(_b_) “Whereas Mr. Hobbes mentions my objections to his book _De Cive_: it is true that ten years since, I gave him about sixty exceptions,” &c. I did indeed intend to have answered those exceptions as finding them neither political nor theological, nor that he alleged any reasons by which they were to be justified. But shortly after, intending to write in English, and publish my thoughts concerning Civil Doctrine in that book which I entitled _Leviathan_, I thought his objections would by the clearness of my method fall off without an answer. Now this _Leviathan_ he calleth “_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_.” Words not far fetched, nor more applicable to my _Leviathan_, than to any other writing that should offend him. For allowing him the word _monstrum_, (because it seems he takes it for a monstrous great fish), he can neither say it is _informe_; for even they that approve not the doctrine, allow the method. Nor that it is _ingens_; for it is a book of no great bulk. Nor _cui lumen ademptum_; for he will find very few readers that will not think it clearer than his scholastic jargon. And whereas he saith there are two of our own Church (as he hears say) that are answering it; and that “he himself,” if I desire it, “will demonstrate that my principles are pernicious both to piety and policy, and destructive to all relations,” &c.: my answer is, that _I_ desire not that he or they should so misspend their time; but if they will needs do it, I can give them a fit title for their book, _Behemoth against Leviathan_. He ends his epistle with “so God bless us.” Which words are good in themselves, but to no purpose here; but are a buffoonly abusing of the name of God to calumny. ------- A VINDICATION OF TRUE LIBERTY FROM ANTECEDENT AND EXTRINSICAL NECESSITY. ------- _J. D._ “Either I am free to write this discourse for liberty against necessity, or I am not free. If I be free, I have obtained the cause, and ought not to suffer for the truth. If I be not free, yet I ought not to be blamed, since I do it not out of any voluntary election, but out of an inevitable necessity.” _T. H._ Right Honourable, I had once resolved to answer J. D.’s objections to my book _De Cive_ in the first place, as that which concerns me most; and afterwards to examine this Discourse of Liberty and Necessity, which, because I never had uttered my opinion of it, concerned me the less. But seeing it was both your Lordship’s and J. D.’s desire that I should begin with the latter, I was contented so to do. And here I present and submit it to your Lordship’s judgment.