Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

telleth us to be the way to happiness. For he that pretends to teach
men the way of so great felicity pretends to govern them; that is to
say, rule and reign over them; which is a thing that all men naturally
desire, and is therefore worthy to be suspected of ambition and
imposture; and consequently ought be examined and tried by every man
before he yield them obedience, unless he have yielded it them already
in the institution of a Commonwealth; as when the prophet is the civil
sovereign, or by the civil sovereign authorized. And if this
examination of prophets and spirits were not allowed to every one of
the people, it had been to no purpose to set out the marks by which
every man might be able to distinguish between those whom they
ought, and those whom they ought not to follow. Seeing therefore
such marks are set out to know a prophet by,* and to know a spirit
by;*(2) and seeing there is so much prophesying in the Old
Testament, and so much preaching in the New Testament against
prophets, and so much greater a number ordinarily of false prophets
than of true; every one is to beware of obeying their directions at
their own peril. And first, that there were many more false than
true prophets appears by this, that when Ahab consulted four hundred
prophets, they were all false impostors, but only one Micaiah.*(3) And
a little before the time of the Captivity the prophets were
generally liars. "The prophets," saith the Lord by Jeremiah, "prophesy
lies in my name. I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, nor
spake unto them: they prophesy to you a false vision, a thing of
naught, and the deceit of their heart."*(4) Insomuch as God
commanded the people by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah not to
obey them. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, hearken not unto the words
of the prophets that prophesy to you. They make you vain: they speak a
vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord."*(5)
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* Deuteronomy, 13. 1, etc.
*(2) I John, 4. 1, etc.
*(3) I Kings, 22
*(4) Jeremiah, 14. 14
*(5) Ibid., 23. 16
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Seeing then there was in the time of the Old Testament such quarrels
amongst the visionary prophets, one contesting with another, and
asking, "When departed the spirit from me, to go to thee" as
between Micaiah and the rest of the four hundred; and such giving of
the lie to one another, as in Jeremiah, 14. 14, and such controversies
in the new Testament this day amongst the spiritual prophets: every
man then was, and now is, bound to make use of his natural reason to
apply to all prophecy those rules which God hath given us to discern
the true from the false. Of which rules, in the Old Testament, one was
conformable doctrine to that which Moses the sovereign prophet had
taught them; and the other, the miraculous power of foretelling what
God would bring to pass, as I have already shown out of Deuteronomy,
13. 1, etc. And in the New Testament there was but one only mark,
and that was the preaching of this doctrine that Jesus is the
Christ, that is, the King of the Jews, promised in the Old
Testament. Whosoever denied that article, he was a false prophet,
whatsoever miracles he might seem to work; and he that taught it was a
true prophet. For St. John, speaking expressly of the means to examine
spirits, whether they be of God or not, after he had told them that
there would arise false prophets, saith thus, "Hereby know ye the
Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is