Political researches in that age necessarily involved theological, or at least ecclesiastical, principles; and Hobbes had not feared to denounce some of the antient usurpations of the clergy, and to pronounce religious concord to be absolutely essential to the civil happiness of a people: and while he broached some principles not well pleasing to the pretensions of the hierarchy of the day, he advanced others which were thought to end, by no violent interpretation, in absolute infidelity. Accordingly, the theologians assailed him from every quarter; and his work, while it divided learned laymen, some of whom thought it a marvel of political genius, others a dangerous and unseemly monster, was condemned by the unanimous indignation of the ecclesiastical body. The churchmen of Rome united in hostility with those of England against doctrines which were dangerous to the common prerogatives of the whole order, if not to the integrity of religion itself. The latter, being more closely attacked, were more violent in their enmity. They denounced the opinions as false and heretical; and the divines of Cambridge went so far as publicly to stigmatize the author as an atheist. Besides this, he did not even escape the charges of being ill disposed to royalty, and a disguised adversary to the party of the king. These calumnies (such at least he constantly asserted both to be,) deprived him of the patronage of the Court, and seemed at one time even to have endangered his personal safety; insomuch that, under the Commonwealth, he found it expedient to escape from his enemies at Paris, and take refuge among those, whose enmity he had rather deserved, the republicans of England. He escaped however the fate, so common to men of moderation in violent times, of being persecuted by both parties; and only sustained the animosity of that which he had intended to serve. Hobbes was a decided Episcopalian. He studied in all matters to conform both to the doctrines and the ceremonies of the church established; and avoided, even with a feeling of dislike, the conventicles of the Puritans. Still less did he incline, on the other hand, to the Roman Catholic faith. During a dangerous illness, which he suffered with great firmness at Paris, when he was supposed to be on the point of death, an intimate friend, named Mersenne, a learned Franciscan, approached him with spiritual consolation, and pressed him to depart in communion with the Roman church. Hobbes calmly replied, “Father, I have long ago considered all those matters well, and it would trouble me to reconsider them now. You can entertain me on some more agreeable subject. When did you see Gassendi?”