I. compacts, have force enough of itself to hold them to PROP. in practice; and so, compacts must be acknowledged to be in fact a great addition and strengthening of men's security. But this compulsion makes no alteration in the obligation itself, and only shows that that entirely lawless state, which Mr Hobbes calls the state of nature, is by no means truly natural, or in any sense suitable to the nature and faculties of man, but, on the contrary, is a state of extremely unnatural and intolerable corruption, as I shall presently prove more fully from some other consider ations. 3. Another notorious absurdity and inconsistency in Mr. Hobbes's scheme, is this: That he all along supposes some particular branches of the law of nature (which he thinks necessary for the foundation of some parts of his own doctrine,) to be originally obligatory from the bare reason of things; at the same time that he denies and takes away innumerable others, which have plainly in the nature and reason of things the same foundation of being obligatory as the former, and without which the obligation of the former can never be solidly made out and defended. Thus, he supposes that, in the state of nature, before any compact be made, every man's own will is his only law; that nothing a man can do, is unjust; and that whatever mischief one man does to another is no injury nor injustice; neither has the per ́son, to whom the mischief is done, how great soever it be, any just reason to complain of wrong; (I think * Unicuique licebat facere quæcunque libebat.-De Cive, c. 1. § 10. + Consequens est, ut nihil dicendum sit injustum. Nomina justi et injusti, locum in hac conditione non habent.-Leviath. c. 13. Ex his sequitur, injuriam nemini fieri posse, nisi eiquocum initur pactum.Siquis alicui noceat, quocum nihil pactus est, damnum ei infert, non injuriam.Etenim si is qui damnum recipit, injuriam expostularet; is qui fecit sic diceret, quid tu mihi? quare facerem ego tuo potius, quam meo libitu ? &c. In qua ratione, ubi nulla intercesserunt pacta, non video quid sit quod possit reprehendi. De Cive, c. 3, § 4. I. PROP. it may here reasonably be presumed, that if Mr. Hobbes had lived in such a state of nature, and had happened to be himself the suffering party, he would in this case have been of another opinion :) And yet at the same time he supposes, that in the same state of nature men are by all means obliged* to seek peace, and† to enter into compacts to remedy the fore-mentioned mischiefs. Now if men are obliged, by the original reason and nature of things to seek terms of peace, and to get out of the pretended natural state of war, as soon as they can; how come they not to be obliged originally by the same reason and nature of things, to live from the beginning in universal benevolence, and avoid entering into the state of war at all? He must needs confess they would be obliged to do so, did not self-preservation necessitate them every man to war upon others: But this cannot be true of the first aggressor; whom yet Mr Hobbes, in the place‡ now cited, vindicates from being guilty of any injustice; and therefore herein he unavoidably contradicts himself. Thus, again; in most instances of morality, he supposes right and wrong, just and unjust, to have no foundation in the nature of things, but to depend entirely on positive laws; that the rules or distinctions of good and evil, honest and dis honest, are mere civil constitutions; and whatever the chief magistrate commands, is to be accounted * Prima et fundamentalis lex nuturæ est, quærendam esse pacem, ubi haberi potest, &c.-De Cive, c. 2. § 2. + See De Cive. c. 2 and 3. Ex his sequitur, injuriam nemini fieri posse, &c. Regulas boni et mali, justi et injusti, honesti et inhonesti, esse leges civiles; ideoque quod legislator præceperit, id pro bono, quod vetuerit, id pro malo habendum esse.-De Cive, c. 12. § 1. Quod actio justa vel injusta sit, a jure imperantis provenit. Reges legitimi quæ imperant, justa faciunt imperando ; quæ vetant, vetando faciunt injusta.- De Cive, c. 12. § 1. [In which section it is worth observing, how he ridiculously interprets those words of Solomon, "Dabis servo tuo cor docile ut possit discernere inter bonum et malum," to signify not his understanding or discerning, but his decreeing what shall be good, and what evil.] good; whatever he forbids, evil; that it is the law PROP. of the land only which makes robbery to be robbery ;* 1. or adultery to be adultery; that the commandments,† to honour our parents, to do no murder, not to commit adultery, and all the other laws of God and nature, are no further obligatory than the civil power shall think fit to make them so; nay, that where the supreme authority commands men to worship God by an image or idol, in heathen countries,‡ (for in this instance he cautiously excepts Christian ones,) it is lawful, and their duty to do it; and (agreeably, as a natural consequence to all this,) that it is men's positive duty to obey the commands of the civil power in all things, even in things clearly and directly against their conscience; (that is, that it is their positive duty to do that which at the same time they know plainly it is their duty not to do ;)§ keeping up indeed always in their own minds an inward desire to observe the laws of nature and conscience, but not being bound to observe them in their outward actions, except when it is safe so to do; Si tamen lex civilis jubeat invadere aliquid, non est illud furtum, adulterium, &c.