties Person and often transmitted such sums of mony to his Majesty himself as were very seasonable supplies to him in great distresses I can have no end and have no temtation to say all this but hold my self obliged to Justice and truth to give this testimony since all the particulars are well known to me having at that time the honor to be in some trust with his Majesty and thereby the full knowledg of what then passed of which there are not now many other witnesses amongst the living And therefore I could not omit this proper season in the close of Mr. Hâ—bbes his Book throughout which he hath made so violent a War upon them without any colour of reason to say that he ows them many acknowledgments but more to God almâ—ghty for the scandal he hath brought upon Religion upon the best constituted Church of the World and upon the most Learned Clergy of any Church and the most irreconcilable to any thing that is erroneous or offensive in the Roman Religion which therefore looks upon them as the only considerable and formidable Enemy they have to encounter I shall not need to take any pains to remove him from the good opinion he had of Independency when he published his Book because pag. 385. it left every man to do what liked him best in Religion as he saies but in truth because Cromwell was then thought to be of that faction But I dare say he did with his heart as well as by his tongue quit that party the very day that the King was proclaimed as he is ready to quit all his other Opinions true or false assoon as the Soveraign power shall please to require him which makes whatever he saies the less to need answering And I shall be less solicitous to deprive the Pope of his new Kingdom of Fairies with the title to which Mr. Hobbes hath gratified him to allay that fear and apprehension which he had endeavoured so much before to infuse into the minds of all Princes of his dangerous greatness and power if at last prove no more then the King of Fairies hath it is less terrible then he represented it to be But since he hath not thought fit to retain that modesty which he professed to have pag. 241. that tho he had proved his Doctrine out of places of Scripture not few nor obscure yet because it will appear to most men a novelty he did 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 autority not yet amongst his Country-men decided by which all sorts of Doctrine are to be approved or rejected and whose commands both in speech and writing whatsoever be the opinions of private men must by all men who mean to be protected by their Laws be obeied notwithstanding which reservation and after he hath seen that dispute of the Sword concerning the autority amongst his Country men decided after he hath seen that Prodigy of Mankind whom he acknowledged to be his Soveraign instituted and adored by him exposed upon the Gallows and his Carcass placed upon the stage that is reserved for the most infamous Traitors and Rebels and all his actions condemned and detested by the whole Nation all which were govern'd and steered exactly by Mr. Hobbes his own Institution and sufficiently shew how insecure they will prove to any man that observes them and after he hath seen his true and lawful Soveraign his disavowed and renounced Soveraign and whose Subjects he had absolv'd from his obedience restored and established with the universal and unexpressible joy of his three Kingdoms and thereby his whole Doctrine with reference to the Ecclesiastical as well as Civil Government disavowed and condemn'd and not exemplarily punished only by his Majesties gracious observation of the Act of Indemnity of which few Subjects have more need it is too malicious an obstinacy and perversness in him still to adhere to his odious Paradoxes both in his Conversation and by private Transcripts which he labors to get printed and was never more solicitous to have his most destructive Doctrines to be published and confirm'd by autority the ill consequence whereof to himself he despises the learning of the Law too much to understand And as he would allow no other right to the Subject in his Liberty or Propriety but what the Soveraigns silence hath permitted in not taking it from him as to dwell where he pleases and educate his Children as he thinks fit and the like so he interprets the present silence of the Law as an approbation of those his monstrous Principles which it knows not how to contradict not considering the while that this silence of the Law cannot be broken but in the loud inflicting those severe punishments upon him as without the shelter of that Soveraigns mercy whom he so much despised and provoked would at once in his ruine discredit all his vain Philosophy and more pernicious Theology and he would find the Successors of Sr. Edward Cooke with whose great ignorance he makes himself so merry learned enough to instruct him in the duty and reverence that is due from all Subjects to the Law and Government And for the better manifestation of the premises having now walked to the end of his fourth part before we take a view of his Review and Conclusion we will observe the same method we did at the end of his two first parts and according to the advice himself gives in his examination of Bellarmines Doctrine lay open his conclusions and Principles
