“———————— Careat successibus opto,Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.”
“———————— Careat successibus opto,Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.”
“———————— Careat successibus opto,Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.”
“———————— Careat successibus opto,
Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.”
Let him evermore want success who thinketh actions are to be judged by their events. This doctrine may be plausible to those who desire to fish in troubled waters. But it is justly hated by those which are in authority, and all those who are lovers of peace and tranquillity.
The last part of this conclusion smelleth rankly of Jeroboam (1 Kings xii. 26-28):Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David, if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem; whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem, behold thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. But by the just disposition of Almighty God, this policy turned to a sin, and was the utter destruction of Jeroboam and his family. It is not good jesting with edge-tools, nor playing with holy things: where men make their greatest fastness, many times they find most danger.
T. H.His Lordship either had a strange conscience, or understood not English. Being at Paris when there was no bishop nor church in England, and every man writ what he pleased, I resolved (when it should please God to restore the authority ecclesiastical) to submit to that authority, in whatsoever it should determine. This his Lordship construes for a temporizing and too muchindifferency in religion; and says further, that the last part of my words do smell of Jeroboam. To the contrary, I say my words were modest, and such as in duty I ought to use. And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matter of faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point,that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them.
J. D.His sixth paradox is a rapper:The civil laws are the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest; and therefore what the lawgiver commands, that is to be accounted good, what he forbids, bad. And a little after:Before empires were, just and unjust were not, as whose nature is relative to a command, every action in its own nature is indifferent. That is,just or unjust proceedeth from the right of him that commandeth. Therefore lawful kings make those things which they command just, by commanding them, and those things which they forbid, unjust by forbidding them.To this add his definition of a sin,that which one doth, or omitteth, saith, or willeth, contrary to the reason of the commonwealth, that is, the (civil) laws. Where by the laws he doth not understand the written laws, elected and approved by the whole commonwealth, but the verbal commands or mandates of him that hath the sovereign power, as we find in many places of his writings.The civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him, that is endowed with sovereign power in the commonwealth, concerningthe future actions of his subjects. And the civil laws are fastened to the lips of that man who hath the sovereign power.
Where are we? In Europe? or in Asia, where they ascribed a divinity to their kings, and, to use his own phrase, madethem mortal gods; O king, live for ever? Flatterers are the common moths of great palaces, where Alexander’s friends are more numerous than the king’s friends. But such gross, palpable, pernicious flattery as this is, I did never meet with, so derogatory both to piety and policy. What deserveth he who should do his uttermost endeavour to poison a common fountain, whereof all the commonwealth must drink? He doth the same who poisoneth the mind of a sovereign prince.
Arethe civil laws the rules of good and bad, just and unjust, honest and dishonest? And what, I pray you, are the rules of the civil law itself? Even the law of God and Nature. If the civil laws swerve from these more authentic laws, they are Lesbian rules.What the lawgiver commands is to be accounted good, what he forbids, bad.This was just the garb of the Athenian sophisters, as they are described by Plato. Whatsoever pleased the great beast, the multitude, they call holy, and just, and good. And whatsoever the great beast disliked, they called evil, unjust, profane. But he is not yet arrived at the height of his flattery.Lawful kings make those things, which they command, just by commanding them.At other times, when he is in his right wits, he talketh of sufferings, andexpecting their reward in heaven. And going to Christ by martyrdom. And if he had the fortitude to suffer death he should do better.ButI fear all this was but said in jest. How should they expect their reward in heaven, if his doctrine be true,that there is no reward in heaven? Or how should they be martyrs, if his doctrine be true, thatnone can be martyrs, but those who conversed with Christ upon earth? He addeth,before empires were, just and unjust were not. Nothing could be written more false in his sense, more dishonourable to God, more inglorious to the human nature; than that God should create man, and leave him presently without any rules, to his own ordering of himself, as the ostrich leaveth her eggs in the sand. But in truth there have been empires in the world ever since Adam. And Adam had a law written in his heart by the finger of God, before there was any civil law. Thus they do endeavour to make goodness, and justice, and honesty, and conscience, and God himself, to be empty names, without any reality, which signify nothing, further than they conduce to a man’s interest. Otherwise he would not, he could not, say, thatevery action as it is invested with its circumstances, is indifferent in its own nature.
