TOPICS OF THE DAY.
HOBBES : VOLUNTARYISM.
THE most prominent characteristics of Hobbes were the inde- pendence and impartiality of his intellect, and the sincerity of his disposition. He missed the truth in some instances, but he always sought it in good faith. And what he thought be frankly uttered ; expecting to find all men as honest and unbiased as him- self. This has been his crime. The Republicans could not brook a writer who maintained the necessity of a strong and concen- trated supreme authority. The King and ardent Royalists were jealous of a writer who held it criminal to subvert an established government, and advocated submission to any government that was strong enough to keep itself established, irrespective of the origin of its power. Clarendon, vain of the proclamations and manifestoes he had penned for the King, was shocked and an- gered to hear it said that the authors of those documents, by ac- knowledging the premises of Parliament to be just, had rendered the conclusions drawn from them unavoidable, and thus in reality weakened the Royal cause. The Bishops could not look very cor- dially on the man who told them, that "though they were content that the divine right, which the Pope pretended to in England, should be denied him, yet they thought it not so fit to be taken from the Church of England, whom they now supposed themselves to represent." And the Presbyterian clergy were still less pleased with the merciless observer, who having traced their popularity in the City to their habit of denouncing the oppressions of Go- vernment from the pulpit, and "lightly inveighing against the lucrative vices of trade or handicraft," naively enough confessed, "I have thought much preaching an inconvenience." All the sectaries who had muddled their brains with metaphysical subtil- ties were indignant at the man who declared that to dovetail the technicalities of Aristotle and the Schoolmen into the simple phraseology of the Scriptures was to spoil both religion and phi- losophy; and added, " I like not the drawing religion into an art, whereas it ought to be a lam." The impartial inquirer, who analyzed the opinions and passions of society to the practical end of reestablishing tranquillity and preserving it, was scouted by all parties bent on placing their respective dogmas in the ascendant. For a time he was made the butt of their literary champions ; but it was soon found more expedient to keep men from listening to him, and by common consent his books were placed on the index expurgatorius of all sects and factions.
The fate of Milton's works contrasts instructively with that of the writings of Hobbes. Milton was an ardent partisan of the Independents ; he identified himself with a party, and wrote for it in a strain more remarkable for passionate sympathy than reasonable conviction ; and he has always had some to patro- nize and eulogize his doctrines. It is not easy to determine
exactly how far Paradise Lost is indebted for its popularity to sectarian partisanship. Certain it is that some extensive wholesale dealers have noted a considerable diminution in the demand for cheap copies of the poem since the discovery and publication of the Treatise on Christian Doctrine. Yet many of the professed admirers of Milton, if they have read his works, must have felt their prejudices quite as much shocked by them as by the writings of Hobbes. The main difference between Hobbes's and Milton's estimate of the sectarian clergy of their day arises from the circumstance that Hobbes, a dependent of the Earls of Devonshire, and associating with the Royalists, saw them only in their public ministry ; while Milton, per- sonally intimate with the Puritans, had opportunities of observing them in domestic life. Hobbes and Milton concur in attributing the influence of the sectarian clergy with the sturdy, wealthy, uneducated middle class, to the dexterous manner in which they insinuated themselves into the office of confessors and conscience- keepers, and the skill with which they spared the favourite vices and extolled the favourite virtues of their penitents. Milton's portrait of the family-chaplain, in his Means for Removing Hirelings out of the Church, is more unsparing than Hobbes's portrait of the Presbyterian preacher in Behemoth. It is curious to trace how closely these adherents of the King and the Commonwealth approach not merely in their judgment of contem- porary characters, but in their practical conclusions respecting government, religion, and philosophy. Hobbes vindicates the Royalists who accepted terms from the Commonwealth after re- sistance had become hopeless ; Milton rests the claim of that Government to obedience upon its victories. Hobbes denies the right of the clergy to political power, or an authoritative voice in questions of -philosophy ; Milton would confine preaching within equally narrow limits. Hobbes's ideal of a government is a King acting upon the principles of enlightenedthinkers ; Milton's, a Council acting in conformity to the sentiments of educated gentlemen. They concur in sympathizing with a bold and frank exercise of benevolent power, in reprobating formal and fantastic fanaticism, and in undervaluing the rough common sense of the illiterate. Yet the Unitarian Milton has been the idol of the most orthodox sects ; while the Trinitarian Hobbes has been repudiated by all churches.
