Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

civil sovereign. For heresy is nothing else but a private opinion,
obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the public
person (that is to say, the representant of the Commonwealth) hath
commanded to be taught. By which it is manifest that an opinion
publicly appointed to be taught cannot be heresy; nor the sovereign
princes that authorize them, heretics. For heretics are none but
private men that stubbornly defend some doctrine prohibited by their
lawful sovereigns.
But to prove that Christians are not to tolerate infidel or
heretical kings, he allegeth a place in Deuteronomy where God
forbiddeth the Jews, when they shall set a king over themselves, to
choose a stranger:* and from thence inferreth that it is unlawful
for a Christian to choose a king that is not a Christian. And it is
true that he that is a Christian, that is, he that hath already
obliged himself to receive our Saviour, when he shall come, for his
king, shall tempt God too much in choosing for king in this world
one that he knoweth will endeavour, both by terror and persuasion,
to make him violate his faith. But, it is, saith he, the same danger
to choose one that is not a Christian for king, and not to depose
him when he is chosen. To this I say, the question is not of the
danger of not deposing; but of the justice of deposing him. To
choose him may in some cases be unjust; but to depose him, when he
is chosen, is in no case just. For it is always violation of faith,
and consequently against the law of nature, which is the eternal law
of God. Nor do we read that any such doctrine was accounted
Christian in the time of the Apostles; nor in the time of the Roman
Emperors, till the popes had the civil sovereignty of Rome. But to
this he hath replied that the Christians of old deposed not Nero,
nor Dioclesian, nor Julian, nor Valens, an Arian, for this cause only,
that they wanted temporal forces. Perhaps so. But did our Saviour, who
for calling for might have had twelve legions of immortal,
invulnerable angels to assist him, want forces to depose Caesar, or at
least Pilate, that unjustly, without finding fault in him, delivered
him to the Jews to be crucified Or ff the Apostles wanted temporal
forces to depose Nero, was it therefore necessary for them in their
epistles to the new made Christians to teach them, as they did, to
obey the powers constituted over them, whereof Nero in that time was
one, and that they ought to obey them, not for fear of their wrath,
but for conscience sake Shall we say they did not only obey, but also
teach what they meant not, for want of strength It is not therefore
for want of strength, but for conscience sake, that Christians are
to tolerate their heathen princes, or princes (for I cannot call any
one whose doctrine is the public doctrine, a heretic) that authorize
the teaching of an error. And whereas for the temporal power of the
Pope, he allegeth further that St. Paul appointed judges under the
heathen princes of those times, such as were not ordained by those
princes;*(2) it is not true. For St. Paul does but advise them to take
some of their brethren to compound their differences, as
arbitrators, rather than to go to law one with another before the
heathen judges; which is a wholesome precept, and full of charity, fit
to be practised also in the best Christian Commonwealths. And for
the danger that may arise to religion, by the subjects tolerating of a
heathen, or an erring prince, it is a point of which a subject is no
competent judge; or if he be, the Pope's temporal subjects may judge
also of the Pope's doctrine. For every Christian prince, as I have
formerly proved, is no less supreme pastor of his own subjects than
the Pope of his.