"Like the colt of a wild ass in the wilderness": Bramhall's critique of the "trim state" of Hobbes
From John Bramhall's The Catching of Leviathan or the Great Whale (1658), a critique of Hobbes. Here Bramhall describes Hobbes's "trim commonwealth" as leaving humanity "in the wilderness", stripped of natural law and its 'thick' account of our obligations to God and neighbour:
Yet, to let us see how inconsistent and irreconcileable he is with himself, elsewhere, reckoning up all the laws of nature at large, even twenty in number, he hath not one word that concerneth religion, or that hath the least relation in the world to God. As if a man were like the colt of a wild ass in the wilderness, without any owner or obligation. Thus, in describing the laws of nature, this great clerk forgetteth the God of nature, and the main and principal laws of nature, which contain a man’s duty to his God and the principal end of his creation. Perhaps he will say, that he handleth the laws of nature there, only so far as may serve to the constitution or settlement of a commonwealth. In good time; let it be so. He hath devised us a trim commonwealth; which is neither founded upon religion towards God, nor justice towards man, but merely upon self-interest and self-preservation. Those rays of heavenly light, those natural seeds of religion, which God Himself hath imprinted in the heart of man, are more efficacious towards the preservation of a society, whether we regard the nature of the thing or the blessing of God, than all his “pacts,” and “surrenders,” and “translations of power".” He who unteacheth men their duty to God, may make them ‘eye-servants,’ so long as their interest doth oblige them to obey, but is no fit master to teach men conscience and fidelity. Without religion, societies are but like soapy bubbles, quickly dissolved.
Yet, to let us see how inconsistent and irreconcileable he is with himself, elsewhere, reckoning up all the laws of nature at large, even twenty in number, he hath not one word that concerneth religion, or that hath the least relation in the world to God. As if a man were like the colt of a wild ass in the wilderness, without any owner or obligation. Thus, in describing the laws of nature, this great clerk forgetteth the God of nature, and the main and principal laws of nature, which contain a man’s duty to his God and the principal end of his creation. Perhaps he will say, that he handleth the laws of nature there, only so far as may serve to the constitution or settlement of a commonwealth. In good time; let it be so. He hath devised us a trim commonwealth; which is neither founded upon religion towards God, nor justice towards man, but merely upon self-interest and self-preservation. Those rays of heavenly light, those natural seeds of religion, which God Himself hath imprinted in the heart of man, are more efficacious towards the preservation of a society, whether we regard the nature of the thing or the blessing of God, than all his “pacts,” and “surrenders,” and “translations of power".” He who unteacheth men their duty to God, may make them ‘eye-servants,’ so long as their interest doth oblige them to obey, but is no fit master to teach men conscience and fidelity. Without religion, societies are but like soapy bubbles, quickly dissolved.
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