T. H.My sixth paradox he calls a rapper. A rapper, a swapper, and such like terms, are his Lordship’s elegancies. But let us see what this rapper is: it is this; the civil laws are the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest. Truly, I see no other rules they have. The Scriptures themselves were made law to us here, by the authority of the commonwealth, and are therefore part of the law civil. If they were laws in their own nature, then were they laws over all the world, and men were obliged to obey them in America, assoon as they should be shown there, though without a miracle, by a friar. What is unjust, but the transgression of a law?Lawtherefore was before unjust: and the law was made known by sovereign power before it was a law: thereforesovereign powerwas antecedent both tolawandinjustice. Who then made unjust but sovereign kings or sovereign assemblies? Where is now the wonder of this rapper,that lawful kings make those things which they command just, by commanding them, and those things which they forbid unjust, by forbidding them? Just and unjust were surely made. If the king made them not, who made them else? For certainly the breach of a civil law is a sin against God. Another calumny which he would fix upon me, is, that I make the King’s verbal commands to be laws. How so? Because I say,the civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him that hath the sovereign power, concerning the future actions of his subjects. What verbal command of a king can arrive at the ears of all his subjects, which it must do ere it be a law, without the seal of the person of the commonwealth, which is here the Great Seal of England? Who, but his Lordship, ever denied that the command of England was a law to Englishmen? Or that any but the King had authority to affix the Great Seal of England to any writing? And who did ever doubt to call our laws, though made in Parliament, the King’s laws? What was ever called a law, which the King did not assent to? Because the King has granted in divers cases not to make a law without the advice and assent of the lords and commons, therefore when thereis no parliament in being, shall the Great Seal of England stand for nothing? What was more unjustly maintained during the Long Parliament, besides the resisting and murdering of the King, than this doctrine of his Lordship’s? But the Bishop endeavoured here to make the multitude believe I maintain, that the King sinneth not, though he bid hang a man for making his apparel otherwise than he appointed, or his servant for negligent attendance. And yet he knew I distinguished always between the King’s natural and politic capacity. What name should I give to this wilful slander? But here his Lordship enters into passion, and exclaims:Where are we, in Europe or in Asia? Gross, palpable, pernicious flattery, poisoning of a commonwealth, poisoning the King’s mind.But where was his Lordship when he wrote this? One would not think he was in France, nor that this doctrine was written in the year 1658, but rather in the year 1648, in some cabal of the King’s enemies. But what did put him into this fit of choler? Partly, this very thing, that he could not answer my reasons; but chiefly, that he had lost upon me so much School-learning in our controversy touchingLiberty and Necessity: wherein he was to blame himself, for believing that the obscure and barbarous language of School-divinity, could satisfy an ingenuous reader, as well as plain and perspicuous English. Do I flatter the King? Why am I not rich? I confess his Lordship has not flattered him here.
J. D.Something there is which he hath a confused glimmering of, as the blind man seesmen walking like trees, which he is not able to apprehendand express clearly. We acknowledge, that though the laws or commands of a sovereign prince be erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as a subject cannot approve for good in themselves; yet he is bound to acquiesce, and may not oppose or resist, otherwise than by prayers and tears, and at the most by flight. We acknowledge that the civil laws have power to bind the conscience of a Christian, in themselves, but not from themselves, but from him who hath said,Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. Either they bind Christian subjects to do their sovereign’s commands, or to suffer for the testimony of a good conscience. We acknowledge that in doubtful cases,semper præsumitur pro rege et lege, the sovereign and the law are always presumed to be in the right. But in plain evident cases, which admit no doubt, it is always better to obey God than man. Blunderers, whilst they think to mend one imaginary hole, make two or three real ones. They who derive the authority of the Scriptures or God’s law from the civil laws of men, are like those who seek to underprop the heavens from falling, with a bulrush. Nay, they derive not only the authority of the Scripture, but even the law of nature itself, from the civil law.The laws of nature(which need no promulgation)in the condition of nature are not properly laws, but qualities which dispose men to peace and obedience. When a commonwealth is once settled, then are they actually laws, and not before.God help us, into what times are we fallen, when the immutable laws of God and nature are made to depend upon the mutable laws of mortal men, just as one shouldgo about to control the sun by the authority of the clock.
