Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

upon their office at first crept in, to the disturbance of their
possessions and of the tranquillity of their subjects, though they
suffered the same for want of foresight of the sequel, and of
insight into the designs of their teachers, may nevertheless be
esteemed accessaries to their own and the public damage. For without
their authority there could at first no seditious doctrine have been
publicly preached. I say they might have hindered the same in the
beginning: but when the people were once possessed by those
spiritual men, there was no human remedy to be applied that any man
could invent. And for the remedies that God should provide, who
never faileth in His good time to destroy all the machinations of
men against the truth, we are to attend His good pleasure that
suffereth many times the prosperity of His enemies, together with
their ambition, to grow to such a height as the violence thereof
openeth the eyes, which the wariness of their predecessors had
before sealed up, and makes men by too much grasping let go all, as
Peter's net was broken by the struggling of too great a multitude of
fishes; whereas the impatience of those that strive to resist such
encroachment, before their subjects' eyes were opened, did but
increase the power they resisted. I do not therefore blame the Emperor
Frederick for holding the stirrup to our countryman Pope Adrian; for
such was the disposition of his subjects then, as if he had not done
it, he was not likely to have succeeded in the empire. But I blame
those that, in the beginning, when their power was entire, by
suffering such doctrines to be forged in the universities of their own
dominions, have held the stirrup to all the succeeding popes, whilst
they mounted into the thrones of all Christian sovereigns, to ride and
tire both them and their people, at their pleasure.
But as the inventions of men are woven, so also are they ravelled
out; the way is the same, but the order is inverted. The web begins at
the first elements of power, which are wisdom, humility, sincerity,
and other virtues of the Apostles, whom the people, converted,
obeyed out of reverence, not by obligation. Their consciences were
free, and their words and actions subject to none but the civil power.
Afterwards the presbyters, as the flocks of Christ increased,
assembling to consider what they should teach, and thereby obliging
themselves to teach nothing against the decrees of their assemblies,
made it to be thought the people were thereby obliged to follow
their doctrine, and, when they refused, refused to keep them company
(that was then called excommunication), not as being infidels, but
as being disobedient: and this was the first knot upon their
liberty. And the number of presbyters increasing, the presbyters of
the chief city or province got themselves an authority over the
parochial presbyters, and appropriated to themselves the names of
bishops: and this was a second knot on Christian liberty. Lastly,
the bishop of Rome, in regard of the Imperial City, took upon him an
authority (partly by the wills of the emperors themselves, and by
the title of Pontifex Maximus, and at last when the emperors were
grown weak, by the privileges of St. Peter) over all other bishops
of the Empire: which was the third and last knot, and the whole
synthesis and construction of the pontifical power.
And therefore the analysis or resolution is by the same way, but
beginneth with the knot that was last tied; as we may see in the
dissolution of the preterpolitical Church government in England.
First, the power of the popes was dissolved totally by Queen
Elizabeth; and the bishops, who before exercised their functions in
right of the Pope, did afterwards exercise the same in right of the