Jendrysik, “Land or Sea Beast”
MPSA 2004
7
“passions of men.”
41
Mixed commonwealths are open to the “poyson of seditious doctrines,” the
chief one of which was “That every private man is Judge of Good and Evill actions.” Democratic
dogmas create men “disposed to debate with themselves, and dispute the commands of the
Common-wealth.”
42
At best, the power of one man or a few and not the “open Consultations of
the Assembly” really sustain mixed (or popular) commonwealths.
43
Hobbes believes that distinctions between religious and political power are false.
However, since people assume a difference exists between spiritual and temporal power, the
pernicious effects of actions based on that belief results in political strife and civil war. Hobbes
looks at religion solely in terms of power. Since “the goal of all religion is to gain recognition for
its authority, Hobbes believes that Christian politics can be understood without reference to
special or unique doctrines of Christianity.”
44
This narrow and somewhat stylized view allows
Hobbes to sidestep many difficulty and potentially upsetting events and ideas which might do
violence to his theory of civil war.
In Hobbes’s view of history, churches and religious leaders put forward the idea that they
possess a right (based on their presumed access to God and revelation) to command a part or all
the loyalty of subjects. Hobbes points to the claims of the pope to universal dominion, including
the right to depose kings. Churchmen claim special powers jure divino (directly from God).
Churches, especially the Catholic Church, the “mortal enemy to commonwealths,” mobilize the
power of religious belief in the political realm.
45
By claiming to act in the name of divine
providence, churches deny their proper subordination to civil rulers and thereby pose a danger to
the “unity and defence of the Common-wealth.”
46
Prior to the civil war kings of England needed only to face the religious pretensions of the
popes or of bishops. By 1651, however, the religious situation had become an anarchy of
individual judgments. Competing and incompatible spiritual interests attempt to impose their
will.
47
The competing interests of the state and church forced them both to try to seize the power
to direct the actions of subjects. “The most frequent praetext of Sedition, and Civill Warre, in
Christian Common-wealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet sufficiently
resolved, of obeying at once, both God, and Man.”
48
The civil conflict arising from divided
religious sovereignty resulted principally from the failure of men to recognize that the commands
of God and the sovereign are one and the same.
The Protestant emphasis on individual conscience, especially in its Puritan guise, also
poses a critical danger to the state. Hobbes points to “private judgement of good and evil,”
“erroneous conscience” and “pretense of inspiration,” all intimately connected with religious
enthusiasm, as three things that tended to weaken a commonwealth.
49
Religious authorities or
individuals separate from the state claim justification for their political decisions through appeals
to conscience. By claiming free exercise of conscience in religious matters men pretend to
41
Leviathan, XXV, 181.
42
Leviathan, XXIX, 223.
43
Leviathan, XXIII, 182. Hobbes would claim that democracy can be, at best, disguised monarchy. In his
translation of Thucydides Peloponnesian War, Hobbes characterizes Periclean Athens in that way. (Of course, so
does Thucydides himself!)
44
Kraynak, History and Modernity, 47.
45
Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan, 199. Also see J. G. A. Pocock, “Time, History and Eschatology in the
Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” in The Diversity of History: Essays in Honour of Sir Herbert Butterfield, ed. J. H.
Elliott and H. G. Koenigsberger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 193.
46
Leviathan, XLII, 374.
47
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 104.
48
Leviathan, XLIII, 402.
49
Leviathan, XXIX, 223.
Convention