Thutting his door, he fell to fmoaking, thinking, and writing for feveral hours. He retained a friend or two at court, and especially the lord Arlington, to protect him if occafion fhould require. He used to fay, that it was lawful to make ufe of ill inftruments to do ourfelves good: If I were caft,' fays he, into a deep pit, and the devil thould put down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it to be drawn out by it.' Towards the end of his life he had very few books, and those he read but very little; thinking he was now able only to digeft what he had for'merly fed upon. If company came to vifit him, he would be free in difcourfe till he was preffed or contradicted; and then he had the infirmities of being thort and peevish, and referring to his writings for better fatisfaction. His friends, who had the liberty of introducing ftrangers to him, made these terms with them before their admiffion, that they should not dispute with the old man, nor contradict him."

After mentioning the apprehenfions Hobbes was under, when the parliament cenfured his book, and the methods he took to escape perfecution, Dr. Kennet proceeds in the following terms: "It is not much to be doubted, that upon this occafion he began to make a more open fhew of religion and church communion. He now frequented the chapel, joined in the fervice, and was generally a partaker of the holy facrament: and whenever any trangers in converfation with him feemed to question his belief, he would always appeal to his conformity in divine fervices, and referred them to the chaplain for a teftimony of it. Others thought it a mere compliance to the orders of the family, and observed, that in city and country he never went to any parifh church; and even in the chapel upon Sundays, he went out after prayers, and turned his back upon the fermon; and when any friend asked the reafon of it, he gave no other but this, they could teach him nothing, but what he knew.' He did not conceal his hatred to the clergy; but it was visible that the hatred was owing to his fear of their civil intereft and power. He had often a jealoufy, that the bithops would burn him: and of all the bench he was most afraid of the bishop of Sarum, because he had moft offended him; thinking every man's fpirit to be remembrance and revenge. After the Reftoration, he watched all opportunities to ingratiate himself with the king and his prime ministers; and looked upon his penfion to be more valuable, as an earnest of favour and protection, than upon any other account. His following courfe of life was to be free from dan ger. He could not endure to be left in an empty houfe. Whenever the earl removed he would go along with him, even to his last stage, from Chatsworth to Hardwick. When he was in a very weak condition, he dared not to be left behind, but made his way upon a feather-bed in a coach, though he furvived the

journey

་

journey but a few days. He could not bear any difcourfe of death, and feemed to caft off all thoughts of it: he delighted to reckon upon longer life. The winter before he died, he made a warm coat, which he faid must laft him three years, and then he would have fuch another. In his laft fickness his frequent queftions were, Whether his difeafe was curable? and when intimations were given that he might have eafe, but no remedy, he used this expreffion, I fhall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at ;' which are reported to have been his laft fenfible words; and his lying fome days following in a filent ftupefaction, did feem owing to his mind inore than to his body. The only thought of death, that he appeared to entertain in time of health, was to take care of fome infcription on his grave. He would fuffer fome friends to dictate an epitaph, among which he was best pleased with this humour, This is the true philo fopher's ftone, &c."

After this account of Hobbes, which, though undoubtedly true in the main, feems rather too ftrongly coloured, it will be but justice to fubjoin what lord Clarendon has faid of him. This noble perfon, during his banishment, wrote a book in 1670, which was printed fix years after at Oxford with this title, "A brief View of the dangerous and pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes's Book, intituled, Leviathan." In the introduction the earl obferves, that Mr. Hobbes's "Leviathan"" contains in it good learning of all kinds, politely extracted, and very wittily and cunningly digested in a very commendable, and in a vigorous and pleasant style: and that Mr. Hobbes himself was a man of excellent parts, of great wit, fome reading, and fomewhat more thinking; one who has fpent many years in foreign parts and obfervations; understands the learned as well as the modern languages; hath long had the reputation of a great philofopher and mathematician; and in his age hath had converfation with very many worthy and extraordinary men: to which it may be, if he had been more indulgent in the more vigorous part of his life, it might have had greater influence upon the temper of his mind; whereas age feldom fubmits to thofe queftions, enquiries, and contradictions, which the laws and liberty of converfation require. And it hath been always a lamentation among Mr. Hobbes's friends, that he fpent too much time in thinking, and too little in exercifing those thoughts in the company of other men of the faine, or of as good faculties; for want whereof his natural conftitution, with age, contracted fuch a morofity, that doubting and contradicting men were never grateful to him. In a word, Mr. Hobbes is one of the most ancient acquaintance I have in the world; and of whom I have always had a great esteem, as a man, who, befides his eminent parts, learning, and knowledge,

