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HOBBES AMONG THE HERETICS?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

JACQUELINE ROSE
JACQUELINE ROSE*
Affiliation:
NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
*
Newnham College, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DFjr292@cam.ac.uk
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Type
Review Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 493 - 511
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Qu. in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (rev. edn, Cambridge, 1996), p. ix. I am grateful to Mark Goldie, Richard Serjeantson, and the Journal's reader for comments on a draft of this article.

2 Key recent contributions to this debate are: Edwin Curley, ‘“I durst not write so boldly” or, how to read Hobbes' Theological-political treatise', in Daniela Bostrenghi, ed., Hobbes e Spinoza (Naples, 1992); A. P. Martinich, The two gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on religion and politics (Cambridge, 1992), app. A; see also their debate in Journal of the History of Philosophy, 34 (1996), pp. 257–87. Much of this discussion rests on how ironic Hobbes was being, on which see Quentin Skinner, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 10.

3 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 43, p. 403.

4 Ibid., ch. 44, pp. 430–1, ch. 41, ch. 38, pp. 314–15.

5 Ibid., ch. 44, pp. 431–3, ch. 42, pp. 339–41; compare Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN, 1994), pp. 507, 543, where Hobbes retreats only regarding Moses.

6 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 42, ch. 47, p. 480 (qu., itals. reversed), and passim.

7 Quentin Skinner, Visions of politics (3 vols., Cambridge, 2002), I.

8 As J. G. A. Pocock famously noted: ‘Time, history and eschatology in the thought of Thomas Hobbes’, in Pocock, Politics, language, and time: essays on political thought and history (London, 1971), p. 160. Compare chs. 10 to 17 of Patricia Springborg, ed., The Cambridge companion to Hobbes's Leviathan (Cambridge, 2007).

9 For Hobbes the orthodox but not ‘standard’ Jacobean Calvinist see Martinich, Two gods, pp. 1–3, 334, 273, and passim (although Martinich speaks at p. 215 of Hobbes having ‘one standard seventeenth-century position’); for an Anglican Hobbes see Paul J. Johnson, ‘Hobbes's Anglican doctrine of salvation’, in Ralph Ross, Herbert W. Schneider, and Theodore Waldman, eds., Thomas Hobbes in his time (Minneapolis, MN, 1974), p. 104 and passim, also Herbert W. Schneider ‘The piety of Hobbes’, in Ross et al., eds., Hobbes in his time; more cautious assessments can be found in Johann Sommerville, ‘Leviathan and its Anglican context’, in Springborg, ed., Cambridge companion to Leviathan; and Franck Lessay, ‘Hobbes's Protestantism’, in Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, eds., Leviathan after 350 years (Oxford, 2004), esp. pp. 268–71. On Hobbes's apparently Lutheran language see Overhoff, Jürgen, ‘The Lutheranism of Thomas Hobbes’, History of Political Thought, 19 (1997), pp. 604–23.Google Scholar

10 Thomas Hobbes, On the citizen, ed. and trans. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 1998), p. 233. The remit given to these ecclesiastics is remarkably small.

11 Richard Tuck, ‘The “Christian atheism” of Thomas Hobbes’, in Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds., Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992), esp. pp. 113–14, 124–5; Richard Tuck, ‘The civil religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993); Nauta, Lodi, ‘Hobbes on religion and the church between The elements of law and Leviathan: a dramatic change of direction?’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 63 (2002), pp. 577–98Google Scholar; Sommerville, Johann, ‘Hobbes and Independency’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 59 (2004), pp. 155–73Google Scholar.

12 On a ‘theistic turn’ see Glover, Willis B., ‘God and Thomas Hobbes’, Church History, 29 (1960), pp. 275–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 275.

13 On these and his other distinctions, see also John Coffey, ‘The toleration controversy during the English Revolution’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby, eds., Religion in revolutionary England (Manchester, 2006).

14 Peter Lake, The boxmaker's revenge: ‘orthodoxy’, ‘heterodoxy’ and the politics of the parish in early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001).

