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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 considerations.

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 owndoctrine,) to beoriginally 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 ; thatt nothing a man can do, is unjust ; and that $ whatever mischief one man does to another is no injury nor injustice; neither has the person, to whom the mischief is done, how great soever it be, any just reason to complain of wrong; (I think

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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,
andt to enter into compacts to remedy the fore-men-
tioned mischiefs. Now if men are obliged, by the ori-
ginal 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 obli-
gedoriginally by the same reason and natureof 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 in-
justice; and therefore herein he unavoidably con-
tradicts himself. Thus, again ; in most instances of
morality, he supposes right and wrong, just and un-
just, 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

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good ; whatever he forbids, evil ; that it is the law PROP. of the land only which makes robbery to be robbery ;* or adultery to be adultery; that the commandments, t 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,f (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.

2.- 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

PROP. (He might as well have said that human laws and 1. 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 thet 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 thatę 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, andff 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

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tecedent to, independent upon, and unalterable by PROP. all human constitutions whatsoever: In which matter 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 wil. fully breaks his faith,t 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 benevo

; lence, 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