WorkThomas Hobbes

An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan, with An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy

Accused of atheism by a bishop five years dead and with his *Leviathan* named in a parliamentary inquiry, Hobbes at eighty defends his God and his legal safety.

by Thomas Hobbes150 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1682(published posthumously)
Original language: English

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Overview

John Bramhall had been dead for about five years when Thomas Hobbes answered him. In 1658 Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, had ended their long dispute over free will with an appendix on a different subject, “The Catching of Leviathan, the Great Whale”, which argued that the teaching of Leviathan was fatal to Christianity and to every government. Hobbes wrote his reply around 1668, and by then the accusation carried a danger it had not carried before. In October 1666, weeks after the Great Fire of London, the House of Commons had told a committee on atheism and blasphemy to gather information on Leviathan by name. John Aubrey, Hobbes's friend and biographer, reports that some of the bishops wanted him burned as a heretic. Hobbes, who was seventy-eight, burned some of his papers and began to study the law of heresy. Two pieces came of this, the Answer and the Historical Narration, and neither was printed while he lived. Charles II would not let him publish on politics or religion; the Narration appeared in 1680, after Hobbes's death in December 1679, and the Answer in 1682. The Answer takes Bramhall's charges one at a time, setting out the bishop's words and replying beneath them. Its boldest reply concerns God. Bramhall held that whoever denies spirits without bodies denies God. Hobbes answered that God is a spirit and also a body, since whatever is not a body is nowhere, and that a God with no extension at all, as the bishop described him, is the idea that leads to atheism. The Narration argues from history instead. Heresy, it says, was at first the name for a private opinion, such as the doctrine of a school of philosophers, and was no crime; emperors made it one to keep peace in the church; and in England, once the Court of High Commission had been abolished before the civil war, no court remained with the power to judge it.

Key concepts

What does Hobbes mean by a “corporeal spirit”?

A spirit, in his definition, is a thin, fluid, transparent and invisible body. The Latin word first meant breath or wind. A corporeal spirit is therefore no contradiction for him, and he describes God as the most pure and simple one, infinitely fine and intelligent. He applies the same description to the Trinity, whose three persons are, he says, that one eternal corporeal spirit.

What is an “incorporeal substance”, and why does Hobbes reject it?

An incorporeal substance is something said to exist without size, place or parts, which is how school theology described God, angels and souls. Hobbes holds that substance and body mean the same, so the phrase cancels itself, like a bodiless body. He adds that neither incorporeal nor immaterial occurs anywhere in Scripture. A thing with no extension is in no place, and what is in no place does not exist.

What is the difference between honouring and worshipping God?

To honour God is to think highly of him, which happens inwardly. To worship is to show that honour by outward signs: words, gestures, ceremonies. Hobbes uses the distinction to argue that the outward signs can be regulated by the civil power, like other public actions, while inward belief cannot be reached by any command. Bramhall sees in this a licence to comply with the times at no risk.

What is the “second death”?

The second death is the final destruction of the damned after the last judgment. Hobbes reads Scripture as saying that God alone is immortal, so the human soul does not survive by its own nature. A dead person stays dead until God raises them. The faithful then receive eternal life as a gift, and the wicked are judged and die again, this time for good, in hell-fire.

What is the king’s supremacy in matters of religion?

It is the doctrine that the civil sovereign is the highest authority over the church in his country. Hobbes defends it throughout the Answer: no assembly of clergy meets lawfully without the sovereign’s leave, no council’s decree is law except by his authority, and the public interpretation of Scripture is his. An interpretation made by rightful authority, he grants, is not thereby true. It settles what may be taught.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A God Who Is Body

Does a philosopher who allows only bodies have room for God? Hobbes answers by making God a body too, and turns the charge of atheism back on the bishop who accused him.

Bramhall had argued that to deny spirits without bodies is to deny God. Hobbes accepts the premise about himself and rejects the conclusion: a spirit is a thin, fluid, invisible body, and God is the purest of them. What has no body is nowhere, so the bishop’s unextended God is the one that amounts to nothing. For support Hobbes cites Scripture, where the word incorporeal never occurs, and Tertullian. The same reasoning reaches the soul. It is not a separate thing that outlives the body by nature; the dead live again when God raises them, and the damned die a second death.

theology
metaphysics
corporealism
atheism
soul
immortality
resurrection
Trinity
christology
scholasticism
hell

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Who May Call an Opinion Heresy

Who has the right to call an opinion heresy and to punish it? For a man whose book a committee of Parliament was examining, the question was a practical one, and he answers it from history and from statute.

The Historical Narration traces a word. Heresy first meant the opinion a Greek philosopher chose to hold, and carried no blame. Philosophers who became Christians brought their disputes into the church, councils fixed the creed against them, and emperors added penalties to keep the peace. Hobbes follows the English statutes down to the abolition of the High Commission and concludes that no court was left to judge the matter. In the Answer the same principle appears as the king’s supremacy: Scripture binds as law by the sovereign’s authority, his interpretation is the public one, and bishops hold their power from him.

heresy
church and state
political authority
sovereignty
religious authority
church authority
religious persecution
religious toleration
conscience
scriptural interpretation
scripture

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Within this work

passages held: 150
distinct concepts: 228
by passages held, corpus-wide: #417

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “metaphysics” and “theology”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 18 pairings. 92 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
metaphysics	theology	13
church and state	heresy	7
church and state	sovereignty	5
political authority	scriptural interpretation	5
church and state	political authority	4
political authority	sovereignty	4
church and state	religious authority	3
political authority	religious authority	3
heresy	political authority	2
religious authority	sovereignty	2
scriptural interpretation	theology	2
church and state	scriptural interpretation	1
heresy	religious authority	1
heresy	theology	1
metaphysics	scriptural interpretation	1
religious authority	scriptural interpretation	1
religious authority	theology	1
scriptural interpretation	sovereignty	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1642 Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (De Cive)
Written in Latin for readers across Europe, this is the second of Hobbes's three statements of his political theory, after The Elements of Law and before Leviathan, and the one that forms a section of his larger system.
EN
1650 The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic
De Cive and Leviathan both grow out of this treatise, the first statement of Hobbes's political theory, which he wrote in English in 1640 and did not himself send to the press.
EN
1651 Leviathan
The last of Hobbes's three statements of his political theory and the one that is still read: it repeats the argument of The Elements of Law and De Cive and says far more about religion than either.
EN
1655 Elements of Philosophy: Concerning Body (De Corpore)
This is the opening section of Hobbes's Elements of Philosophy, where he sets out his logic and his theory of motion. He drafted it over ten years or more, and it reached print only in 1655, thirteen years after the section on the citizen.
EN
1656 The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance
This is Hobbes's fullest treatment of free will and his last word on it in his argument with John Bramhall, an argument that reached print in four instalments between 1654 and 1658.
EN
1682 An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan, with An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy you are here EN

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