Jendrysik, “Land or Sea Beast”
MPSA 2004
10
As all men are “pursuers of their own interests and preferments,” “ignorant of their duty to the
public,” and painfully short sighted, the task of history becomes delineating how that pursuit
causes the destruction of political and religious authority.
66
Hobbes provides part of the answer.
“Our rebels were publically taught rebellion in the pulpits; and that there was no sin, but the
doing of what the preachers forbade, or the omission of what they advised.”
67
Lloyd notes that
“for Hobbes, the English Civil War is first and foremost a religious war.” “Hobbes argues that
the primary cause… was religious dissention created by the erroneous doctrines of Presbyterian
ministers.”
68
Therefore, Presbyterian divines seeking power are the key cause of revolution.
Hobbes deplores the disorders generated by the preaching of the itinerant friars of
an earlier age, and he compares their role to that of the Puritan preachers of his
own day, whom he describes in terms of their histrionics, their ability to feign
inspiration, and there knowledge of how, in speaking, to play on the fears and
interests of their audience.
69
In Hobbes’s own words, the Presbyterian preachers have made the people
in love with democracy with their harangues in the Parliament, and by their
discourses and communication with people in the country, continually extolling
liberty and inveighing against tyranny, leaving people to collect of themselves
that this tyranny was the present government of the state.
70
They do this not out of a love of the truth or even out of true religious belief. Instead the Puritans
act solely out of a love of power. Their sedition, at first religious, becomes political as their lust
for power takes hold. As George Kateb notes, for Hobbes,
Subversive doctrines are confected to advance the intense desires of a few for
such insubstantial attainments as the pleasure of domination, the pleasure of
prestige, or the pleasure of making a difference and making things happen. These
are the pleasures of ambition.
71
Their goals are simple. In their pursuit and love of power they refuse all allegiances. They have,
in effect made
a downright declaration to all kings and commonwealths in general; that a
Presbyterian minister will be a true subject to none of them in the things of Christ;
which things what they are, they will be judges themselves. What have we gotten
from our deliverance from the Pope’s tyranny, if these petty men succeed in the
66
Behemoth, 29 and 39.
67
Behemoth, 144.
68
Lloyd, Ideals as interests, 192 and 205.
69
Frederick G. Whelan, “Language and its Abuses in Hobbes’ Political Philosophy.” American Political
Science Review, Vol. 75, No. 1 (March 1981), 63.
70
Behemoth, 23. As is clear from Leviathan Hobbes believes that that great mass of people lack critical faculties
and accept what they are told by people in authority. Thus Charles I’s loss of control over public opinion in the late
1630’s is complete disaster for the monarchy and foretells much of what happened later. See Behemoth, 27-28.
71
Kateb, “Hobbes and the Irrationality of Politics,” 364. For supporting evidence of this tendency see
Behemoth , 159.
Convention