T. H.Hitherto he never offered to mend any of the doctrines he inveighs against; but here he does. He says I have a glimmering of something I was not able to apprehend and express clearly. Let us see his Lordship’s more clear expression.We acknowledge, saith he,that though the laws or commands of a sovereign prince be erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as a subject cannot approve for good in themselves, yet he is bound to acquiesce, and may not oppose or resist otherwise than by prayers and tears, and at the most by flight. Hence it follows clearly, that when a sovereign has made a law, though erroneous, then, if his subject oppose it, it is a sin. Therefore I would fain know, when a man has broken that law by doing what it forbad, or by refusing to do what it commanded, whether he have opposed this law or not. If to break the law be to oppose it, he granteth it. Therefore his Lordship has not here expressed himself so clearly, as to make men understand the difference between breaking a law and opposing it. Though there be some difference between breaking of a law, and opposing those that are sent with force to see it executed; yet between breaking and opposing the law itself, there is no difference. Also, though the subject think the law just, as when a thief is by law condemned to die, yet he may lawfully oppose the execution, not only by prayers, tears, and flight, but also (as I think) any way he can. For though his fault were never so great, yet his endeavour to save his own life is not a fault. For the law expects it,and for that cause appointeth felons to be carried bound and encompassed with armed men to execution. Nothing is opposite to law, but sin: nothing opposite to the sheriff, but force. So that his Lordship’s sight was not sharp enough to see the difference between the law and the officer. Again,We acknowledge, says he,that the laws have power to bind the conscience of a Christian in themselves, but not from themselves. Neither do the Scriptures bind the conscience because they are Scriptures, but because they were from God. So also the book of English Statutes bindeth our consciences in itself, but not from itself, but from the authority of the king, who only in the right of God has the legislative powers. Again he saith,We acknowledge that in doubtful cases, the sovereign and the law are always presumed to be in the right. If he presume they are in the right, how dare he presume that the cases they determine are doubtful?But, saith he,in evident cases which admit no doubt, it is always better to obey God than man. Yes, and in doubtful cases also, say I. But not always better to obey the inferior pastors than the supreme pastor, which is the king. But what are those cases that admit no doubt? I know but very few, and those are such as his Lordship was not much acquainted with.
J. D.But it is not worthy of my labour, nor any part of my intention, to pursue every shadow of a question which he springeth. It shall suffice to gather a posy of flowers (or rather a bundle of weeds) out of his writings, and present them to the reader, who will easily distinguish them from healthful plants by the rankness of their smell. Such are these which follow.
T. H.As for the following posy of flowers, there wants no more to make them sweet, than to wipe off the venom blown upon some of them by his Lordship’s breath.
J. D.1.To be delighted in the imagination only of being possessed of another man’s goods, servants, or wife, without any intention to take them from him by force or fraud, is no breach of the law which saith: Thou shalt not covet.
T. H.What man was there ever, whose imagination of anything he thought would please him, was not some delight? Or what sin is there, where there is not so much as an intention to do injustice? But his Lordship would not distinguish between delight and purpose, nor between a wish and a will. This was venom. I believe that his Lordship himself, even before he was married, took some delight in the thought of it, and yet the woman then was not his own. All love is delight, but all love is not sin. Without this love of that which is not yet a man’s own, the world had not been peopled.
