Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

him: so a teacher of Christian doctrine may abandon his disciples that
obstinately continue in an unchristian life; but he cannot say they do
him wrong, because they are not obliged to obey him: for to a
teacher that shall so complain may be applied the answer of God to
Samuel in the like place, "They have not rejected thee, but me."*
Excommunication therefore, when it wanteth the assistance of the civil
power, as it doth when a Christian state or prince is excommunicate by
a foreign authority, is without effect, and consequently ought to be
without terror. The name of fulmen excommunicationis (that is, the
thunderbolt of excommunication) proceeded from an imagination of the
Bishop of Rome, which first used it, that he was king of kings, as the
heathen made Jupiter king of the gods; and assigned him, in their
poems and pictures, a thunderbolt wherewith to subdue and punish the
giants that should dare to deny his power: which imagination was
grounded on two errors; one, that the kingdom of Christ is of this
world, contrary to our Saviour's own words, "My kingdom is not of this
world";*(2) the other, that he is Christ's vicar, not only over his
own subjects, but over all the Christians of the world; whereof
there is no ground in Scripture, and the contrary shall be proved in
its due place.
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* I Samuel, 8. 7
*(2) John, 18. 36
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St. Paul coming to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the
Jews, "as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days
reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging, that
Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and
that this Jesus whom he preached was the Christ."* The Scriptures here
mentioned were the Scriptures of the Jews, that is, the Old Testament.
The men to whom he was to prove that Jesus was the Christ, and risen
again from the dead, were also Jews, and did believe already that they
were the word of God. Hereupon, as it is in the fourth verse some of
them believed, and, as it is in the fifth verse, some believed not.
What was the reason, when they all believed the Scripture, that they
did not all believe alike, but that some approved, others disapproved,
the interpretation of St. Paul that cited them, and every one
interpreted them to himself It was this: St. Paul came to them
without any legal commission, and in the manner of one that would
not command, but persuade; which he must needs do, either by miracles,
as Moses did to the Israelites in Egypt, that they might see his
authority in God's works; or by reasoning from the already received
Scripture, that they might see the truth of his doctrine in God's
word. But whosoever persuadeth by reasoning from principles written
maketh him to whom he speaketh judge; both of the meaning of those
principles and also of the force of his inferences upon them. If these
Jews of Thessalonica were not, who else was the judge of what St. Paul
alleged out of Scripture If St. Paul, what needed he to quote any
places to prove his doctrine It had been enough to have said, "I find
it so in Scripture; that is to say, in your laws, of which I am
interpreter, as sent by Christ." The interpreter therefore of the
Scripture, to whose interpretation the Jews of Thessalonica were bound
to stand, could be none: every one might believe or not believe,
according as the allegations seemed to himself to be agreeable or
not agreeable to the meaning of the places alleged. And generally in
all cases of the world he that pretendeth any proof maketh judge of
his proof him to whom he addresseth his speech. And as to the case