"But before I commit myself to the dangerous depths of his Discourse which I am now upon the brink of, I would with his leave, make a motion; that instead of Author I may henceforth indifferently well call him Mr. Bayes as oft as I shall see occasion. And that first because he has no name, or at least will not own it, though he himself writes under the greatest security, and gives us the first letters of other men's names before he be asked them. Secondly, because he is, I perceive, a lover of elegancy of style and can endure no man's tautologies but his own; and therefore I would not distaste him with too frequent repetition of one word. But chiefly because Mr. Bayes and he do very much symbolise, in their understandings, in their expressions, in their humour, in their contempt and quarrelling of all others, though of their own profession." But justice must be done even to Parker before handing him over to the Tormentor. What were his positions? He was a coarse-fibred, essentially irreligious fellow, the accredited author of the reply to the question "What is the best body of Divinity?" "That which would help a man to keep a Coach and six horses," but he is a lucid and vigorous writer, knowing very well that he had to steer his ship through a narrow and dangerous channel, avoiding Hobbism on the one side and tender consciences on the other. Each generation of State Churchmen has the same task. The channel remains to-day just as it ever did, with Scylla and Charybdis presiding over their rocks as of old. Hobbes's _Leviathan_ appeared in 1651, and in 1670 both his philosophy and his statecraft were fashionable doctrine. All really pious people called Hobbes an Atheist. Technically he was nothing of the sort, but it matters little what he was technically, since no plain man who can read can doubt that Hobbes's enthronement of the State was the dethronement of God:-- "Seeing then that in every Christian commonwealth the civil sovereign is the supreme factor to whose charge the whole flock of his subjects is commuted, and consequently that it is by his authority that all other pastors are made and have power to teach and perform all other pastoral offices, it followeth also that it is from the civil sovereign that all other pastors derive their right of teaching, preaching and other functions pertaining to that office, and that they are but his ministers in the same way as the magistrates of towns, judges in Court of Justice and commanders of assizes are all but ministers of him that is the magistrate of the whole commonwealth, judge of all causes and commander of the whole militia, which is always the Civil Sovereign. And the reason hereof is not because they that teach, but because they that are to learn, are his subjects."--(_The Leviathan_, Hobbes's _English Works_ (Molesworth's Edition), vol. iii. p. 539.)