J. D.2.If a man by the terror of present death be compelled to do a fact against the law, he is totally excused, because no law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation; nature compelleth him to the fact.The like doctrine he hath elsewhere.When the actor doth anything against the law of nature by the command of the author, if he be obliged by former covenants to obey him, not he, but the author breaketh the law of nature.
T. H.The second flower is both sweet and wholesome.
J. D.3.It is a doctrine repugnant to civil society, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin.
T. H.It is plain, that to do what a man thinks in his own conscience to be sin, is sin; for it is a contempt of the law itself; and from thence ignorant men, out of an erroneous conscience, disobey the law, which is pernicious to all government.
J. D.4.The kingdom of God is not shut but to them that sin, that is, to them who have not performed due obedience to the laws of God; nor to them, if they believe the necessary articles of the Christian faith.
5.We must know that the true acknowledging of sin is repentance itself.
6.An opinion publicly appointed to be taught cannot be heresy; nor the sovereign princes that authorized the same, heretics.
T. H.The fourth, fifth, and sixth smell well. But to say, that the sovereign prince in England is a heretic, or that an act of parliament is heretical, stinks abominably; as it was thoughtprimo Elizabethæ.
J. D.7.Temporal and spiritual government are but two words to make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign, &c. There is no other government in this life, neither of state nor religion, but temporal.
8.It is manifest, that they, who permit a contrary doctrine to that which themselves believe and think necessary(to salvation),do against their consciences, and will, as much as in them lieth, the eternal destruction of their subjects.
T. H.The seventh and eighth are roses andjessamine. But his leaving out the words (to salvation) was venom.
J. D.9.Subjects sin if they do not worship God according to the laws of the commonwealth.
T. H.The ninth he hath poisoned, and made it not mine. He quotes my bookDe Cive, cap.XV.19, where I say,regnante Deo per solam rationem naturalem, that is,before the Scripture was given, they sinned that refused to worship God, according to the rites and ceremonies of the country; which hath no ill scent, but to undutiful subjects.
J. D.10.To believe in Jesus (in Jesum), is the same as to believe that Jesus is Christ.
T. H.And so it is always in the Scripture.
J. D.11.There can be no contradiction between the laws of God, and the laws of a Christian commonwealth.Yet, we see Christian commonwealths daily contradict one another.
T. H.The eleventh is also good. But his Lordship’s instance,that Christian commonwealths contradict one another, has nothing to do here. Their laws do indeed contradict one another, but contradict not the law of God. For God commands their subjects to obey them in all things, and his Lordship himself confesseth that their laws, though erroneous, bind the conscience. But Christian commonwealths would seldom contradict one another, if they made no doctrine law, but such as were necessary to salvation.
J. D.12.No man giveth but with intention of some good to himself. Of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good.Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of his mind.
T. H.That which his Lordship adds to the twelfth, namely, that Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of my mind, is false. For the two former did what they did for a good to themselves, which was eternal life; and the Decii for a good fame after death. And his Lordship also, if he had believed there is an eternal happiness to come, or thought a good fame after death to be anything worth, would have directed all his actions towards them, and have despised the wealth and titles of the present world.
J. D.13.There is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after death, much less of reward which is then to be given to breach of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men’s saying, that they know it supernaturally, or that they know those that knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.
T. H.The thirteenth is good and fresh.
J. D.14.David’s killing of Uriah was no injury to Uriah; because the right to do what he pleased, was given him by Uriah himself.
T. H.David himself makes this good, in saying,to thee only have I sinned.
J. D.15.To whom it belongeth to determine controversies which may arise from the divers interpretations of Scripture, he hath an imperial power over all men, which acknowledge the Scripture to be the word of God.
16.What is theft, what is murder, what is adultery, and universally what is an injury, is known by the civil law, that is, by the commands of the sovereign.
