principles, which indeed are the principles of the whole work, are surprisingly similar to those of a great writer of our own times, De Maistre, whose work on the Pope has much in common with Hobbes's work on Government. Starting, however, from the same principles, the two authors arrive at the most opposite conclusions.

Hobbes puts the civil power in the position in which De Maistre puts the Pope, and insists on what in practice amounts to the subordination of the spiritual to the temporal, on grounds very like those on which some of De Maistre's successors have inferred the Pope's right to an indirect authority over all temporal affairs.

In religion, as in all other subjects, Hobbes goes straight to first principles, and examines all his fundamental terms. God's government over men, he says, is founded on the simple fact that God is omnipotent and men weak. God's word is threefold -consisting of reason, revelation, and prophecy, which is a kind of revelation. Reason is the foundation on which government rests. Therefore government rests on God's word. The civil power, therefore, is a kind of middle term between God and man; and, subject to express commands from God, it rests with the civil power to determine the manner in which God shall be worshipped. It also falls to the civil power to regulate and reduce to explicit forms everything which reason teaches in general. Religion is and can be only a supplement to this. What, then, is

the nature of that supplement? In answer to this question, Hobbes enters into one of those obscure and half-scholastic biblical inquiries which he probably introduced for the sake of making his speculations look more orthodox than they really were, and which certainly have the effect of making it exceedingly difficult for a modern reader to understand precisely what he means to say.

There, is, for instance, a strange inquiry into the terms of the contract between God and Abraham, and about the limits of the provinces of Moses and Aaron. To a modern reader all this is by no means edifying. The general drift of the argument, however, is that, under the old dispensation, there was always a positive institution, a definite form of government in the strict sense of the word, which represented God

to men.

The chapter on the Christian dispensation is more interesting, though it too is expressed in such a crabbed and unfamiliar way that it is hard to understand it fully. The most remarkable point of it appears to be that, though God is a King, Christ was not sent to govern mankind in the full sense of the word. His main function was advice or counsel, which, as Hobbes with profound truth observes, is continually confounded with law, though the two are radically distinct.

'The government whereby Christ rules the faithful ones in this life is not properly a kingdom or dominion, but a pastoral charge or the right of teach

ing. That is to say, God the Father gave him not a power to judge of meum and tuum as he doth to the kings of the earth; nor a coercive power nor legislative; but of showing to the world, and teaching them the way and knowledge of salvation-that is to say, of preaching and declaring what they were to do who would enter into the kingdom of heaven.'

The kingdom of God, under the new dispensation, in the full sense of the word kingdom, 'is heavenly and begins from the day of judgment.' The Christian revelation, he adds, affected not the laws of God, but the sanction of those laws. In instituting the sacraments, Christ gave a law in the strict sense of the word, but it was the only law which he gave. As to moral duties, in general he gave none. He only showed that morality was a law, and not a mere theory, by revealing the fact that punishments would be inflicted after death for breaches of morality. Besides this, he forgave sins, and entrusted others with the power of doing so. There is another strange chapter on this point, discussing the powers of absolution vested in the clergy in the same singular way in which the rights of Abraham and Moses are discussed.

From this general view of the character of the Christian revelation, and of the divine origin of government, Hobbes proceeds to investigate the relations between the Church and the State. He arrives at much the same conclusion as that of Hooker. The Church and the State are identical.

Church unity consists, he says, in unity of government, not in unity of doctrine.

On the other hand, the fact that the civil power has coercive jurisdiction excludes all other coercion, for coercion by its nature must be exclusive. 'A church' (he says) 'is not one except there be a certain and known, that is to say, a lawful power, by means whereof every man may be obliged to be present in the congregation, either himself in person or by proxy, and that becomes one, and is capable of personal functions by the union of a lawful power of convocating synods and assemblies of Christians, not by uniformity of doctrine. . . . It follows that a city of Christian men and a church is altogether the same thing, of the same men, termed by two names for two causes, for the matter of a city and a church is one, to wit the same Christian men. And the form which consists in a lawful power of assembling them is the same too, for 'tis manifest that every subject is obliged to come thither, whither he is summoned by his city. Now that which is called a city as it is made up of men, the same, as it is made up of Christians, is styled a church.'

In some ways this kind of speculation has gone out of fashion, but it is not the less important, for it is perfectly certain that Hobbes was right in the opinion that government must be in one hand. Somewhere or other there must be a supreme power in politics, just as somewhere or other, in every mechanical system, there must be a centre of gravity. Nor do

the words spiritual and temporal make any real difference. The question is, Who, by any threats, whether of punishment here or damnation hereafter, can secure obedience? Whoever can do this is the supreme ruler, whether he be called Pope or King.

It is very difficult to make out how far Hobbes believed in his own teaching about religion. To go into the matter fully would require an examination of his other works, and a comparison of the different lines of thought by which his mind travelled on different subjects. The work under consideration is full of professions of religious belief, and is very severe upon atheists. It contains, however, passages which, to some persons, suggest an atheistical interpretation, though they closely resemble much that is to be found in the most orthodox of modern defenders of the faith.

Such a passage as the following, for instance, might stand as a summary of much that has of late years been preached with great applause in University pulpits. 'When we say that a thing is infinite, we signify nothing really but the impotency in our own mind, as if we should say that we know not whether or where it is limited. Neither speak they honourably enough of God who say we have an idea of him in our mind, for an idea is our conception, but conception we have none except of a finite thing; nor they who say that he hath parts, or that he is some certain entire thing, which are also attributes of finite things. . . . He, therefore, who would not ascribe any

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