Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

made me a judge, or a divider, amongst you" and in another place, "My
kingdom is not of this world." But he that hath not the power to
hear and determine causes between man and man cannot be said to have
any jurisdiction at all. And yet this hinders not but that our Saviour
gave them power to preach and baptize in all parts of the world,
supposing they were not by their own lawful sovereign forbidden: for
to our own sovereigns Christ himself and his Apostles have in sundry
places expressly commanded us in all things to be obedient.
The arguments by which he would prove that bishops receive their
jurisdiction from the Pope (seeing the Pope in the dominions of
other princes hath no jurisdiction himself) are all in vain. Yet
because they prove, on the contrary, that all bishops receive
jurisdiction, when they have it, from their civil sovereigns, I will
not omit the recital of them.
The first is from Numbers, 11, where Moses, not being able alone
to undergo the whole burden of administering the affairs of the people
of Israel, God commanded him to choose seventy elders, and took part
of the spirit of Moses, to put it upon those seventy elders: by
which is understood, not that God weakened the spirit of Moses, for
that had not eased him at all, but that they had all of them their
authority from him; wherein he doth truly and ingenuously interpret
that place. But seeing Moses had the entire sovereignty in the
Commonwealth of the Jews, it is manifest that it is thereby
signified that they had their authority from the civil sovereign:
and therefore that place proveth that bishops in every Christian
Commonwealth have their authority from the civil sovereign; and from
the Pope in his own territories only, and not in the territories of
any other state.
The second argument is from the nature of monarchy, wherein all
authority is in one man, and in others by derivation from him. But the
government of the Church, he says, is monarchical. This also makes for
Christian monarchs. For they are really monarchs of their own
people; that is, of their own Church (for the Church is the same thing
with a Christian people); whereas the power of the Pope, though he
were St. Peter, is neither monarchy, nor hath anything of archical nor
cratical, but only of didactical; for God accepteth not a forced,
but a willing obedience.
The third is from that the See of St. Peter is called by St.
Cyprian, the head, the source, the root, the sun, from whence the
authority of bishops is derived. But by the law of nature, which is
a better principle of right and wrong than the word of any doctor that
is but a man, the civil sovereign in every Commonwealth is the head,
the source, the root, and the sun, from which all jurisdiction is
derived. And therefore the jurisdiction of bishops is derived from the
civil sovereign.
The fourth is taken from the inequality of their jurisdictions:
for if God, saith he, had given it them immediately, He had given as
well equality of jurisdiction, as of order: but we see some are
bishops but of one town, some of a hundred towns, and some of many
whole provinces; which differences were not determined by the
command of God: their jurisdiction therefore is not of God, but of
man: and one has a greater, another a less, as it pleaseth the
Prince of the Church. Which argument, if he had proved before that the
Pope had had a universal jurisdiction over all Christians, had been
for his purpose. But seeing that hath not been proved, and that it
is notoriously known the large jurisdiction of the Pope was given
him by those that had it, that is, by the emperors of Rome (for the