T. H.For the fifteenth, he should have disputedit with the head of the church. And as to the sixteenth, I would have asked him by what other law his Lordship would have it determined what is theft, or what is injury, than by the laws made in parliament, or by the laws which distinguish betweenmeumandtuum? His Lordship’s ignorance smells rankly ('tis his own phrase in this and many other places, which I have let pass) of his own interest. The King tells us what is sin, in that he tells us what is law. He hath authorized the clergy to dehort the people from sin, and to exhort them, by good motives both from Scripture and reason, to obey the laws; and supposeth them (though under forty years old), by the help they have in the university, able, in case the law be not written, to teach the people, old and young, what they ought to follow in doubtful cases of conscience; that is to say, they are authorized to expound the laws of nature; but not so as to make it a doubtful case, whether the King’s laws be to be obeyed or not. All they ought to do, is from the King’s authority. And therefore this my doctrine is no weed.
J. D.17. He admitteth incestuouscopulationsof the heathens,according to their heathenish laws, to have been lawful marriages. Though the Scripture teach us (Levit. xviii. 28) expressly, that for those abominations the land of Canaan spued out her inhabitants.
T. H.The seventeenth he hath corrupted with a false interpretation of the text. For in that chapter, from the beginning to verse twenty, are forbidden marriages in certain degrees of kindred. From verse twenty, which begins withMoreover, to the twenty-eighth, are forbidden sacrificing ofchildren to Moloch, and profaning of God’s name, and buggery with man and beast, with this cause expressed, (For all these abominations have the men of the land done which were before you, and the land is defiled,)that the land spue not you out also. As for marriages within the degrees prohibited, they are not referred to the abominations of the heathen. Besides, for some time after Adam, such marriages were necessary.
J. D.18.I say that no other article of faith besides this, that Jesus is Christ, is necessary to a Christian man for salvation.
19.Because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, therefore neither can his ministers, unless they be kings, require obedience in his name. They have no right of commanding, no power to make laws.
T. H.These two smell comfortably, and of Scripture. The contrary doctrine smells of ambition and encroachment of jurisdiction, or rump of the Roman tyranny.
J. D.20. I pass by his errors about oaths, about vows, about the resurrection, about the kingdom of Christ, about the power of the keys, binding, loosing, excommunication, &c., his ignorant mistakes ofmeritum congruiandcondigni, active and passive obedience, and many more, for fear of being tedious to the reader.
T. H.The terms of School divinity, of which number aremeritum congrui,meritum condigni, andpassive obedience, are so obscure, as no man living can tell what they mean; so that they that use them may admit or deny their meaning, as it shall serve their turns. I said not that this wastheir meaning, but that I thought it was so. For no man living can tell what a Schoolman means by his words. Therefore I expounded them according to their true signification. Meritex condigno, is when a thing is deserved by pact; as when I say the labourer is worthy of his hire, I meanmeritum ex condigno. But when a man of his own grace throweth money among the people, with an intention that what part soever of it any of them could catch he should have, he that catcheth merits it, not by pact, nor by precedent merit, as a labourer, but because it was congruent to the purpose of him that cast it amongst them. In all other meaning these words are but jargon, which his Lordship had learnt by rote. Alsopassive obediencesignifies nothing, except it may be calledpassive obediencewhen a man refraineth himself from doing what the law hath forbidden. For in his Lordship’s sense, the thief that is hanged for stealing, hath fulfilled the law; which I think is absurd.
J. D.His whole works are a heap of mis-shapen errors, and absurd paradoxes, vented with the confidence of a juggler, the brags of a mountebank, and the authority of some Pythagoras, or third Cato, lately dropped down from heaven.
