The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 06 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
_A._ God forbid that so horrible, unchristian, and inhuman a design
should ever enter into the King’s heart. I would have him have money
enough readily to raise an army able to suppress any rebellion, and to
take from his enemies all hope of success, that they may not dare to
trouble him in the reformation of the Universities; but to put none to
death without the actual committing such crimes as are already made
capital by the laws. The core of rebellion, as you have seen by this,
and read of other rebellions, are the Universities; which nevertheless
are not to be cast away, but to be better disciplined: that is to say,
that the politics there taught be made to be, as true politics should
be, such as are fit to make men know, that it is their duty to obey all
laws whatsoever that shall by the authority of the King be enacted, till
by the same authority they shall be repealed; such as are fit to make
men understand, that the civil laws are God’s laws, as they that make
them are by God appointed to make them; and to make men know, that the
people and the Church are one thing, and have but one head, the King;
and that no man has title to govern under him, that has it not from him;
that the King owes his crown to God only, and to no man, ecclesiastic or
other; and that the religion they teach there, be a quiet waiting for
the coming again of our blessed Saviour, and in the mean time a
resolution to obey the King’s laws, which also are God’s laws; to injure
no man, to be in charity with all men, to cherish the poor and sick, and
to live soberly and free from scandal; without mingling our religion
with points of natural philosophy, as freedom of will, incorporeal
substance, everlasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases, which the people
understand not, nor will ever care for. When the Universities shall be
thus disciplined, there will come out of them, from time to time,
well-principled preachers, and they that are now ill-principled, from
time to time fall away.