T. H. As for the first words cited (Leviathan, vol. iii. p. 68) I refer the reader to the place itself; and for the words concerning Satan, I leave them to the judgment of the learned.
J. D. And for hell, he describeth the kingdom of Satan, or the kingdom of darkness, to be a confederacy of deceivers. He telleth us that the places, which set forth the torments of hell in holy Scripture, do design metaphorically a grief and discontent of mind, from the sight of that eternal felicity in others, which they themselves, through their own incredulity and disobedience, have lost. As if metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths in them, as well as literal; as if final desperation were no more than a little fit of grief or discontent; and a guilty conscience were no more than a transitory passion; as if it were a loss so easily to be borne, to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical vision; and lastly, as if the damned, besides that unspeakable loss, did not likewise suffer actual torments, proportionable in some measure to their own sins, and God’s justice.
T. H. That metaphors bear sad truths in them, I deny not. It is a sad thing to lose this present life untimely. Is it not therefore much more a sad thing to lose an eternal happy life? And I believe that he which will venture upon sin, with such danger, will not stick to do the same notwithstanding the doctrine of eternal torture. Is it not also a sad truth, that the kingdom of darkness should be a confederacy of deceivers?
J. D. Lastly, for the damned spirits, he declareth himself every where, that their sufferings are not eternal. The fire shall be unquenchable, and the torments everlasting; but it cannot be thence inferred, 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 burnt and tortured, and yet never be destroyed nor die. And though there be many places, that affirm everlasting fire, into which men may be cast successively one after another for ever; yet I find none that affirm that there shall be an everlasting life therein of any individual person. If he had said, and said only, that the pains of the damned may be lessened, as to the degree of them, or that they endure not for ever, but that after they are purged by long torments from their dross and corruptions, as gold in the fire, both the damned spirits and the devils themselves should be restored to a better condition; he might have found some ancients (who are therefore called the merciful doctors) to have joined with him; though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholic church.
T. H. Why does not his Lordship cite some place of Scripture here to prove, that all the reprobates which are dead, live eternally in torment? We read indeed, that everlasting torments were prepared for the Devil and his angels, whose natures also are everlasting; and that the Beast and the false prophet shall be tormented everlastingly; but not that every reprobate shall be so. They shall indeed be cast into the same fire; but the Scripture says plainly enough, that they shall be both body and soul destroyed there. If I had said that the devils themselves should be restored to a better condition, his Lordship would have been so kind as to have put me into the number of the merciful doctors. Truly, if I had had any warrant for the possibility of their being less enemies to the church of God than they have been, I would have been as merciful to them as any doctor of them all. As it is, I am more merciful than the Bishop.
J. D. But his shooting is not at rovers, but altogether at random, without either precedent or partner. All that eternal fire, all those torments which he acknowledgeth, is but this, that after the resurrection, the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in, after the sin committed, saving that God promised a redeemer to Adam and not to them: adding, that they shall live as they did formerly, marry and give in marriage; and consequently engender children perpetually after the resurrection, as they did before: which he calleth an immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men. It is to be presumed, that in those their second lives, knowing certainly from T. H. that there is no hope of redemption for them from corporal death upon their well-doing, nor fear of any torments after death for their ill-doing, they will pass their times here as pleasantly as they can. This is all the damnation which T. H. fancieth.
T. H. This he has urged once before, and I answered to it, that the whole paragraph was to prove, that for any text of Scripture to the contrary, men might, after the resurrection, live as Adam did on earth; and that, notwithstanding the text of St. Luke, (chap. xx. 34-36), Marry and propagate. But that they shall do so, is no assertion of mine. His Lordship knew I held, that after the resurrection there shall be at all no wicked men; but the elect (all that are, have been, and hereafter shall be) shall live on earth. But St. Peter (2 Epist. iii. 13) says, there shall then be a new heaven and a new earth.
J. D. In sum I leave it to the free judgment of the understanding reader, by these few instances which follow, to judge what the Hobbian principles are in point of religion. Ex ungue leonem.
First, that no man needs to put himself to any hazard for his faith, but may safely comply with the times. And for their faith it is internal and invisible. They have the licence that Naaman had, and need not put themselves into danger for it.
Secondly, he alloweth subjects, being commanded by their sovereign, to deny Christ. Profession with the tongue is but an external thing, and no more than any other gesture, whereby we signify our obedience: and wherein a Christian, holding firmly in his heart the faith of Christ, hath the same liberty which the prophet Elisha allowed to Naaman, &c. who by bowing before the idol Rimmon, denied the true God as much in effect, as if he had done it with his lips. Alas, why did St. Peter weep so bitterly for denying his master, out of fear of his life or members? It seems he was not acquainted with these Hobbian principles. And in the same place he layeth down this general conclusion: This we may say, that whatsoever a subject is compelled to, in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he, that in this case denieth Christ before men, but his governor and the law of his country. His instance, in a Mahometan commanded by a Christian prince to be present at divine service, is a weak mistake, springing from his gross ignorance in case-divinity, not knowing to distinguish between an erroneous conscience, as the Mahometan’s is, and a conscience rightly informed.