"All this," said Inglesant, "I partly believe, yet I imagine that something may be said upon the other side of the argument, and I should suppose that there is not one of these doctrines and practices but what has some shadow of truth in it, and sprang at first from the wellspring of truth."
"Doubtless," said the philosopher, "there is nothing but has had its origin in some conception of the truth, but are we 'for this cause,' as that same divine says, 'also to forsake the Truth itself, and devotionally prostrate ourselves to every evanescent and far-cast show of Him—shadows of shadows—in infinite myriads of degenerations from Him?' Surely not."
"What is truth?" said Inglesant; "who shall show us any good?"
"Truth," said the philosopher, "is that which we have been taught, that which the civil government under which we live instructs us in and directs us to believe. Our Saviour Christ came as the Messiah to establish His kingdom on earth, and after Him the Apostles and Christian Princes and Commonwealths have handed down His truth to us. This is our only safe method of belief."
"But should we believe nothing of Christianity," said Inglesant, "unless the civil government had taught it us?"
"How can you believe anything," said Hobbes, "unless you have first been taught it? and in a Christian Commonwealth the civil government is the vicar of Christ. I know the Jesuits," said Hobbes, "and they me; when I was in France, some of them came to trouble me about something I had said. I quieted them by promising to write a book upon them if they did not let me be: what they seek is influence over the minds of men; to gain this they will allow every vice of which man is capable. I could prove it from their books. It is not for me, whom you scarcely know, to say anything against a friend whom you have known so long; but, as I understand you, your friend does not advise you to become a Papist. I do not suppose, though possibly you may do so, that he has no other object in view than your welfare. He has doubtless far-reaching reasons of which we know nothing; nevertheless, be not distrustful of him, but in this especially follow his advice. Shakespeare, the play-writer, says 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,' or, I should say, the ends that others work out for us, to His higher purpose. Let us have faith in this beneficent Artist, and let Him accomplish His will on us."
"But this," said Inglesant, "is very different from what my reading and experience in mystical religion has taught me. Is there then no medium between the Divine Life and ourselves than that of the civil government? This would seem to me most repulsive and contrary to experience."
"If you pretend to a direct revelation," said Hobbes with a smile, "I have nothing to allege against it, but, to the rest of us, Christian sovereigns are the supreme pastors and the only persons we now hear speak from God. But because God giveth faith by means of teachers, therefore I call hearing the immediate cause of faith. In a school where many are taught, some profit, others profit not; the cause of learning in them that profit is the Master, yet it cannot be thence inferred that learning is not the gift of God. All good things proceed from God, yet cannot all that have them say that they are inspired, for that implies a gift supernatural and the immediate hand of God, which he that pretends to, pretends to be a prophet."
"I am loth to believe what you say," said Inglesant; "I am no prophet, yet I would willingly believe that God is speaking to me with an immediate voice, nay, more, that I may enter into the very life that God is leading, and partake of His nature. Also, what you now say seems to me to contradict what you said before, that we should endeavour to found our doctrine on the conceptions and ideas of things, which I take to mean a following after divine truth: nor do I see why you take the sacrament, as you say you do, except you expect some immediate communication from God in it."
The philosopher smiled. "One may see you have been taught in the Jesuits' college," he said, "and are a forward pupil and a close reasoner. But what I have said concerning faith coming by hearing need not prevent that afterwards God may convey other gifts to men by other means. Yet I confess I am not a proficient in this divine knowledge or life of which you speak; nor do I follow your master Plato very far into the same conclusions which many profess to find in him. One disputant grounds his knowledge upon the infallibility of the Church, and the other on the testimony of the private spirit. The first we need not discuss, but how do you know that your private spirit, that this divine life within you, is any other than a belief grounded on the authority and arguments of your teachers?"