in Religion which lie scatter'd through those other two parts that men may take a view of the consequences and bethink themselves whether Christianity be advanc'd and consequently whether the peace and happiness of mankind be provided for and secured by such Doctrines 1. Those Books of Scripture only are Canonical and ought to be looked upon as the word of God in every Nation which are established for such by the Soveraign autority of each Nation pag. 199. 2. None can know that the Scriptures are Gods word tho all true Christians believe it but they to whom God himself â—ath revealed it supernaturally pag. 205. 3. Men ought to consider who hath next under God the autority of governing Christian men and to observe for a rule that Doctrine which he commandeth to be taught that is all Subjects ought to profess that Religion which the Soveraign enjoines whether he be Christian or Heathen pag. 232. 4. By the Kingdom of Heaven is meant the Kingdom of the King that dwelleth in Heaven and that the Kingdom of God is to be on Earth pag. 240 241. 5. The immortal life beginneth not in man till the Resurrection and day of Iudgment and hath for cause not his specifical nature and generation but promise pag. 241. 6. Gods Enemies and their torments after Iudgment appear by the Scripture to have their places upon Earth pag. 242. The fire shall be unquenchable and the torments everlasting after the Resurrection But it cannot therefore be inferr'd 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 burned and tortured and yet never be destroied or die pag. 245. 7. There shall be a second death of every one that shall be condemn'd at the day of judgment after which he shall die no more The Scriptures affirm not that there shall be an eternal life therein of any individual person but to the contrary an everlasting Death pag. 245. 8. The Salvation we are to look for is to be upon the Earth For since Gods Throne is in Heaven and the Earth is his Footstool it is not for the dignity of so great a King that his Subjects should have any place so high as his Throne or higher then his Foot-stool pag. 247. 9. If we be commanded by our lawful Prince to say we do not believe in Christ we may obey such his command pag. 271. 10. None can be Martyrs for Christ but they that conversed with him on Earth and saw him after he was risen for a witness must have seen what he testifieth or else his testimony is not good pag. 272. 11. None can be a Martyr who hath not a warrant to preach Christ come in the Flesh and none but such who are sent to the conversion of Infidels pag. 273. 12. To teach out of the old Testament that Iesus was Christ and risen from the Dead is not to say that men are bound after they believe it to obey those who tell them so against the Laws and commands of their Soveraigns but they do wisely to expect the coming of Christ hereafter in patience and faith with obedience to their present Magistrates pag. 274. 13. The autority of Earthly Soveraigns being not to be put down till the day of Iudgment it is manifest we do not in Baptism constitute over us another autority by which our external actions are to be governed in this life pag. 274. 14. They who received not the Doctrine of Christ did not sin therein pag. 286. 15. Christian Kings have power to Baptize to Preach to administer the Lords Supper and to Consecrate both Temples and Persons to Gods service c. 297. 16. No man shall live in torments everlastingly pag. 345. 17. To pray voluntarily to the King for fair weather or for any thing that God only can do for us is divine worship and Idolatry but if a King compel a man to it by the terror of death or other great corporal punishment it is not Idolatry pag. 360. 17. If one being no Pastor or of eminent reputation for knowledg in Christian Doctrine do external honor to an Idol for fear and an other follow him this is no scandal given for he had no cause to follow such example pag. 362. And now I hope he hath made an ample Paraphrase upon Religion according to the definition he gâ—ve of it in the first entrance of his Leviathan when he defines pag. 26. Religion to be fâ—ar of power invisible feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly told and when the seed he sows for Religion to grow from or to consist in are opinion of ghosts ignorance of second causes devotion towards what men fear and taking things casual for Prognosticks These amongst others are the Doctrines of Mr. Hobbes in his two last parts which I believe in the judgment of most Christians are assoon renounc'd as pronounc'd and which indeed need little other confutation then the reciting them yet I doubt not many men will say how scandalous soever the assertions seem to be since he appeals to the Scripture and cites several Texts out of the same for the making good the worst of his Opinions it is pity that his ignorance or perverseness in those Interpretations had not bin made appear by manifesting that those places of Scripture could not admit that Interpretation and what the genuine sense thereof is Which consideration had bin more reasonable and necessary if these Errors had bin publish'd and those Glosses made and own'd by any National Church or any Body of Learned men but it may be thought too great a presumtion for a private man a stranger to Divinity to take upon him to put unnatural Interpretations upon several Texts of Scripture the better to apply them and make them subservient to his own corrupt purposes and opinions contrary to the whole current of Scripture and to the Doctrine thereof and without the least autority or shadow that the like Interpretation was ever made before by any other man I say such a person cannot reasonably expect that any body should too seriously examine all his frivolous and light suggestions and endeavor to vindicate those Texts from such impossible Interpretations Yet if any man thinks it worth his pains I am well content that he receive that honor and will still hope that Mr. Hobbes may be so well instructed in the true sense and end of the Scripture that he may better discern the eternity of the reward and punishment in the next World And so we conclude our discourse upon his Book and examine what he saies in his Conclusion The Review and Conclusion is only an abridgment and contracting the most contagious poison that runs through the Book into a less vessel or volume least they who will not take the pains to read the Book or reading it may by inadvertency and incogitancy not be hurt enough by it may here in less room and more nakedly