Theological Origins of Modernity

220 chapter seven
prisingly reminiscent of the Calvinism of his youth, although transformed
in important ways by his materialism. 39 Th e Queen Mother was already
angry about the publication of De cive, and, aft er the Leviathan appeared,
banned him from court. He seems to have thought the Anglicans would
see the work as a powerful argument for episcopal government, but even
royalist Anglicans such as Payne, who had admired De cive, thought Leviathan
was dangerous because it was fi deistic. 40 Hammond called it “a
farrago of Christian atheism.” 41 Th e fi rst two parts of the book were not
so disturbing, although they pushed claims for reason further than many
Christians were willing to go. Th e last two sections, however, were especially
threatening, not because they were anti-Christian but because their
scriptural theology was both heterodox and persuasive. 42
Hobbes may already have planned his return to England, and he fl ed
there in 1651, when French Catholics moved to have him arrested. Settling
in London, he again came into contact with Charles Cavendish and was
soon back in the employment of Devonshire. 43 He renewed friendships
with John Seldon, Ben Jonson, Samuel Cowper, John Vaughan, and William
Harvey and was drawn into to freethinking circles that included men
such as Th omas White.
Th e uproar over Leviathan, however, would not go away. In 1654 Hobbes
was drawn into a debate with the Bishop Bramhall over liberty and necessity
of the will. Bramhall was an Arminian and an ally of Staff ord and
Laud. 44 Th e debate began as a private discussion but became a vitriolic
public debate when the initial discussions were published without permission
by one of Hobbes’ supporters. Th is debate recapitulates in many ways
the debate between Luther and Erasmus, as well as Hobbes’ earlier debate
with Descartes in the Objections and Replies to the Meditations. Bramhall
argued that human beings have a free will that they must use to respond
to divine grace. Hobbes maintained that everything happens as the result
of God’s predestining will, the same position that Luther and Calvin defended,
but he supplemented this theological assertion with the claim that
this divine will operates in the world according to sheer mechanical causality.
Bramhall was deeply disturbed, but more because of Hobbes’ Calvinism
than his materialism. 45 He also rejected the view of divine omnipotence
that underlay Hobbes’ notion of predestination, asserting he would
rather be a heretic than admit the absoluteness of God’s creative power. 46
Hobbes too worried that the doctrine of predestination might lead to atheism
or despair. 47 However, he tried to show that the absence of free will did
not mean that humans had no responsibility for their actions. In his view
human beings are not blamed for choosing to do what they wrongly desire