Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

exercise, unless he have the other with it: and therefore to the
pastoral power, which he calls spiritual, the supreme power civil is
necessarily annexed; and that thereby he hath a right to change
kingdoms, giving them to one, and taking them from another, when he
shall think it conduces to the salvation of souls.
Before I come to consider the arguments by which he would prove this
doctrine, it will not be amiss to lay open the consequences of it,
that princes and states that have the civil sovereignty in their
several Commonwealths may bethink themselves whether it be
convenient for them, and conducing to the good of their subjects of
whom they are to give an account at the day of judgement, to admit the
same.
When it is said the Pope hath not, in the territories of other
states, the supreme civil power directly, we are to understand he doth
not challenge it, as other civil sovereigns do, from the original
submission thereto of those that are to be governed. For it is
evident, and has already been sufficiently in this treatise
demonstrated, that the right of all sovereigns is derived originally
from the consent of every one of those that are to be governed;
whether they that choose him do it for it for their common defence
against an enemy, as when they agree amongst themselves to appoint a
man or an assembly of men to protect them, or whether they do it to
save their lives, by submission to a conquering enemy. The Pope
therefore, when he disclaimeth the supreme civil power over other
states directly, denieth no more but that his right cometh to him by
that way; he ceaseth not for all that to claim it another way; and
that is, without the consent of them that are to be governed, by a
right given him by God, which he calleth indirectly, in his assumption
to the papacy. But by what way soever he pretend, the power is the
same; and he may, if it be granted to be his right, depose princes and
states, as often as it is for the salvation of souls, that is, as
often as he will: for he claimeth also the sole power to judge whether
it be to the salvation of men's souls, or not. And this is the
doctrine, not only that Bellarmine here, and many other doctors
teach in their sermons and books, but also that some councils have
decreed, and the Popes have accordingly, when the occasion hath served
them, put in practice. For the fourth council of Lateran, held under
Pope Innocent the Third (in the third Chapter, De Haereticis), hath
this canon: "If a king, at the Pope's admonition, do not purge his
kingdom of heretics, and being excommunicate for the same, make not
satisfaction within a year, his subjects are absolved of their
obedience." And the practice hereof hath been seen on diverse
occasions: as in the deposing of Childeric, King of France; in the
translation of the Roman Empire to Charlemagne; in the oppression of
John, King of England; in transferring the kingdom of Navarre; and
of late years, in the league against Henry the Third of France, and in
many more occurrences. I think there be few princes that consider
not this as unjust and inconvenient; but I wish they would all resolve
to be kings or subjects. Men cannot serve two masters. They ought
therefore to ease them, either by holding the reins of government
wholly in their own hands, or by wholly delivering them into the hands
of the Pope, that such men as are willing to be obedient may be
protected in their obedience. For this distinction of temporal and
spiritual power is but words. Power is as really divided, and as
dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another indirect power,
as with a direct one. But to come now to his arguments.
The first is this, "The civil power is subject to the spiritual: