Communication Christian ecclesiology and the composition of Leviathan: A newly discovered letter to Thomas Hobbes

Historical Journal

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 217-231

  Collins, Jeffrey R ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950023815     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X99008845     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Mordechai Feingold, 'Robert Payne of Oxford', in J. D. North and J. J. Roche, eds., The light of nature: essays in the history and philosophy of science, presented to A. C. Crombie (Dordrecht, 1985), pp. 269-70;
2. Noel Malcolm, ed., The correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (2 vols., Oxford, 1991), p. 873 (Biographical Register: 'Robert Payne').
3. Hobbes met Galileo during a tour of Europe undertaken with the third earl of Devonshire. Payne's translation of Galileo's Delia scienza mecanica was likely executed from a manuscript procured by Hobbes on this trip. Jean Jacquot, 'Sir Charles Cavendish and his learned friends', Annals of Science, 8 (1952), p. 21.
4. On Payne's optical studies, see Feingold, 'Payne', pp. 272-5.
5. Jacquot, 'Cavendish', pp. 18-20. Payne apparently served as the intermediary between Hobbes and the prominent theorist of optics Walter Warner. Payne to Warner, 3 Oct. 1636, British Library (BL) Add MS 4458, fos. 26-7. It has been recently argued that the manuscript known as the 'Short tract on first principles', which contains key elements of Hobbes's natural philosophy and has been widely ascribed to Hobbes, is in Payne's hand and may have been authored by him. Richard Tuck, 'Hobbes and Descartes', in G. A. J. Rogers and Alan Ryan, eds., Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1988) pp. 17-18.
6. For a rebuttal, see Karl Schuhmann, 'Le short tract, première oeuvre philosophique de Hobbes', Hobbes Studies, 8 (1995), pp. 3-36;
7. also Perez Zagorin, 'Hobbes's early philosophical development', Journal of the History of Ideas, 54 (1993), pp. 505-18.
8. Peter Zagorin, 'Thomas Hobbes's departure from England in 1640: an unpublished letter', Historical Journal, 21 (1978), pp. 157-60.
9. Hobbes explained the Leviathan to Edward Hyde by saying that 'the truth is, I have a mind to go home'. Edward Hyde, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to church and slate in Mr. Hobbes's book entitled Leviathan (London, 1676), p. 7.
10. Malcolm, 'Payne', p. 875.
11. Ibid., pp. 872, 875.
12. Sheldon passed the Interregnum as a private chaplain in Nottinghamshire. Victor D. Sutch, Gilbert Sheldon: architect of anglican survival, 1640-1675 (The Hague, 1973), pp. 35-6.
13. Malcolm, introduction to Correspondence of Hobbes, p. lii. Hobbes was a prodigious composer of letters, but only 210 letters to or from him survive. Malcolm considers the lost correspondences between Hobbes and François du Verdus (1650-70S) and that between Hobbes and Robert Payne (1640S-51) to be the most significant of all such losses.
14. The letter provides Payne's assessment of Lord Herbert's De teritate (1624), and does not prove particularly useful for a study of Hobbes's own development. Robert Payne to Thomas Hobbes, 5 Nov. 1636, Malcolm, ed., Correspondence of Hobbes, p. 40. The newly discovered letter presented here would be number 62A in Malcolm's sequence.
15. This periodical, printed from 1846 to 1868, confusingly underwent three title changes (Theological and Ecclesiastic, Ecclesiastic, and Ecclesiastic and Theologian) and is now quite difficult to locate. Pocock's edition of the known Payne-Sheldon correspondence is contained in a series titled, 'Illustrations of the state of the church during the great rebellion', which also contains other clerical correspondence of the Interregnum.
16. Payne to Sheldon, 25 Apr. 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 134. Pocock, 'Illustrations', Theologian and Ecclesiastic, 6 (1898), p. 165.
17. For convenience, I have included references to Pocock where he includes relevant material, but as I have found several significant transcription errors in the printed edition of these letters, the Harleian MS is quoted throughout.
18. Payne to Sheldon, 26 Mar. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 129;
19. Pocock, 'Illustrations', Theologian and Ecclesiastic, 6 (1898), pp. 170-1.
20. A manuscript copy of the Elements had been provided to the publisher without Hobbes's knowledge. The political chapters of the Elements were published as a second book, also unauthorized, at the same time. Payne mistook this for an English translation of Hobbes's 1642 treatise of political theory, De cive. He sent a copy along to Sheldon. Payne to Sheldon, 13 May 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 128. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 172.
21. Payne to Sheldon, 13 May 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 128;
22. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 172.