15 Malcolm, Noel, ‘Thomas Harrison and his “Ark of Studies”: an episode in the history of the organization of knowledge’, The Seventeenth Century, 19 (2004), pp. 196–232Google Scholar; see pp. 215–16 on the difficulties of controlling information, and p. 210 on how classification assisted making sense of the world.

16 John Aubrey, Brief lives, ed. Andrew Clark (2 vols., Oxford, 1898), i, p. 339; cf. Milton, Philip, ‘Hobbes, heresy and Lord Arlington’, History of Political Thought, 14 (1993), pp. 501–46.Google Scholar

17 For the texts see Vere Chappell, ed., Hobbes and Bramhall on liberty and necessity (Cambridge, 1999); on the debate, see also Damrosch, Leopold jr, ‘Hobbes as Reformation theologian: implications of the free-will controversy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 40 (1979), pp. 339–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Samuel I. Mintz, The hunting of Leviathan: seventeenth-century reactions to the materialism and moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, 1962), ch. 6.

18 On the first two of these (and more emphasis on Bramhall's early career), see John McCafferty, The reconstruction of the Church of Ireland: Bishop Bramhall and the Laudian reforms, 1633–1641 (Cambridge, 2007). Jackson refers briefly to the Pauline passage in Politics of liberty and necessity, p. 105 n. 35.

19 Jackson, Politics of liberty and necessity, p. 46 n. 39, p. 98 n. 133, p. 101 n. 5.

20 Qu. in ibid., p. 227. For wider summary overviews see Jan Miel, Pascal and theology (Baltimore, MD, 1969), ch. 1; Robert Sleigh, jr, Vere Chappell, and Michael Della Rocca, ‘Determinism and human freedom’, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, eds., The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy (2 vols., Cambridge, 1998).

21 Exploration of these themes has recently been opened by Anthony Milton, Laudian and royalist polemic in seventeenth-century England: the career and writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester, 2007).

22 David L. Smith, Constitutional royalism and the search for settlement, c. 1640–1649 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 143–56, shows how these men might have accepted regulated episcopacy as the basis for a settlement, and defended bishops on constitutional and historical, not iure divino, grounds.

23 See, similarly, Curran, Eleanor, ‘A very peculiar royalist: Hobbes in the context of his political contemporaries’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 10 (2002), pp. 167–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, although Curran's discussion is only of secular aspects.

24 Parker's book was published in July 1642; Hobbes's De cive was ready in manuscript by Nov. 1641 and printed by May 1642: On the citizen, p. xiii.

25 Thomas Hobbes, Seven philosophical problems and two propositions of geometry (London, 1682), sig. [A3]v.

26 Mark Goldie and Justin Champion, eds., Hobbes on heresy and church history (Oxford, forthcoming).

27 Alan Orr, D., ‘Sovereignty, supremacy and the origins of the English Civil War’, History, 87 (2002), pp. 474–90Google Scholar; Collins, Jeffrey R., ‘The church settlement of Oliver Cromwell’, History, 87 (2002), pp. 18–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar (although compare Ann Hughes, ‘“The public profession of these nations”: the national church in Interregnum England’, in Durston and Maltby, eds., Religion in revolutionary England, on the Cromwellian establishment).

28 Mark Goldie, ‘The civil religion of James Harrington’, in Anthony Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987).

29 Coffey, ‘Toleration controversy’; Blair Worden, ‘Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate’, in W. J. Sheils, ed., Persecution and toleration (Oxford, 1984); Joel Halcomb, ‘Congregational church practice and culture in East Anglia, 1642–62’ (M.Phil. thesis, Cambridge, 2006).

30 Thomas Hobbes, Stigmai ageometrias, or markes of the absurd geometry, rural language, Scottish church-politicks and barbarismes of John Wallis (London, 1657), p. 18.

