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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
The article compares the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker with Thomas Hobbes's Christian Commonwealth focussing primarily on the political dimension of religious life. The comparison serves to undermine the position—still surprisingly widespread—which sees Hobbes as sacrificing religion to political stability by displaying the extent to which and the way in which Hooker takes religious practice (since Constantine) to be a matter of public policy requiring authoritative determination. Also, a somewhat novel suggestion is elaborated regarding the relationship between the “rational” and “religious” parts of Leviathan. It is suggested that the first part of Leviathan is a kind of conceptual primer—a guide to Scriptural exegesis—and that the parts of Leviathan thus form an integrated whole.
L'objet de cette étude est de comparer la politique ecclésiastique de Richard Hooker au commonwealth chrétien de Thomas Hobbes en insistant principalement sur la dimension politique de la vie religieuse. La comparaison servira à contester la thèse, encore trop répandue, selon laquelle Hobbes aurait sacrifié la religion à la stabilité politique; on démontrera dans quelle mesure et de quelle manière la pratique religieuse (depuis Constantin) constitue pour Hooker une question relevant de la politique et exigeant une détermination autoritaire. En outre, on tentera d'établir une relation, plutôt negligée à ce jour, entre les parties « rationnelles » et « religieuses » du Léviathan. La première partie du Léviathan serait une sorte de lecture conceptuelle de niveau élémentaire—un guide d'exégèse scripturale. Ainsi, les diverses parties de l'ouvrage formeraient un ensemble organiquement intégré.
1 J. Spenser, preface to R. Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in Keble, J. (ed.), Hooker's Works (7th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), vol. 1, 123Google Scholar (afterwards cited as Works).
2 Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 71–72.Google Scholar There are some notable exceptions to the “secular” thesis: for example, W. B. Glover, “God and Thomas Hobbes,” in Brown, K. C. (ed.), Hobbes Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965);Google ScholarPocock, J. G. N., Politics, Language and Time (New York: Atheneum, 1971);Google Scholar various articles in Ross, R. et al. (eds.), Thomas Hobbes in his Time (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974);Google ScholarGoldsmith, M. M., Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966);Google ScholarHenry, N. H., “Milton, and Hobbes, : Mortalism and the Intermediate State,” Studies in Philology 48 (1951), 234;Google ScholarMintz, S. I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962);Google ScholarHalliday, R. J., Kenyon, T. and Reeve, A., “Hobbes's Belief in God,” Political Studies 31 (1983), 418;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDamrosch, L., “Hobbes as Reformation Theologian: Implications of the Free Will Controversy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40 (1979), 338;CrossRefGoogle ScholarEisenach, E. J., “Hobbes on Church, State and Religion,” History of Political Thought 3 (1982), 215;Google ScholarSpringborg, P., “Leviathan and the Problem of Ecclesiastical Authority,” Political Theory 3 (1975), 289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 McNeilly, F. S., The Anatomy of Leviathan (London: Macmillan, 1968), 24–25.Google Scholar
4 Hood, F. C., The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 24.Google Scholar
5 Pocock, J., “Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” in his Politics, Language and Time (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 148.Google Scholar
6 Works, I, 351.
7 Works, I, 406, 342–46.
8 Works, I, 352–53.
9 Works, III, 334.
10 Works, III, 340.
11 Works, II, 456.
12 Works, II, 526–27 (emphasis added).
13 Works, III, 154.
14 Works, III, 156.
15 Works, III, 165.
16 Works, III, 328.
17 Works, III, 351. See Cross, C., The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (Historical Problems: Studies and Documents 8 [London, 1969]), 36:Google Scholar “Hooker defended the royal supremacy for those very characteristics which Elizabeth disliked most.” See also Munz, P., The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 103–05.Google Scholar
18 Works, III, 346 (emphasis added).
19 Works, III, 354–419.
20 Works, III, 438.
21 Works, III, 357.
22 Works, III, 408.
23 Works, III, 359.
24 Works, III, 411.
25 Works, I, 282.
26 Hobbes, T., Leviathan (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 271.Google Scholar
27 Works, III, 345.
28 Leviathan, 271.
29 Leviathan, 283.
30 See for example, Hobbes, T., The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Molesworth, W. (ed.), (London: John Bohn, 1889), vol. IV, 296Google Scholar and vol. I, x–xi; and Hobbes, T., A True Ecclesiastical History (London, printed for E. Curll in The Strand, 1722, 55–65).Google Scholar It is unfortunate that this work was not included by Molesworth in his edition of Hobbes's English works. Its inclusion was contemplated by the late Howard Warrender in his new edition of Hobbes's works and it would, I think, go a long way in revising the popular view of Hobbes's religious position. See State, S., “Thomas Hobbes and the Debate over Natural Law and Religion” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London, 1980)Google Scholar, chap. 2. For a more broadly based comparison of Hobbes and other contemporary versions of ecclesiastical order see Eisenach, E. J., “Hobbes on Church, State and Religion,” History of Political Thought 3 (1982), 215–43.Google Scholar
31 Roger Owen, cited in Wakefield, G. S., Puritan Devotion (London: Epworth Press, 1957), 12.Google Scholar
32 Leviathan, 284.
33 Leviathan, 340.
34 Leviathan, 393.
35 Leviathan, 262.
36 Pocock, , Politics, Language and Time, 183.Google Scholar
37 Leviathan, 342. See Halliday, et al., “Hobbes's Belief in God,” 418, where the authors contend that Scriptural material is itself paradigmatic.
38 Leviathan, 342–43 (emphasis added).
39 Leviathan, 155.
40 Leviathan, 132.
41 Leviathan, 344.
42 Leviathan, 346.
43 Leviathan, 349.
44 Leviathan, 297 (emphasis in original).
45 Leviathan, 160; and English Works, vol. V, 246.
46 Leviathan, 299.
47 Leviathan, 348.
48 Leviathan, 363.
49 Examples of this contention may be seen in Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes, 1: “[Hobbes] professed to accord to Scripture and only to Scripture, unquestionable authority over his mind”; and Halliday, et al., “Hobbes's Belief in God,” 418: “the art of politics consists in the imitation of the commands of an omnipotent God” and, “the covenant with Abraham,… Hobbes identified as the paradigm of all covenants.” In contrast, we would suggest that the commands of God cannot be imitated until they are understood, and the covenant with Abraham cannot stand as a model for other covenants until we understand Abraham's status as a civil sovereign and all that that entails. The covenant with Abraham is less a paradigm than an instantiation of the concept of a “covenant” elaborated in the first part of Leviathan.
50 Works, I, 267, 299, 371; Leviathan, 271.
51 Leviathan, 276; Works, I, 267, 321.
52 Leviathan, 271.
53 Pocock, “Time, History and Eschatology,” 183.
54 Ibid., 185.
55 Leviathan, 30–31.
56 Leviathan, 116.