Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

Queen and her successors; though by retaining the phrase of jure
divino they were thought to demand it by immediate right from God: and
so was untied the first knot. After this, the Presbyterians lately
in England obtained the putting down of Episcopacy: and so was the
second knot dissolved. And almost at the same time, the power was
taken also from the Presbyterians: and so we are reduced to the
independency of the primitive Christians to follow Paul, or Cephas, or
Apollos, every man as he liketh best: which if it be without
contention, and without measuring the doctrine of Christ by our
affection to the person of his minister (the fault which the Apostle
reprehended in the Corinthians), is perhaps the best: first, because
there ought to be no power over the consciences of men, but of the
word itself, working faith in every one, not always according to the
purpose of them that plant and water, but of God Himself, that
giveth the increase. And secondly, because it is unreasonable in them,
who teach there is such danger in every little error, to require of
a man endued with reason of his own to follow the reason of any
other man, or of the most voices of many other men, which is little
better than to venture his salvation at cross and pile. Nor ought
those teachers to be displeased with this loss of their ancient
authority: for there is none should know better than they that power
is preserved by the same virtues by which it is acquired; that is to
say, by wisdom, humility, clearness of doctrine, and sincerity of
conversation; and not by suppression of the natural sciences, and of
the morality of natural reason; nor by obscure language; nor by
arrogating to themselves more knowledge than they make appear; nor
by pious frauds; nor by such other faults as in the pastors of God's
Church are not only faults, but also scandals, apt to make men stumble
one time or other upon the suppression of their authority.
But after this doctrine, that the Church now militant is the kingdom
of God spoken of in the Old and New Testament, was received in the
world, the ambition and canvassing for the offices that belong
thereunto, and especially for that great office of being Christ's
lieutenant, and the pomp of them that obtained therein the principal
public charges, became by degrees so evident that they lost the inward
reverence due to the pastoral function: insomuch as the wisest men
of them that had any power in the civil state needed nothing but the
authority of their princes to deny them any further obedience. For,
from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged
for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their
whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly
to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in
England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in
the night. And if a man consider the original of this great
ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no
other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned
upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out
of the ruins of that heathen power.
The language also which they use, both in the churches and in
their public acts, being Latin, which is not commonly used by any
nation now in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman
language
The fairies in what nation soever they converse have but one
universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the
Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics
likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one
universal king, the Pope.