hath

ath been always looked upon as a man of probity, and of a life free from scandal."

There have been few perfons, whose writings have had a more pernicious influence in spreading irreligion and infidelity than those of Hobbes; and yet none of his treatifes are directly levelled against revealed religion. He fometimes affects to speak with veneration of the facred writings, and exprefsly declares, that though the laws of nature are not laws, as they proceed from nature, yet" as they are given by God in Holy Scripture, they are properly called laws; for the Holy Scripture is the voice of God, ruling all things by the greateft right [z]." But though he feems here to make the laws of Scripture the laws of God, and to derive their force from his fupreme authority, yet elfewhere he fuppofes them to have no authority, but what they de rive from the prince or civil power. He fometimes feems to acknowledge inspiration to be a fupernatural gift, and the immediate hand of God: at other times he treats the pretence to it as a fign of madness, and reprefents God's fpeaking to the prophets in a dream, to be no more than the prophets dreaming that God fpake unto them. He afferts, that we have no affurance of the certainty of Scripture, but the authority of the church [A], and this he refolves into the authority of the commonwealth; and declares, that til the fovereign ruler had prescribed them, "the precepts of Scripture were not obligatory laws, but only counsel or advice, which he that was counfelled might without injustice refuse to observe, and being contrary to the laws could not without injuftice obferve;" that the word of the interpreter of Scripture is the word of God, and that the fovereign magiftrate is the interpreter of Scripture, and of all doctrines, to whofe authority we muft ftand. Nay, he carries it fo far as to pronounce [B], that Chriftians are bound in confcience to obey the laws of an infidel king in matters of religion; that "thought is free, but when it comes to confeffion of faith, the private reason muft fubmit to the public, that is to fay, to God's lieutenant." Accordingly he allows the fubject, being commanded by the fovereign, to deny Chrift in words, holding the faith of him firmly in his heart; it being in this "not he, that denieth Chrift before men, but his governor and the laws of his country." In the mean time he acknowledges the existence of God [c], and that we muft of neceffity afcribe the effects we behold to the eternal power of all powers, and caufe of all caufes; and he reproaches thofe as abfurd, who call the world, or the foul of the world, God. But then he denies that we know any thing more of him than that he exifts, and feems plainly to make him corporeal ;

De Cive, c. iii. s, 33,
Leviathan, p. 196.

[B] De Cive, c. 17. Leviathan, p. 169, 283, 284.

[] Leviathan, p. 238.271.

