Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

faithful did then, that is to say, as we read "in Christ's name to
cast out devils, to speak with new tongues, to take up serpents, to
drink deadly poison without harm taking, and to cure the sick by the
laying on of their hands,"* and all this without other words but "in
the name of Jesus," is another question. And it is probable that those
extraordinary gifts were given to the Church for no longer a time than
men trusted wholly to Christ, and looked for their felicity only in
his kingdom to come; and consequently, that when they sought authority
and riches, and trusted to their own subtlety for a kingdom of this
world, these supernatural gifts of God were again taken from them.
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* Mark, 16. 17
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Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither
instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament;
nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after
they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached,
it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods
those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of
external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly
called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations
of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of
reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before
us in a dream. And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that
an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal,
stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or
feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without
place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the
brain. And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in
the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God
being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and
afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship
and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies),
they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there
can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high
priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own
appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own
destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was:
they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of
other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune
with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their
peace, and for their salvation from their enemies. And the second
was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of
their own invention. For it is the same deposing of a king to submit
to another king, whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by
ourselves.
The places of Scripture pretended to countenance the setting up of
images to worship them, or to set them up at all in the places where
God is worshipped, are, first, two examples; one of the cherubim
over the Ark of God; the other of the brazen serpent: secondly, some
texts whereby we are commanded to worship certain creatures for
their relation to God; as to worship His footstool: and lastly, some
other texts, by which is authorized a religious honouring of holy
things. But before I examine the force of those places, to prove
that which is pretended, I must first explain what is to be understood
by worshipping, and what by images and idols.
I have already shown, in the twentieth Chapter of this discourse,