But it may be you will say, that the rest of the clergy, bishops, and episcopal men, no friends of yours, and against whose office Mr. Hobbes never writ anything, speak no better of his religion than you do.
It is true, he never wrote against episcopacy; and it is his private opinion, that such an episcopacy as is now in England, is the most commodious that a Christian King can use for the governing of Christ’s flock; the misgoverning whereof the King is to answer for to Christ, as the bishops are to answer for their misgovernment to the King, and to God also. Nor ever spake he ill of any of them, as to their persons: therefore I should wonder the more at the uncharitable censure of some of them, but that I see a relic still remaining of the venom of popish ambition, lurking in that seditious distinction and division between the power spiritual and civil; which they that are in love with a power to hurt all those that stand in competition with them for learning, as the Roman clergy had to hurt Galileo, do not willingly forsake. All bishops are not in every point like one another. Some, it may be, are content to hold their authority from the King’s letters patents; and these have no cause to be angry with Mr. Hobbes. Others will needs have somewhat more, they know not what, of divine right, to govern by virtue of imposition of hands, and consecration, not acknowledging their power from the King, but immediately from Christ. And these perhaps are they that are displeased with him, which he cannot help, nor has deserved; but will for all that believe the King only, and without sharers, to be the head of all the Churches within his own dominions; and that he may dispense with ceremonies, or with anything else that is not against the Scriptures, nor against natural equity; and that the consent of the Lords and Commons cannot now give him that power, but declare, for the people, their advice and consent to it. Nor can he be made believe that the safety of a state depends upon the safety of the Church, I mean of the clergy. For neither is a clergy essential to a commonwealth; and those ministers that preached sedition, pretend to be of the clergy, as well as the best. He believes rather that the safety of the Church depends on the safety of the King, and the entireness of the sovereign power; and that the King is no part of the flock of any minister or bishop, no more than the shepherd is of his sheep, but of Christ only; and all the clergy, as well as the people, the King’s flock. Nor can that clamour of his adversaries make Mr. Hobbes think himself a worse Christian than the best of them. And how will you disprove it, either by his disobedience, to the laws civil or ecclesiastical, or by any ugly action? Or how will you prove that the obedience, which springs from scorn of injustice, is less acceptable to God, than that which proceeds from fear of punishment, or hope of benefit. Gravity and heaviness of countenance are not so good marks of assurance of God’s favour, as cheerful, charitable, and upright behaviour towards men, which are better signs of religion than the zealous maintaining of controverted doctrines. And therefore I am verily persuaded, it was not his Divinity that displeased you or them, but somewhat else, which you are not willing to pretend. As for your party, that which angered you, I believe, was this passage of his Leviathan (vol. iii. p. 160); Whereas some men have pretended for their disobedience to their sovereign, a new covenant made, not with men, but with God; this also is unjust. For there is no covenant with God, but by mediation of somebody that represented God’s person; which none doth but God’s lieutenant, who hath the sovereignty under God. But this pretence of covenant with God, is so evident a lie, (this is it that angered you), even in the pretenders' own consciences, that it is not only an act of an unjust, but also of a vile and unmanly disposition.
Besides, his making the King judge of doctrines to be preached or published, hath offended you both; so has also his attributing to the civil sovereign all power sacerdotal. But this perhaps may seem hard, when the sovereignty is in a Queen. But it is because you are not subtle enough to perceive, that though man be male and female, authority is not. To please neither party is easy; but to please both, unless you could better agree amongst yourselves than you do, is impossible. Your differences have troubled the kingdom, as if you were the houses revived of York and Lancaster. A man would wonder how a little Latin and Greek should work so mightily, when the Scriptures are in English, as that the King and Parliament can hardly keep you quiet, especially in time of danger from abroad. If you will needs quarrel, decide it amongst yourselves, and draw not the people into your parties.
