Samuel Clarke · 24 of 54

Proposition I. · Part 4

4. That state, which Mr Hobbes calls the state of nature, is not in any sense a natural state; but a state of the greatest, most unnatural, and most intolerable corruption that can be imagined. For reason, which is the proper nature of man, can never (as has been before shown) lead men to any thing else than universal love and benevolence; and wars, hatred, and violence, can never arise but from extreme corruption. A man may sometimes, it is true, in his own defence, be necessitated, in compliance with the laws of nature and reason, to make war upon his fellows: But the first aggressors, who, upon Mr Hobbes’s principles, (that all men have a natural will to hurt each other, and that every one in the state of nature has a right to do whatever he has a will to;)—the first aggressors, I say, who, upon these principles, assault and violently spoil as many as they are superior to in strength, without any regard to equity or proportion; these can never, by any colour whatsoever, be excused from having utterly divested themselves of human nature, and having introduced into the world, contrary to all the laws of nature and reason, the greatest calamities, and most unnatural confusion, that mankind, by the highest abuse of their natural powers and faculties, are capable of falling under. Mr Hobbes pretends, indeed, that one of the first and most natural principles of human life is a desire necessarily arising in every man’s mind, of having power and dominion over others; and that this naturally impels men to use force and violence to obtain it. But neither is it true, that men, following the dictates of reason and uncorrupted nature, desire disproportionate power and dominion over others; neither, if it was natural to desire such power, would it at all follow that it was agreeable to nature to use violent and hurtful means to obtain it. For since the only natural and good reason to desire power and dominion, (more than what is necessary for every man’s self-preservation) is, that the possessor of such power may have a larger compass, and greater abilities, and opportunities of doing good, (as is evident from God’s exercise of perfectly absolute power,) it is plain that no man obeying the uncorrupted dictates of nature and reason can desire to increase his power by such destructive and pernicious methods, the prevention of which is the only good reason that makes the power itself truly desirable: All violence, therefore, and war, are plainly the effects, not of natural desires, but of unnatural and extreme corruption; and this Mr Hobbes himself unwarily proves against himself by those very arguments whereby he endeavours to prove that war and contention is more natural to men than to bees or ants; for his arguments on this head are all drawn from men’s using themselves (as the animals he is speaking of cannot do,) to strive about honours and dignities, till the contention grows up into hatred, seditions, and wars; to separate each one his private interest from the public, and value himself highly above others, upon getting and engrossing to himself more than his proportion of the things of life, to find fault with each other’s management, and, through self-conceit, being in continual innovation and distractions, to impose one upon another by lies, falsifying, and deceit, calling good evil, and evil good, to grow envious at the prosperity of others, or proud and domineering when themselves are in ease and plenty, and to keep up tolerable peace and agreement among themselves, merely by artificial compacts and the compulsion of laws; all which things are so far from being truly the natural effects and result of men’s reason and other faculties, that, on the contrary, they are evidently some of the grossest abuses and most unnatural corruptions thereof, that any one who was arguing on the opposite side of the question could easily have chosen to have instanced in.

5. Lastly; The chief and principal argument, which is one of the main foundations of Mr Hobbes’s and his followers’ system, namely, that God’s irresistible power is the only foundation of his dominion, and the only measure of his right over his creatures; and, consequently, that every other being has just so much right as it has natural power, that is, that it is naturally right for every thing to do whatever it has power to do: This argument, I say, is of all his others the most notoriously false and absurd; as may sufficiently appear, (besides what has been already said of God’s other perfections being as much the measure of his right as his power is,) from this single consideration, suppose the devil, (for when men run into extreme impious assertions, they must be answered with suitable suppositions,) suppose, I say, such a being as we conceive the devil to be, of extreme malice, cruelty, and iniquity, was indued with supreme absolute power, and made use of it only to render the world as miserable as was possible, in the most cruel, arbitrary, and unequal manner that can be imagined; would it not follow undeniably, upon Mr Hobbes’s scheme, since dominion is founded on power, and power is the measure of right, and consequently absolute power gives absolute right, that such a government as this would not only be as much of necessity indeed to be submitted to, but also that it would be as just and right, and with as little reason to be complained of, as is the present government of the world in the hands of the ever-blessed and infinitely good God, whose love and goodness and tender mercy appear everywhere over all his works?

Here Mr Hobbes, as an unanswerable argument in defence of his assertion, urges, that the only reason why men are bound to obey God is plainly nothing but weakness or want of power; because, if they themselves were all-powerful, it is manifest they could not be under any obligation to obey; and, consequently, power would give them an undoubted right to do what they pleased. That is to say; if men were not created and dependent beings, it is true they could not indeed be obliged to the proper relative duty of created and dependent beings, viz. to obey the will and command of another in things positive. But from their obligation to the practice of moral virtues, of justice, righteousness, equity, holiness, purity, goodness, beneficence, faithfulness, and truth, from which Mr Hobbes fallaciously, in this argument, and most impiously in his whole scheme, endeavours to discharge them; from this they could not be discharged by any addition of power whatsoever; because the obligation to these things is not, as the obligation to obey in things of arbitrary and positive constitution, founded only in the weakness, subjection, and dependency of the persons obliged; but also, and chiefly, in the eternal and unchangeable nature and reason of the things themselves: For these things are the law of God himself, not only to his creatures, but also to himself, as being the rule of all his own actions in the government of the world.

I have been the longer upon this head, because moral virtue is the foundation and the sum, the essence and the life, of all true religion; for the security whereof all positive institution was principally designed; for the restoration whereof all revealed religion was ultimately intended; and inconsistent wherewith, or in opposition to which, all doctrines whatsoever, supported by what pretence of reason or authority soever, are as certainly and necessarily false, as God is true.