-De Cive, c. 14. sec. 10. Sequitur ergo, legibus illis, non occides, non mæchabere, non furabere, parentes honorabis; nihil aliud præcepisse Christum, quam ut cives et subditi suis principibus et summis imperatoribus in quæstionibus omnibus circa meum, tuum, suum, alienum, absolute obedirent.-De Cive, c. 17. § 10. Si quæratur an obediendum civitati sit, si imperetur Deum colere sub imagine, coram iis quid id fieri honorificum esse putant, certè faciendum est.-De Cive, cap. 15. § 18. || Universaliter et in omnibus obedire obligamur.-De Cive, c. 14. § 10. Doctrina alia, quæ obedientiæ civili repugnat, est, quicquid faciat civis quicunque contra conscientiam suam, peccatum esse.-Leviath. c. 29. Opinio eorum qui docent, peccare subditos, quoties mandata principum suorum, quæ sibi injusta videntur esse, exsequuntur; et erronea est, et inter eas numeranda, quæ obedientiæ civili adversantur. -De Cive, c. 12, sec. 2. § Concludendum est, legem naturæ semper et ubique obligare in foro interno, sive conscientia, non semper in foro externo, sed tum solummodo, cum secure id fieri possit.-De Cive, c. 3. P I. PROP. (He might as well have said that human laws and constitutions have* power to make light be darkness, and darkness light; to make sweet be bitter, and bitter sweet: And, indeed, as one absurdity will naturally lead a man into another, he does say something very like it; namely, that thef civil authority is to judge of all opinions and doctrines whatsoever ; tof determine questions philosophical, mathematical; and, because indeed the signification of words is arbitrary, even arithmetical ones also; as whether a man shall presume to affirm that two and three make five or not:) And yet at the same time, some particular things, which it would either have been too flagrantly scandalous for him to have made depending upon human laws; as that God is to be loved, honoured, and adored ;** that a man ought not to murder his parents; and the like: Or else, which were of necessity to be supposed for the foundation of his own scheme ;tt as that compacts ought to be faithfully performed, and‡‡ obedience to be duly paid to civil powers: The obligation of these things he is forced to deduce entirely from the internal reason and fitness of the things themselves;|||| an * Quæ si tanta potentia est stultorum sententiis atque jussis, ut eorum suffragiis rerum natura vertatur cur non sanciunt, ut quæ mala perniciosaque sunt, habeantur pro bonis ac salutaribus ?-Cicero de Legib. lib. 1. + De Cive, c. 6. sec. 11. || Ibid. c. 18. sec. 4. Ibid. c. 17. sec. 12. Neque enim an honorificè de Deo sentiendum sit, neque an sit amandus, timendus, colendus, dubitari potest. Sunt enim hæc religionum per omnes gentes communia.-De Homine, cap. 14. **Si is qui summum habet imperium, seipsum, imperantem dico, interficere alicui imperet, non tenetur. Neque parentem, &c. cùm filius mori quam vivere infamis atque exosus malit. Et alii casus sunt, cum mandata facta inhonesta sunt, &c.-De Cive, c. 6. sec. 13. ++ Lex naturalis est pactis standum esse, sive fidem observandam esse.-De Cive, c. 3. sec. 1. Lex naturalis omnes leges civiles jubet observari.—Ibid. c. 14. sec: 10. Legem civilem, quæ non sit lata in contumeliam Dei (cujus respectu ipsæ civitates non sunt sui juris, nec dicuntur leges ferre, &c.) De Cive, c. 14. sec. 10. Pacti violatio, &c.See de Cive, c. 3. sec 3. I. tecedent to, independent upon, and unalterable by PROP. all human constitutions whatsoever: In which mat-. ter he is guilty of the grossest absurdity and inconsistency that can be. For if those greatest and strongest of all our obligations; to love and honour God, for instance, or, to perform compacts faithfully ; depend not at all on any human constitution, but must of necessity (to avoid making obligations reciprocally depend on each other in a circle,) be confessed to arise originally from, and be founded in, the eternal reason and unalterable nature and relations of things themselves; and the nature and force of these obligations be sufficiently clear and evident; so that he who dishonours God,* or wilfully breaks his faith,† is (according to Mr Hobbes's own reasoning) guilty of as great an absurdity in practice, and of as plainly contradicting the right reason of his own mind, as he who in a dispute is reduced to a necessity of asserting something inconsistent with itself; and the original obligation to these duties can from hence only be distinctly deduced : Then, for the same reason, all the other duties likewise of natural religion; such as universal benevolence, justice, equity, and the like, (which I have before proved to receive in like manner their power of obliging from the eternal reason and relations of things,) must needs be obligatory, antecedent to any consideration of positive compact, and unalterably and independently on all human constitutions whatsoever: And consequently Mr Hobbes's whole * See de Cive, c. 14. sec. 10. + Est similitudo quædam inter id, quod in vita communi_vocatur injuria, et id quod in scholis solet appellari absurdum. Quemadmodum enim is, qui argumentis cogitur ad negationem assertionis quam prius asseruerat, dicitur redigi ad absurdum; eodem modo is, qui præ animi impotentia facit vel omittit id quod se non facturum vel non omissurum pacto suo ante promiserat, injuriam facit; neque minus in contradictionem incidit, quam qui in scholis reducitur ad absurdum.Est itaque injuria, absurditas, quædam in conversatione, sicut absurditas, injuria quædam est in disputatione.De Cive, c. 3. sec. 3. |