You were angry also for his blaming the scholastical philosophers, and denying such fine things as these: that the species or apparences of bodies come from the thing we look on, into the eye, and so make us see; and into the understanding, to make us understand; and into the memory, to make us remember: that a body may be just the same it was, and yet bigger or lesser: that eternity is a permanent now; and the like: and for detecting, further than you thought fit, the fraud of the Roman clergy. Your dislike of his divinity, was the least cause of your calling him atheist. But no more of this now.
The next head of your contumelies is to make him contemptible, and to move Mr. Boyle to pity him. This is a way of railing too much beaten to be thought witty. As for the thing itself, I doubt your intelligence is not good, and that you algebricians, and non-conformists, do but feign it, to comfort one another. For your own part, you contemn him not, or else you did very foolishly to entitle the beginning of your book, Mr. Hobbes considered; which argues he is considerable enough to you. Besides, it is no argument of contempt, to spend upon him so many angry lines as would have furnished you with a dozen of sermons. If you had in good earnest despised him, you would have let him alone, as he does Dr. Ward, Mr. Baxter, Pike, and others, that have reviled him as you do. As for his reputation beyond the seas, it fades not yet: and because perhaps you have no means to know it, I will cite you a passage of an Epistle, written by a learned Frenchman to an eminent person in France, a passage not impertinent to the point now in question. It is in a volume of Epistles, the fourth in order, and the words (page 167) concerning chemists, are these: Truly, Sir, as much as I admire them, when I see them lute an alembic handsomely, filter a liquor, build an athanor, so much I dislike them when I hear them discourse upon the subject of their operations; and yet they think all they do, is nothing in respect of what they say. I wish they would take less pains, and be at less charges; and whilst they wash their hands after their work, they would leave to those that attend to the polishing of their discourse, I mean, the Galileos, the Descarteses, the Hobbeses, the Bacons, and the Gassendis, to reason upon their work, and themselves to hear what the learned and judicious shall tell them, such as are used to discern the differences of things. Quam scit uterque libens censebo exerceat artem. And more to the same purpose.
What is here said of chymists, is applicable to all other mechanics.
Every man that hath spare money, can get furnaces, and buy coals. Every man that hath spare money, can be at the charge of making great moulds, and hiring workmen to grind their glasses; and so may have the best and greatest telescopes. They can get engines made, and apply them to the stars; recipients made, and try conclusions; but they are never the more philosophers for all this. It is laudable, I confess, to bestow money upon curious or useful delights; but that is none of the praises of a philosopher. And yet, because the multitude cannot judge, they will pass with the unskilful, for skilful in all parts of natural philosophy. And I hear now, that Hugenius and Eustachio Divini are to be tried by their glasses, who is the more skilful in optics of the two; but for my part, before Mr. Hobbes his book De Homine came forth, I never saw any thing written on that subject intelligibly. Do not you tell me now, according to your wonted ingenuity, that I never saw Euclid’s, Vitellio’s, and many other men’s Optics; as if I could not distinguish between geometry and optics.
So also of all other arts; not every one that brings from beyond seas a new gin, or other jaunty device, is therefore a philosopher. For if you reckon that way, not only apothecaries and gardeners, but many other sorts of workmen, will put in for, and get the prize. Then, when I see the gentlemen of Gresham College apply themselves to the doctrine of motion, (as Mr. Hobbes has done, and will be ready to help them in it, if they please, and so long as they use him civilly,) I will look to know some causes of natural events from them, and their register, and not before: for nature does nothing but by motion.
I hear that the reason given by Mr. Hobbes, why the drop of glass so much wondered at, shivers into so many pieces, by breaking only one small part of it, is approved for probable, and registered in their college. But he has no reason to take it for a favour: because hereafter the invention may be taken, by that means, not for his, but theirs.
To the rest of your calumnies the answers will be short, and such as you might easily have foreseen. And first, for his boasting of his learning, it is well summed up by you in these words: It was a motion made by one, whom I will not name, that some idle person should read over all his books, and collecting together his arrogant and supercilious speeches, applauding himself, and despising all other men, set them forth in one synopsis, with this title, Hobbius de se. What a pretty piece of pageantry this would make, I shall leave to your own thoughts.