Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

ut every pastor in his parish should have legislative power. Again,
they that are bound to obey their pastors have no power to examine
their commands. What then shall we say to St. John, who bids us "not
to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they are of
God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world"* It
is therefore manifest that we may dispute the doctrine of our pastors,
but no man can dispute a law. The commands of civil sovereigns are
on all sides granted to be laws: if any else can make a law besides
himself, all Commonwealth, and consequently all peace and justice,
must cease; which is contrary to all laws, both divine and human.
Nothing therefore can be drawn from these or any other places of
Scripture to prove the decrees of the Pope, where he has not also
the civil sovereignty, to be laws.
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* I John, 4. 1
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The last point he would prove is this, that our Saviour Christ has
committed ecclesiastical jurisdiction immediately to none but the
Pope. Wherein he handleth not the question of supremacy between the
Pope and Christian kings, but between the Pope and other bishops.
And first, he says it is agreed that the jurisdiction of bishops is at
least in the general de jure divino, that is, in the right of God; for
which he alleges St. Paul, Ephesians, 4. 11, where he says that
Christ, after his ascension into heaven, "gave gifts to men, some
Apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and
some teachers"; and thence infers they have indeed their
jurisdiction in God's right, but will not grant they have it
immediately from God, but derived through the Pope. But if a man may
be said to have his jurisdiction de jure divino, and yet not
immediately; what lawful jurisdiction, though but civil, is there in a
Christian Commonwealth that is not also de jure divino For
Christian kings have their civil power from God immediately; and the
magistrates under Him exercise their several charges in virtue of
His commission; wherein that which they do is no less de jure divino
mediato than that which the bishops do in virtue of the Pope's
ordination. All lawful power is of God, immediately in the supreme
governor, and mediately in those that have authority under him: so
that either he must grant every constable in the state to hold his
office in the right of God, or he must not hold that any bishop
holds his so, besides the Pope himself.
But this whole dispute, whether Christ left the jurisdiction to
the Pope only, or to other bishops also, if considered out of those
places where the Pope has the civil sovereignty, is a contention de
lana caprina: for none of them, where they are not sovereigns, has any
jurisdiction at all. For jurisdiction is the power of hearing and
determining causes between man and man, and can belong to none but him
that hath the power to prescribe the rules of right and wrong; that
is, to make laws; and with the sword of justice to compel men to
obey his decisions, pronounced either by himself or by the judges he
ordaineth thereunto, which none can lawfully do but the civil
sovereign.
Therefore when he allegeth, out of the sixth chapter of Luke, that
our Saviour called his disciples together, and chose twelve of them,
which he named Apostles, he proveth that he elected them (all,
except Matthias, Paul, and Barnabas), and gave them power and
command to preach, but not to judge of causes between man and man: for
that is a power which he refused to take upon himself, saying, "Who