As in all things which I have written, so also in this piece, I have endeavoured all I can to be perspicuous; but yet your own attention is always necessary. The late Lord Bishop of Derry published a book called _The Catching of the Leviathan_, in which he hath put together divers sentences picked out of my _Leviathan_, which stand there plainly and firmly proved, and sets them down without their proofs, and without the order of their dependance one upon another; and calls them atheism, blasphemy, impiety, subversion of religion, and by other names of that kind. My request unto you is, that when he cites my words for erroneous, you will be pleased to turn to the place itself, and see whether they be well proved, and how to be understood. Which labour his Lordship might have saved you, if he would have vouchsafed as well to have weighed my arguments before you, as to have shown you my conclusions. His book containeth two chapters, the one concerning Religion, the other concerning Politics. Because he does not so much as offer any refutation of any thing in my _Leviathan_ concluded, I needed not to have answered either of them. Yet to the first I here answer, because the words _atheism_, _impiety_, and the like, are words of the greatest defamation possible. And this I had done sooner, if I had sooner known that such a book was extant. He wrote it ten years since, and yet I never heard of it till about three months since; so little talk there was of his Lordship’s writings. If you want leisure or care of the questions between us, I pray you condemn me not upon report. To judge and not examine is not just. Farewell. T. HOBBES. ------- AN ANSWER, ETC. ------- THAT THE HOBBIAN PRINCIPLES ARE DESTRUCTIVE TO CHRISTIANITY AND ALL RELIGION.