his
usual wit and subtlety; but it is a pity that in both the one and the other
we stumble upon petty tricks, such as arise in excitement over the game.
The bishop speaks with much vehemence and behaves somewhat arrogantly. Mr.
Hobbes for his part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests
rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the
Schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop.

2. One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the
opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity
depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no
more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He
maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above
him with power to punish and constrain him. Yet he speaks sometimes as if
what is said about God were only compliments, that is to say expressions
proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing him. He testifies also
that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked must end in their
destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of the Socinians, but it
seems that Mr. Hobbes goes much further. His philosophy, which asserts that
bodies alone are substances, hardly appears favourable to the providence of
God and the immortality of the soul. On other subjects nevertheless he says
very reasonable things. He shows clearly that nothing comes about by
chance, or rather that chance only signifies the ignorance of causes that
produce the effect, and that for each effect there must be a concurrence of
all the sufficient conditions anterior to the event, not one of which,
manifestly, can be lacking when the event is to follow, because they are
conditions: the event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these
conditions exist all together, because they are sufficient conditions. All
which amounts to the same as I have said so many times, that everything
comes to pass as a result of determining reasons, the knowledge [395]
whereof, if we had it, would make us know at the same time why the thing
has happened and why it did not go otherwise.

3. But this author's humour, which prompts him to paradoxes and makes him
seek to contradict others, has made him draw out exaggerated and odious
conclusions and expressions, as if everything happened through an absolute
necessity. The Bishop of Derry, on the other hand, has aptly observed in
the answer t