Thus we have seen how the Hobbian principles do destroy the existence, the simplicity, the ubiquity, the eternity, and infiniteness of God, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, the hypostatical union, the kingly, sacerdotal, and prophetical office of Christ, the being and operation of the Holy Ghost, heaven, hell, angels, devils, the immortality of the soul, the Catholic and all national churches; the holy Scriptures, holy orders, the holy sacraments,the whole frame of religion, and the worship of God; the laws of nature, the reality of goodness, justice, piety, honesty, conscience, and all that is sacred. If his disciples have such an implicit faith, that they can digest all these things, they may feed withostriches.
T. H.He here concludes his first chapter with bitter reproaches, to leave in his reader, as he thought, a sting; supposing perhaps that he will read nothing but the beginning and end of his book, as is the custom of many men. But to make him lose that petty piece of cunning, I must desire of the reader one of these two things. Either that he would read with it the places of myLeviathanwhich he cites, and see not only how he answers my arguments, but also what the arguments are which he produceth against them; or else, that he would forbear to condemn me, so much as in his thought: for otherwise he is unjust. The name of Bishop is of great authority; but these words are not the words of a bishop, but of a passionate Schoolman, too fierce and unseemly in any man whatsoever. Besides, they are untrue. Who that knows me, will say that I have the confidence of a juggler, or that I use to brag of anything, much less that I play the mountebank? What my works are, he was no fit judge. But now he has provoked me, I will say thus much of them, that neither he, (if he had lived), nor I, if I would, could extinguish the light which is set up in the world by the greatest part of them: and for these doctrines which he impugneth, I have few opposers, but such whose profit, or whose fame in learning is concerned in them. He accuses me first of destroying the existenceof God; that is to say, he would make the world believe I were an atheist. But upon what ground? Because I say, that God is a spirit, butcorporeal. But to say that, is allowed me by St. Paul, that says (1 Cor. xv. 44):There is a spiritual body, and there is an animal body. He that holds there is a God, and that God is really somewhat, (forbodyis doubtlessly areal substance), is as far from being an atheist, as it is possible to be. But he that says God is anincorporeal substance, no man can be sure whether he be an atheist or not. For no man living can tell whether there be anysubstanceat all, that is not alsocorporeal. For neither the wordincorporeal, norimmaterial, nor any word equivalent to it, is to be found in Scripture, or in reason. But on the contrary, thatthe Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ, is found in Colos. ii. 9; and Tertullian maintains that God is either acorporeal substanceornothing. Nor was he ever condemned for it by the church. For why? Not only Tertullian, but all the learned, callbody, not only that which one can see, but also whatsoever has magnitude, or that is somewhere; for they had greater reverence for the divine substance, than that they durst think it had nomagnitude, or wasnowhere. But they that hold God to be a phantasm, as did the exorcists in the Church of Rome, that is, such a thing as were at that time thought to be the sprights, that were said to walk in churchyards and to be the souls of men buried, do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their heartsthey thought God a substance, and would also, if they had known whatsubstanceand whatcorporealmeant, have said he was a corporeal substance. So that thisatheism by consequenceis a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church. He also that says that God iswholly here, andwholly there, andwholly every where, destroys by consequence the unity of God, and the infiniteness of God, and the simplicity of God. And this the Schoolmen do, and are thereforeatheists by consequence, and yet they do not all say in their hearts that there is no God. So also his Lordship by exempting the will of man from being subject to the necessity of God’s will or decree, denies byconsequencethe Divine prescience, which also will amount toatheism by consequence. But out of this, that God is aspirit corporealandinfinitely pure, there can no unworthy or dishonourable consequence be drawn.
Thus far to his Lordships first chapter, in justification of myLeviathanas to matter of religion; and especially to wipe off that unjust slander cast upon me by the Bishop of Derry. As for the second chapter, which concerns my civil doctrines, since my errors there, if there be any, will not tend very much to my disgrace, I will not take the pains to answer it.
Whereas his Lordship has talked in his discourse here and there ignorantly of heresy, and some others have not doubted to say publicly, that there be many heresies in myLeviathan; I will add hereunto, for a general answer, an historical relation concerning the word Heresy, from the first use of it amongst the Grecians till this present time.