markable
observation:--"Hobbes said, that he was not surprised that the
Independents, who were enemies of monarchy, could not bear it
in heaven, and that therefore they placed there three Gods
instead of one; but he was astonished that the English
bishops, and those Presbyterians who were favourers of
monarchy, should persist in the same opinion concerning the
Trinity. He added, that the Episcopalians ridiculed the
Puritans, and the Puritans the Episcopalians; but that the
wise ridiculed both alike."--_Lantiniana MS._ quoted by Joly,
p. 434.

The _religion_ of Hobbes was in _conformity_ to _State and
Church_. He had, however, the most awful notions of the
Divinity. He confesses he is unacquainted with "the nature of
God, but not with the _necessity_ of the existence of the
Power of all powers, and First Cause of all causes; so that we
know that God is, though not what he is." See his "Human
Nature," chap. xi. But was the God of Hobbes the inactive
deity of Epicurus, who takes no interest in the happiness or
misery of his created beings; or, as Madame de Stael has
expressed it, with the point and felicity of French
antithesis, was this "an Atheism with a God?" This consequence
some of his adversaries would draw from his principles, which
Hobbes indignantly denies. He has done more; for in his _De
Corpore Politico_, he declares his belief of all the
fundamental points of Christianity, part i. c. 4, p. 116. Ed.
1652. But he was an open enemy to those "who presume, out of
Scripture, by their own interpretation, to raise any _doctrine
to the understanding_, concerning those things which are
incomprehensible;" and he refers to St. Paul, who gives a good
rule "_to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every
man_ the measure of faith."--Rom. xii. 3.

[357] This he pictures in a strange engraving prefixed to his book,
and representing a crowned figure, whose description will be
found in the note, p. 440. It is remarkable that when Hobbes
adopted the principle that the _ecclesiastical_ should be
united with the _sovereign_ power, he was then actually
producing that portentous change which had terrified Luther
and Calvin; who,