The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 06 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
_B._ All that is required, both in faith and manners, for man’s
salvation, is, I confess, set down in Scripture as plainly as can be.
_Children obey your parents in all things: Servants obey your masters:
Let all men be subject to the higher powers, whether it be the King or
those that are sent by him_: _Love God with all your soul, and your
neighbour as yourself_: are words of the Scripture, which are well
enough understood; but neither children, nor the greatest part of men,
do understand why it is their duty to do so. They see not that the
safety of the commonwealth, and consequently their own, depends upon
their doing it. Every man by nature, without discipline, does in all his
actions look upon, as far as he can see, the benefit that shall redound
to himself from his obedience. He reads that covetousness is the root of
all evil; but he thinks, and sometimes finds, it is the root of his
estate. And so in other cases the Scripture says one thing, and they
think another, weighing the commodities or incommodities of this present
life only, which are in their sight, never putting into the scales the
good and evil of the life to come, which they see not.
_A._ All this is no more than happens where the Scripture is sealed up
in Greek and Latin, and the people taught the same things out of them by
preachers. But they that are of a condition and age fit to examine the
sense of what they read, and that take a delight in searching out the
grounds of their duty, certainly cannot choose but by their reading of
the Scriptures come to such a sense of their duty, as not only to obey
the laws themselves, but also to induce others to do the same. For
commonly men of age and quality are followed by their inferior
neighbours, that look more upon the example of those men whom they
reverence, and whom they are unwilling to displease, than upon precepts
and laws.