It is true, he never wrote against episcopacy; and it is his private opinion, that such an episcopacy as is now in England, is the most commodious that a Christian King can use for the governing of Christ’s flock; the misgoverning whereof the King is to answer for to Christ, as the bishops are to answer for their misgovernment to the King, and to God also. Nor ever spake he ill of any of them, as to their persons: therefore I should wonder the more at the uncharitable censure of some of them, but that I see a relic still remaining of the venom of popish ambition, lurking in that seditious _distinction_ and _division_ between the power _spiritual_ and _civil_; which they that are in love with a power to hurt all those that stand in competition with them for learning, as the Roman clergy had to hurt Galileo, do not willingly forsake. All bishops are not in every point like one another. Some, it may be, are content to hold their authority from the King’s letters patents; and these have no cause to be angry with Mr. Hobbes. Others will needs have somewhat more, they know not what, of divine right, to govern by virtue of _imposition of hands_, and _consecration_, not acknowledging their power from the King, but immediately from Christ. And these perhaps are they that are displeased with him, which he cannot help, nor has deserved; but will for all that believe the King only, and without sharers, to be the head of all the Churches within his own dominions; and that he may dispense with ceremonies, or with anything else that is not against the Scriptures, nor against natural equity; and that the consent of the Lords and Commons cannot now give him that power, but declare, for the people, their advice and consent to it. Nor can he be made believe that the safety of a state depends upon the safety of the Church, I mean of the clergy. For neither is a clergy essential to a commonwealth; and those ministers that preached sedition, pretend to be of the clergy, as well as the best. He believes rather that the safety of the Church depends on the safety of the King, and the entireness of the sovereign power; and that the King is no part of the flock of any minister or bishop, no more than the shepherd is of his sheep, but of Christ only; and all the clergy, as well as the people, the King’s flock. Nor can that clamour of his adversaries make Mr. Hobbes think himself a worse Christian than the best of them. And how will you disprove it, either by his disobedience, to the laws _civil_ or _ecclesiastical_, or by any ugly action? Or how will you prove that the obedience, which springs from scorn of injustice, is less acceptable to God, than that which proceeds from fear of punishment, or hope of benefit. Gravity and heaviness of countenance are not so good marks of assurance of God’s favour, as cheerful, charitable, and upright behaviour towards men, which are better signs of religion than the zealous maintaining of controverted doctrines.