31 Thomas Coleman, A brotherly examination re-examined (London, 1646 [1645]), p. 14.

32 As Collins points out, Hobbes attacked episcopacy and blamed the regicide on the Presbyterian overthrow of Charles I rather than the Independents in this work; the latter move was, however, far from unique: see Henry Foulis, The history of Romish treasons and usurpations (London, 1671), p. 107; Henry Foulis, The history of the wicked plots and conspiracies of our pretended saints (London, 1662), p. 162; John Nalson, The common interest of king and people (London, 1677), p. 234.

33 Collins, Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, pp. 105, 229–31.

34 For example, in Hobbes's declaration in spring 1662 that he favoured ‘such an episcopacy as is now in England’ before the Act of Uniformity had finally passed: Mr Hobbes considered in his reputation, loyalty, religion, and manners by way of letter to Dr Wallis (London, 1662), p. 44.

35 Collins, Jeffrey R., ‘The Restoration bishops and the royal supremacy’, Church History, 68 (1999), pp. 549–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 549.

36 Robert S. Bosher, The making of the Restoration settlement: the influence of the Laudians, 1649–1662 (Westminster, 1951); I. M. Green, The re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663 (Oxford, 1978).

37 Marshall, John, ‘The ecclesiology of the latitude-men, 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson, and ‘“Hobbism”’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), pp. 407–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 6, p. 42.

39 The single exception is in ch. 20, p. 140.

40 Ibid., ch. 31, pp. 246–7.

41 Ibid., ch. 20, p. 141.

42 The time it took for this to develop is outlined in ch. 5 of Parkin's work reviewed below.

43 Hobbes, Leviathan, qu. ch. 14, p. 99. Hobbes comments that the pejorative meaning of ‘sensual’ only comes into effect in the commonwealth: ibid., ch. 6, p. 40.

44 Sim and Walker admit (Discourse of sovereignty, p. 14) a debt to Mintz but come close to denying his idea that those who linked Hobbes and libertinism misinterpreted his ideas: see Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan, pp. 135–6, 140.

45 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 21, p. 149; James Harrington, The commonwealth of Oceana, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1992), p. 9.

46 Sim and Walker complain about a prior analysis of twenty pages being ‘all too brief’ (Discourse of sovereignty, p. 95 n. 6), ironic given their ten-page treatment.

47 Qu. John Locke to Edward Clarke, 29 Jan./8 Feb. 1689: The correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer (8 vols., 1976–89), letter 1102. On Locke's conservatism, see John Marshall, John Locke: resistance, religion and responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), p. 283.

48 Parkin, Jon, ‘Hobbism in the later 1660s: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 85–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jon Parkin, Science, religion, and politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland's De legibus naturae (Woodbridge, 1999); Jon Parkin, ‘Taming the Leviathan: reading Hobbes in seventeenth-century Europe’, in T. J. Hochstrasser and P. Schröder, eds., Early modern natural law theories: contexts and strategies in the early Enlightenment, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 186 (Dordrecht, 2003); Jon Parkin, ‘The reception of Hobbes's Leviathan’, in Springborg, ed., Cambridge Companion to Leviathan; Mark Goldie, ‘The reception of Hobbes’, in J. H. Burns and M. A. Goldie, eds., The Cambridge history of political thought, 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991); Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European republic of letters’, in Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2002); Marshall, ‘Latitude-men’; Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan, ch. 7.

49 Noel Malcolm, ‘Leviathan, the Pentateuch, and the origins of modern Biblical criticism’, in Sorell and Foisneau, eds., Leviathan after 350 years, pp. 247–8; Goldie, ‘Reception of Hobbes’, pp. 596, 600.

50 One of Parkin's most interesting suggestions is that Leviathan sold slowly initially, since it might have been viewed as offering little new, in sharp contrast to the booming Restoration market for Hobbes and his critics.

51 Hobbes five times, under three propositions; Baxter five times, under five propositions.

52 As suggested by Whitaker, Mark, ‘Hobbes's view of the Reformation’, History of Political Thought, 9 (1988), pp. 45–58.Google Scholar