Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

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All that is necessary to salvation is contained in two virtues,
faith in Christ, and obedience to laws. The latter of these, if it
were perfect, were enough to us. But because we are all guilty of
disobedience to God's law, not only originally in Adam, but also
actually by our own transgressions, there is required at our hands
now, not only obedience for the rest of our time, but also a remission
of sins for the time past; which remission is the reward of our
faith in Christ. That nothing else is necessarily required to
salvation is manifest from this, that the kingdom of heaven is shut to
none but to sinners; that is to say, to the disobedient, or
transgressors of the law; nor to them, in case they repent, and
believe all the articles of Christian faith necessary to salvation.
The obedience required at our hands by God, that accepteth in all
our actions the will for the deed, is a serious endeavour to obey Him;
and is called also by all such names as signify that endeavour. And
therefore obedience is sometimes called by the names of charity and
love, because they imply a will to obey; and our Saviour himself
maketh our love to God, and to one another, a fulfilling of the
whole law; and sometimes by the name of righteousness, for
righteousness is but the will to give to every one his own, that is to
say, the will to obey the laws; and sometimes by the name of
repentance, because to repent implieth a turning away from sin,
which is the same with the return of the will to obedience.
Whosoever therefore unfeignedly desireth to fulfil the commandments of
God, or repenteth him truly of his transgressions, or that loveth
God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, hath all the
obedience necessary to his reception into the kingdom of God: for if
God should require perfect innocence, there could no flesh be saved.
But what commandments are those that God hath given us Are all
those laws which were given to the Jews by the hand of Moses the
commandments of God If they be, why are not Christians taught to obey
them If they be not, what others are so, besides the law of nature
For our Christ hath not given us new laws, but counsel to observe
those we are subject to; that is to say, the laws of nature, and the
laws of our several sovereigns: nor did he make any new law to the
Jews in his Sermon on the Mount, but only expounded the laws of Moses,
to which they were subject before. The laws of God therefore are
none but the laws of nature, whereof the principal is that we should
not violate our faith, that is, a commandment to obey our civil
sovereigns, which we constituted over us by mutual pact one with
another. And this law of God, that commandeth obedience to the law
civil, commandeth by consequence obedience to all the precepts of
the Bible; which, as I have proved in the precedent chapter, is
there only law where the civil sovereign hath made it so; and in other
places but counsel, which a man at his own peril may without injustice
refuse to obey.
Knowing now what is the obedience necessary to salvation, and to
whom it is due, we are to consider next, concerning faith, whom and
why we believe, and what are the articles or points necessarily to
be believed by them that shall be saved. And first, for the person
whom we believe, because it is impossible to believe any person before
we know what he saith, it is necessary he be one that we have heard
speak. The person therefore whom Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the
prophets believed was God Himself, that spake unto them
supernaturally; and the person whom the Apostles and Disciples that
conversed with Christ believed, was our Saviour himself. But of