It is not likely that Hobbes and Bunyan were acquainted; they lived in distant parts of the country. Bunyan's Pilgrim, which was the foundation of his wide-spread fame, was not published till 1678, when the Leviathan philosopher was ninety years of age; he died in 1679. Hobbes' company were the learned and illustrious among men,—the Des Carteses, Gassendis, and Wallises of his age; while Bunyan associated with the despised Nonconformists. Nor is is likely that Bunyan read the Leviathan; Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, The Practice of Piety, Fox's Martyrs, and, above all, his Bible, constituted his library during his imprisonment for conscience-sake, which lasted from 1660 to 1672. Had he suffered from Hobbes's philosophy, he would have proclaimed it upon the house-tops, especially in his Grace Abounding, that others might have been guarded from such dangerous scepticism. The Vision of Hobbes was doubtless intended to render the forgery more popular.
George Offor.
Hackney, Jan. 1851.
THE MOTHER CHURCH OF THE SAXONS.
In "Notes and Queries" (Vol. ii., p. 478.) Sir Henry Ellis observes, that—
"Although St. Martin's, Canterbury, is commonly called the mother church of England on account of its having been the first used here by Augustine, tradition represents, that when this missionary arrived in Kent, he found an ancient church on the site of what is now called St. Martin's."
Sir H. Ellis adds, that—
"A charter of King Canute's styles Saviour's church, Canterbury, the mother and mistress of all churches in the kingdom of England."-Æcclesia Salvatoris, &c.
I conceive these accounts to be perfectly reconcilable. From Bede's Ecclesiastical History (b. i., caps. 25, 26.), we learn that, on the east side of Canterbury, in the year 597, there was a church dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, that was "built while the Romans were still in the island," some two hundred years before this date. St. Martin's was the church wherein Bertha, Queen of Kent, used to pray; she having been a Christian of the Royal Family of the Franks.