Perhaps you will take for a sign of Mr. Hobbes his ill meaning, that his Majesty was displeased with him. And truly I believe he was displeased for a while, but not very long. They that complained of, and misconstrued his writings, were his Majesty’s good subjects, and reputed wise and learned men, and thereby obtained to have their misconstruction believed for some little time: but the very next summer after his coming away, two honourable persons of the Court, that came over into England, assured him, that his Majesty had a good opinion of him; and others since have told me, that his Majesty said openly, that he thought Mr. Hobbes never meant him hurt. Besides, his Majesty hath used him more graciously than is ordinary to so humble a person as he is, and so great a delinquent as you would make him; and testified his esteem of him in his bounty. What argument now can you draw from hence more than this, that his Majesty understood his writings better than his accusers did?
I admire in the next place, upon what ground you accuse him, and with him all those that have approved his Leviathan, with atheism. I thought once, that that slander had had some, though not firm, ground, in that you call his a new divinity: but for that point he will allege these words of his Leviathan (p. 438): By which it seemeth to me (with submission nevertheless, both in this and all other questions whereof the determination dependeth on the Scriptures, to the interpretation of the Bible authorized by the commonwealth, whose subject I am), that, &c. What is there in these words, but modesty and obedience? But you were at this time in actual rebellion. Mr. Hobbes, that holds religion to be a law, did in order thereto condemn the maintenance of any of his opinions against the law; and you that reproach him for them, upon your own account should also have shown by your own learning, wherein the Scripture, which was his sole proof, was miscited or misconstrued by him; (for he submitted to the laws, that is to say, to the King’s doctrine, not to yours); and not have insulted for the victory won by the power of the law, to which you were then an enemy.
Another argument of atheism you take from his denying immaterial or incorporeal substances. Let any man impartially now compare his religion with yours, by this very measure, and judge which of the two savours most of atheism.
It is by all Christians confessed, that God is incomprehensible; that is to say, that there is nothing can arise in our fancy from the naming of him, to resemble him either in shape, colour, stature, or nature; there is no idea of him; he is like nothing that we can think on. What then ought we to say of him? What attributes are to be given him (not speaking otherwise than we think, nor otherwise than is fit,) by those who mean to honour him? None but such as Mr. Hobbes hath set down, namely, expressions of reverence, such as are in use amongst men for signs of honour, and consequently signify goodness, greatness, and happiness; and either absolutely put, as good, holy, mighty, blessed, just, wise, merciful, &c., or superlative, as most good, most great, most mighty, almighty, most holy, &c., or negative of whatsoever is not perfect, as infinite, eternal, and the like: and not such as neither reason nor Scripture hath approved for honourable. This is the doctrine that Mr. Hobbes hath written, both in his Leviathan, and in his book De Cive, and when occasion serves, maintains. What kind of attribute, I pray you, is, immaterial, or incorporeal substance? Where do you find it in the Scripture? Whence came it hither, but from Plato and Aristotle, heathens, who mistook those thin inhabitants of the brain they see in sleep, for so many incorporeal men; and yet allowed them motion, which is proper only to things corporeal? Do you think it an honour to God to be one of these? And would you learn Christianity from Plato and Aristotle? But seeing there is no such word in the Scripture, how will you warrant it from natural reason? Neither Plato nor Aristotle did ever write of, or mention, an incorporeal spirit. For they could not conceive how a spirit, which in their language was πνεῦμα, in ours a wind, could be incorporeal. Do you understand the connexion of substance and incorporeal? If you do, explain it in English; for the words are Latin. It is something, you will say, that being without body, stands under——. Stands under what? Will you say, under accidents? Almost all the Fathers of the Church will be against you; and then you are an atheist. Is not Mr. Hobbes his way of attributing to God, that only which the Scriptures attribute to him, or what is never any where taken but for honour, much better than this bold undertaking of yours, to consider and decipher God’s nature to us?
For a third argument of atheism, you put, that he says: besides the creation of the world, there is no argument to prove a Deity: and, that it cannot be evinced by any argument that the world had a beginning; and, that whether it had or no, is to be decided not by argument, but by the magistrate’s authority. That it may be decided by the Scriptures, he never denied; therefore in that also you slander him. And as for arguments from natural reason, neither you, nor any other, have hitherto brought any, except the creation, that has not made it more doubtful to many men than it was before. That which he hath written concerning such arguments, in his book De Corpore: opinions, saith he (vol. I. p. 412), concerning the nature of infinite and eternal, as the chiefest of the fruits of wisdom, God hath reserved to himself, and made judges of them those men whose ministry he meant to use in the ordering of religion; and therefore I cannot praise those men that brag of demonstration of the beginning of the world from natural reason: and again (vol. I. p. 414), wherefore I pass by those questions of infinite and eternal, contenting myself with such doctrine concerning the beginning and magnitude of the world, as I have learned from the Scripture, confirmed by miracles, and from the use of my country, and from the reverence I owe to the law. This, Doctor, is not ill said, and yet it is all you ground your slander on, which you make to sneak vilely under a crooked paraphrase.