for

for he affirms, that whatever is not body is nothing at all. And though he fometimes feems to acknowledge religion and its obligations, and that there is an honour and worship due to God; prayer, thanksgivings, oblations, &c. yet he advances principles, which evidently tend to fubvert all religion. The account he gives of it is this, that " from the fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales, publicly allowed, arifeth religion; not allowed, fuperftition:" and he refolves religion into things which he himself derides, namely, "opinions of ghofts, ignorance of fecond caufes, devotion to what men-fear, and taking of things cafual for prognoftics." He takes pains in many places to prove man a neceffary agent, and openly derides the doctrine of a future ftate: for he says, that the belief of a future ftate after death," is a belief grounded upon other men's faying, that they knew it fupernaturally; or, that they knew thofe, that knew them, that knew others that knew it fupernaturally." But it is not revealed religion only, of which Hobbes makes light; he goes farther, as will appear by running over a few more of his maxims. He afferts, "that, by the law of nature, every man hath a right to all things, and over all perfons; and that the natural condition of man is a ftate of war, a war of all men against all men: that there is no way fo reasonable for any man, as by force or wiles to gain a mastery over all other perfons that he can, till he fees no other power strong enough to endanger him: that the civil laws are the only rules of good and evil, juft and unjust, honest and dishonest; and that, antecedently to fuch laws, every action is in its own nature indifferent; that there is nothing good or evil in itself, nor any common laws conftituting what is naturally just and unjust ; that all things are measured by what every man judgeth fit, where there is no civil government, and by the laws of fociety, where there is: that the power of the fovereign is abfolute, and that he is not bound by any compacts with his fubjects: that nothing the fovereign can do to the fubject, can properly be called injurious or wrong; and that the king's word is fufficient to take any thing from the fubject if need be, and that the king is judge of that need." This fcheme evidently ftrikes at the foundation of all religion, natural and revealed. It tends not only to fubvert the authority of Scripture, but to deftroy God's moral government of the world. It confounds the natural differences of good and evil, virtue and vice. It deftroys the best principles of the human nature; and inftead of that innate benevolence, and focial difpofition which thould unite men together, fuppofes all men to be naturally in a state of war with one another. It erects an abfolute tyranny in the ftate and church which it confounds, and makes the will of the prince or governing power the fole standard of right and wrong.

Such

Such principles in religion and politics would, as it may be imagined, raife a man adverfaries. Hobbes accordingly was attacked by many confiderable perfons, and, what may feem more ftrange, by fuch as wrote against each other. For inftance, Harrington in his "Oceana," falls very often on Hobbes; and fo does fir Robert Filmer in his “ Observations concerning the Original of Government." We have already mentioned Bramhall and Clarendon; the former argued with great acuteness against that part of his fyftem, which relates to liberty and neceffity, and afterwards attacked the whole in a piece, called "The Catching of the Leviathan," publifhed in 1685; in which he undertakes to demonftrate out of Hobbes's own works, that no man, who is thoroughly an Hobbift, can be

a good Chriftian, or a good commonwealth's man, or reconcile himself to himself." Tenifon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, gave a fummary view of Hobbes's principles, in a book, called "The Creed of Mr. Hobbes examined, 1670;" to which we may add the two dialogues of Dr. Eachard between Timothy and Philautus, and Dr. Parker's book, entitled, “Difputationes de Deo & Divina Providentia." Dr. Henry More has alfo in different parts. of his works canvaffed and refuted feveral pofitions of Hobbes; and the philofopher of Malmefbury is faid to have been fo ingenuous as to own, that "whenever he discovered his own philofophy to be unfustainable, he would embrace the opinions of Dr. More." But the two greatest works against him were, Cumberland's book "De legibus Naturæ," and Cudworth's "Intellectual System:" for thefe authors do not employ themselves about his peculiar whimfies, or in vindicating revealed religion from his exceptions and cavils, but endeavour to establish the great principles of all religion and morality, which his fcheme tended to fubvert, and to fhew, that they have a real foundation in reafon and nature.

There is one peculiarity related of Hobbes, which we have not yet mentioned in the courfe of our account of him, but with which it fhall be clofed: it is, that he was afraid of apparitions and fpirits. His friends indeed have called this a fable [D]. "He was falfely accufed," fay they, "by fome, of being afraid to be alone, becaufe he was afraid of fpectres and apparitions: vain bugbears of fools, which he had chafed away by the light of his philofophy." They do not however deny, that he was afraid of being alone; they only infinuate, that it was for fear of being affaffinated. In the mean time, Bayle obferves, that Hobbes's principles of philofophy were not proper to rid him from the fear of apparitions or fpirits [E]: "a man," fays he, "would not only be very rafh, but also very extrava[1] Art: HOBBES, note N.

[D] Vita Hobbes, p. 106.

gant,