nd country had witnessed, perpetually kindled by crazy
fanatics and intolerant dogmatists, insisted that the _crosier_ should
be carried in the _left_ hand of his Leviathan, and the _sword_ in
his right.[357] He testified, as strongly as man could, by his public
actions, that he was a Christian of the Church of England, "as by law
established," and no enemy to the episcopal order; but he dreaded the
encroachments of the Churchmen in his political system; jealous of
that _supremacy_ at which some of them aimed. Many enlightened bishops
sided with the philosopher.[358] At a time when Milton sullenly
withdrew from every public testimonial of divine worship, Hobbes, with
more enlightened views, _attended Church service_, and strenuously
supported _an established religion_; yet one is deemed a religious
man, and the other an Atheist! Were the actions of men to be decisive
of their characters, the reverse might be inferred.

The temper of our philosopher, so ill-adapted to contradiction, was
too often tried; and if, as his adversary, Harrington, in the
"Oceana," says, "Truth be a spark whereunto objections are like
bellows," the mind of Hobbes, for half a century, was a very forge,
where the hammer was always beating, and the flame was never allowed
to be extinguished. Charles II. strikingly described his worrying
assailants. "Hobbes," said the king, "was a bear against whom the
Church played their young dogs, in order to exercise them."[359] A
strange repartee has preserved the causticity of his wit. Dr. Eachard,
perhaps one of the prototypes of Swift, wrote two admirable ludicrous
dialogues, in ridicule of Hobbes's "State of Nature."[360] These were
much extolled, and kept up the laugh against the philosophic
misanthropist: once when he was told that the clergy said that
"Eachard had crucified Hobbes," he bitterly retorted, "Why, then,
don't they fall down and _worship_ me?"[361]

"The Leviathan" was ridiculed by the wits, declaimed against by the
republicans, denounced by the monarchists, and menaced by the clergy.
The commonwealth man, the dreamer of equality, Harrington, raged at
the subtile advocate for despotic power; but the glittering bubble of
his fanciful "Oceana" only broke on the mighty sides of the Leviathan,
wasting its rainbow tints: the mitred Bramhall, at "The Catching of
Leviathan, or the Great Whale," flung his harpoon, demonstrating
consequences from the principles of Hobbes, which he as eagerly
denied.