These opinions, I said, were to be judged by those to whom God has committed the ordering of religion; that is, to the supreme governors of the church, that is, in England, to the King: by his authority, I say, it ought to be decided, not what men shall think, but what they shall say in those questions. And methinks you should not dare to deny it; for it is a manifest relapse into your former crimes.
But why do you style the King by the name of magistrate? Do you find magistrate to signify any where the person that hath the sovereign power, or not every where the sovereign’s officers. And I think you knew that; but you and your fellows (your fellows I call all those that are so besmeared all over with the filth of the same crime, as not to be distinguished) meant to make your Assembly the sovereign, and the King your magistrate. I pray God you do not mean so still, if opportunity be presented.
There has hitherto appeared in Mr. Hobbes his doctrine, no sign of atheism; and whatsoever can be inferred from the denying of incorporeal substances, makes Tertullian, one of the ancientest of the Fathers, and most of the doctors of the Greek Church, as much atheists as he. For Tertullian, in his treatise De Carne Christi, says plainly: omne quod est, corpus est sui generis. Nihil est incorporale, nisi quod non est: that is to say, whatsoever is anything, is a body of its kind. Nothing is incorporeal, but that which has no being. There are many other places in him to the same purpose: for that doctrine served his turn to confute the heresy of them that held that Christ had no body, but was a ghost; also of the soul he speaks, as of an invisible body. And there is an epitome of the doctrine of the Eastern Church, wherein is this, that they thought angels and souls were corporeal, and only called incorporeal, because their bodies were not like ours. And I have heard that a Patriarch of Constantinople, in a Council held there, did argue for the lawfulness of painting angels, from this, that they were corporeal. You see what fellows in atheism you join with Mr. Hobbes.
How unfeigned your own religion is, may be argued strongly, demonstratively, from your behaviour, that I have already recited. Do you think, you that have committed so abominable sins, not through infirmity, or sudden transport of passion, but premeditately, wilfully, for twenty years together, that any rational man can think you believe yourselves, when you preach of heaven and hell, or that you do not believe one another to be cheats and impostors, and laugh at silly people in your sleeves for believing you; or that you applaud not your own wit for it; though for my part I could never conceive that very much wit was requisite for the making of a knave? And in the pulpit most of you have been a scandal to Christianity, by preaching up sedition, and crying down moral virtue. You should have preached against unjust ambition, covetousness, gluttony, malice, disobedience to government, fraud, and hypocrisy: but for the most part you preached your own controversies, about who should be uppermost, or other fruitless and unedifying doctrines. When did any of you preach against hypocrisy? You dare not in the pulpit, I think, so much as name it, lest you set the church a laughing: and you in particular, when you said in a sermon, that σοψίης was not in Homer. What edification could the people have from that, though it had been true, as it is false? For it is in his Iliad, XV. 412. Another I heard make half his sermon of this doctrine, that God never sent a great deliverance, but in a great danger: which is indeed true, because the greatness of the danger makes the greatness of the deliverance, but for the same cause ridiculous; and the other half he took to construe the Greek of his text: and yet such sermons are much applauded. But why? First, because they make not the people ashamed of any vice. Secondly, because they like the preacher, for using to find fault with the government or governors. Thirdly, for their vehemence, which they mistake for zeal. Fourthly, for their zeal to their own ends, which they mistake for zeal to God’s worship. I have heard besides divers sermons made by fanatics, young men, and whom, by that and their habit, I imagined to be apprentices; and found little difference between their sermons, and the sermons of such as you, either in respect of wisdom, or eloquence, or vehemence, or applause of common people.
Therefore, I wonder how you can pretend, as you do in your petition for a dispensation from the ceremonies of the Church, to be either better preachers than those that conform, or to have tenderer consciences than other men. You that have covered such black designs with the sacred words of Scripture, why can you not as well find in your hearts to cover a black gown with a white surplice? Or what idolatry do you find in making the sign of the cross, when the law commands it? Though I think you may conform without sin, yet I think you might have been also dispensed with without sin, if you had dispensed in like manner with other ministers that subscribed to the articles of the Church. And if tenderness of conscience be a good plea, you must give Mr. Hobbes also leave to plead tenderness of conscience to his new Divinity, as well as you. I should wonder also, how any of you should dare to speak to a multitude met together, without being limited by his Majesty what they shall say, especially now that we have felt the smart of it, but that it is a relic of the ecclesiastical policy of the Popes, that found it necessary for the disjoining of the people from their too close adherence to their Kings or other civil governors.