There is nothing in it against episcopacy; I cannot therefore imagine what reason any episcopal man can have to speak of me, as I hear some of them do, as of an atheist, or man of no religion, unless it be for making the authority of the Church wholly upon the regal power; which I hope your Majesty will think is neither atheism nor heresy. But what had I to do to meddle with matters of that nature, seeing religion is not philosophy, but law? It was written in a time when the pretence of Christ’s kingdom was made use of for the most horrid actions that can be imagined; and it was in just indignation of that, that I desired to see the bottom of that doctrine of the kingdom of Christ, which divers ministers then preached for a pretence to their rebellion: which may reasonably extenuate, though not excuse the writing of it. There is therefore no ground for so great a calumny in my writing. There is no sign of it in my life; and for my religion, when I was at the point of death at St. Germain’s, the Bishop of Durham can bear witness of it, if he be asked. Therefore I most humbly beseech your sacred Majesty not to believe so ill of me upon reports, that proceed often, and may do so now, from the displeasure which commonly ariseth from difference in opinion; nor to think the worse of me, if snatching up all the weapons to fight against your enemies, I lighted upon one that had a double edge. Your Majesty’s poor and most loyal subject, THOMAS HOBBES. ========== [Illustration: _Seven Philosophical Problems. English Works, Vol. 7._] PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS. --- CHAPTER I. PROBLEMS OF GRAVITY. _A._ What may be the cause, think you, that stones and other bodies thrown upward, or carried up and left to their liberty, fall down again, for aught a man can see, of their own accord? I do not think with the old philosophers, that they have any love to the earth; or are sullen, that they will neither go nor stay. And yet I cannot imagine, what body there is above that should drive them back. _B._ For my part, I believe the cause of their descending is not in any natural appetite of the bodies that descend; but rather that the globe of the earth hath some special motion, by which it more easily casteth off the air than it doth other bodies. And then this descent of those we call heavy bodies must of necessity follow, unless there be some empty spaces in the world to receive them. For when the air is thrown off from the earth, somewhat must come into the place of it, in case the world be full: and it must be those things which are hardliest cast off, that is, those things which we say are heavy.