This comes of judging a man's writings not by what they really contain, but by his party-connexions. The persons who would make the reading or editing of Hobbes a crime, practically ob- struct the dissemination of truth as much as those who would pro- scribe Milton. They entertain a mistaken notion of what consti- • *tee the value of books, and the process by which truth is attained.
It is not so much the conclusions of a writer, as the mass of just and striking observations he accumulates, and the skill he shows in arranging and deducing consequences from them, that makes a book valuable. The earlier chemists have many erroneous con- clusions ; but their writings are still valuable, because upon the methods of inquiring they struck out and the facts they observed still rests the whole of their important science. And so with mental and moral analysts and observers. That the erroneous conclusions of Hobbes in politics have been refuted, is owing in a great measure to the use subsequent inquirers have made of the method of investigation he was the first to apply to political science. He bequeathed to after observers an engine capable of detecting not merely the errors of other thinkers, but his own. His mistakes and their sources have been pointed out, and thus rendered innocuous ; but the truths he revealed retain their pris- tine value. No one man ever discovered more than fragments of truth, if the expression be admissible : the discussion to which new views give rise—the cavilling and criticism of op- ponents, the modification of expressions to obviate objections— is indispensible to the full development of sound doctrine. To trace the growing clearness and precision of sound opinions through the ferment of controversy, is one of the most im- proving studies. There is more instruction to be derived from detecting the causes which lead a great mind into error, than in listening to the soundest doctrines repeated parrot-like in con- ventional formulas.
To maintain that the admirers of Hobbes cannot sincerely en- tertain Voluntary opinions, is to betray an inadequate appre- hension of what Voluntary opinions really are. The Voluntary principle prescribes, that no force or seduction shall be exhibited to the will with a view to prevent the adoption or profession of any opinions whatsoever—that the judgment shall be left free, and the will regulated by the judgment alone. In religious-matters, the true Voluntary system is that which leaves every man free to join any congregation or communion of whose practice and doc- trines his judgment approves, and to quit it without blame or reproach when he ceases to believe in them. To infringe upon this liberty by holding up to public odium the man who acts thus—much more, to denounce the man who examines all opinions candidly though he remains firm in his original faith—is a far more serious deviation from Voluntary principles than to compel a man to contribute according to his means towards the support of the preachers of an alien church. The latter is only po- litical oppression, for it leaves opinion free : the former is both political and religious oppression, for it attaches a severe penalty to the honest expression of opinion. The most dangerous practical application which professing Voluntaries make of this narrow and erroneous view of their prin- ciple, is that which leads them to repudiate the public services of a man otherwise unexceptionable, not on the ground that he is irreligious, but that he is not religious in the same fashion or de- gree as those who object to him. They who make what they call " the religion of the heart " the test of fitness for secular employ. ment, claim worldly influence and power as the exclusive right of those to whom has been imparted a capacity for apprehending divine things not shared by the rest of the world—in short, a special revelation. In language less repulsive to modern habits of thought than that of the Romanists of the middle ages or the hierarchs of Pagan times, they claim supremacy for a priesthood. They revive, though in guarded language, the pretensions of the Fifth Monarchy men—that " the saints shall inherit the earth." Such pretensions cannot be admitted in our day. The bulk of mankind, to whom the exclusive light has not been imparted, must of necessity guide themselves by the feebler light of mere human reason ; and the favoured few, in their transactions with worldly men, must speak the language and act on the principles of the world.
Previous page