23. Richard Tuck, Philosophy and government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 323-5. Tuck is the first intellectual historian to make extensive use of the Payne-Sheldon correspondence as printed in Pocock's edition. Much of the material from this paragraph is fully treated in his work.
24. See below. Miriam Reik's biography of Hobbes also makes some use of the Payne-Sheldon correspondence. Miriam Reik, The golden lands of Thomas Hobbes (Detroit, 1977).
25. Payne to Sheldon, 4 Feb. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 173;
26. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 167. Johann Sommerville, another prominent commentator on Hobbes from the Cambridge School contextualists, has also made use of the Sheldon-Payne correspondence as edited by Pocock. See his Thomas Hobbes: political ideas in historical context (New York, 1992), pp. 23-4, 124, 127.
27. Tuck, Philosophy and government, pp. 323-5;
28. see also Tuck, 'The civil religion of Thomas Hobbes', in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modem Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 120-35.
29. Anthony Milton, Catholic and reformed: the Roman and Protestant churches in English political thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 353-73, et passim;
30. Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as pastor: the episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990), pp. 10, 260-1, 300;
31. Peter Lake, Anglicans and puritans? Presbyterians and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London, 1988), pp. 220-2.
32. Payne to Sheldon, 7 Mar. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 127;
33. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 170.
34. Payne to Sheldon, :g Aug. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 130;
35. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 173.
36. Payne to Sheldon, 6 May 1651, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 132.
37. Payne to Sheldon, 20 July 1651, BL Add MS 34727, fo. 88. Note the alternate location of this letter. Pocock understandably missed it, as it is wrongly identified as a letter from 'BP' (rather than 'RP') in the British Library catalogue.
38. Payne to Sheldon, 16 Sept. 1651, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 131. This letter too appears to have been omitted by Pocock in his edition of the Payne-Sheldon correspondence.
39. Quentin Skinner, 'Conquest and consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement controversy' in G. E. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646-1660 (London, 1972).
40. Payne to Sheldon, 19 Aug. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 130;
41. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 173.
42. BL Harleian MS 6942 contains letters from approximately ten Interregnum correspondents of Sheldon's (the vast majority are from Henry Hammond). Based upon handwriting analysis alone, no candidate other than Payne appears to be represented among this group.
43. Payne to Sheldon, 4 Feb. 1650, Harleian MS 6942, no. 173;
44. Pocock, 'Illustrations', p. 167.
45. See BL Harleian MS 6942, nos. 130, 153a. Indeed, both passages refer to a 'quarell with the tribe'.
46. Payne to Sheldon, 20 Dec. 16, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 121.
47. Drafts of letters, in any case, are included by Malcolm in his edition of Hobbes's correspondence. In this case, the evidence that this draft accurately reflected a letter actually received by Hobbes is overwhelming.
48. Payne to Sheldon, 4 Feb. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 173. That the correspondent in Paris is Hobbes is indicated by the remainder of the letter, which is cited above and offers an account of Hobbes's dispute with Payne over episcopal power.
49. The fortunes of Sheldon's papers thereafter, including how this batch ended up in the possession of Robert and Edward Harley, is unclear. No information is contained in Cyril Ernest Wright, ed., Forties Harleiani: study of the sources of the Harleian collection of manuscripts (London, 1972).
50. The letter may shed some light on to the order in which Leviathan was composed, and indicates that it was composed in the order of its final presentation. In May of 1650, Payne reported that Hobbes had finished thirty-seven of Leviathan's planned fifty chapters (the final work had fortyseven chapters). If we assume that the work was composed in order, then this would have taken Hobbes into the middle of part three of Leviathan, 'Of a Christian Commonwealth', which deals with the specific ecclesiological issues covered in Payne's letter. This would make some sense, as Hobbes had been disputing ecclesiology with Payne throughout late 1649 and early 1650. Nothing conclusive can be said, but it seems more likely than not that Hobbes composed Leviathan in order of its eventual publication.
51. Tuck, Philosophy and government, pp. 325-35.
52. J. G. A. Pocock, 'Time, history, and eschatology in the thought of Thomas Hobbes', in Politics, language and time (London, 1978), pp. 148-200;
53. Tuck, 'Civil religion', passim; David Johnston, 'Hobbes's mortalism', History of Political Thought, 10 (1989), pp. 647-63.
54. For some brief but useful remarks see Mark Goldie, 'The reception of Hobbes', in J. H. Burns and M. Goldie, eds., Cambridge history of political thought, 1450-1700 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 612;
55. see also Jeffrey R. Collins, 'Thomas Hobbes and the English revolution' (Ph. D. dissertation, Harvard, 1999). chs. 5-8.
56. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the matter, forme, and power of a commonwealth ecclesiasticall and civill, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 320-1.
57. Ibid., pp. 323-4, 374-7.
58. Ibid., pp. 378-402;
59. Patricia Springborg, '"Leviathan" and the problem of ecclesiastical authority', Political Theory, 3 (1975), pp. 298-303.
60. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 362-3, 365-7, 371-3.
61. This designation obviously occurred in Hobbes's correspondence with Payne. Payne employed it in explaining Hobbes's position to Sheldon. Payne to Sheldon, 19 Aug. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 130.
62. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 373-4.
63. Ibid., p. 374.
64. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 153a-b. The conclusion of this paragraph of the letter is unfortunately fragmented, but it seems that Payne is arguing that the phrase Dei gratia referencing the power of kings should be justified by similar logic: as a mark of respect or gratitude, rather than as an actual claim on divine authority. Hobbes concluded differently, arguing that kings only were to employ the phrase, although admittedly as a 'mark of their submission to God onely'. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 374.
65. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 153b.
66. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 420-1. The issue of the use of the phrase Dei gratia in the title of the king arises again here. Hobbes argued that the practice of bishops crowning kings served to imply that 'it were from that Ceremony, that he derives the clause of Dei gratia in his title'.
67. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 153b.
68. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153b-c.
69. See, for instance, Thomas Hobbes, The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance, clearly slated and debated between Dr. Bramhall, bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol. v in The English works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. William Molesworth (London, 1849), pp. 142-3.
70. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 226-7, 347-55.
71. This widely accepted view is found in Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism (Oxford, 1987).
72. Tyacke has influenced, among other, Conrad Russell, Origins of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990).
73. A point often overlooked, but emphasized throughout the still valuable work of William A. Shaw, A history of the English church during the Civil World War and under the commonwealth, 1640-1660 (2 vols., London, 1990), and in John Morrill, 'The religious context of the English Civil War', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 39 (1989).
74. Collins, 'Thomas Hobbes and the English revolution', ch. 3, 5.
75. Thomas Hobbes to William Cavendish, 23 July 1641. Malcolm, ed., Correspondence of Hobbes, p. 120.
76. Thomas Hobbes, De cive: the English version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, 1983), 6:11. The marginal notes of the second edition of De cive (1646) answered many of the criticisms that 'ecclesiastical persons' had made against the work.
77. Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth; the history of the causes of the Civil Wars of England from 1640 to 1660, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (London, 1889; repr. Chicago, 1990), pp. 47, 95.
78. For instance, Hobbes accuses the Anglicans of vindicating the revolt with their doctrine of passive obedience, and strongly implies that their jure divino claims on authority hurt the royal cause. John Aubrey reported to Locke that Charles 'dar[ed] not license [Behemoth] for fear of displeasing the bishops'.
79. John Aubrey to John Locke, 11 Feb. 1673, printed in G. S. de Beer, ed., The correspondence of John Locke, 1 (Oxford, 1979), letter 268.
80. See Skinner, 'Conquest and consent', pp. 79-98, and elsewhere.
81. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 478-80.
82. Payne to Sheldon, 19 Aug. 1650, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 130.
83. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153a.
84. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153c.
85. Hobbes derided the Anglican distinction, which Payne here relied upon, between 'passive' and 'active' obedience, a distinction often employed to present Anglicans as more politically quiescent than Presbyterians, who often espoused resistance theory. Hobbes, Behemoth, pp. 47-9. For Payne's rehearsal of the distinction, see Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153c.
86. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153c-d.
87. Payne to Sheldon, 7 Mar. 1650, ibid., no. 127. Pocock's edition misreads this as 'Grandees of the west', but the word is clearly an abbreviation for Westminster and refers to the leading army men (including Cromwell) who had established political control. The correct reading lends the passage added significance, and may explain why word of Hobbes's return appeared in the regime's news sheet in January of 1652. Mercurius politicus, 8-15 Jan. 1652, no. 84, 1344.
88. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 153a.
89. See, for instance: Herbert Thorndike, Of the right of churches in a Christian state (London, 1649), and Epilogue to the tragedy of the Church of England (London, 1659);
90. John Bramhall, The catching of Leviathan (London, 1658);
91. Henry Hammond, A letter of resolution for six quaeres of present use in the Church of England (London, 1653).
92. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, BL Harleian MS 6942, no. 153b-c.
93. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153c. Emphasis added.
94. Payne to Hobbes, 1649, ibid., no. 153d.
95. The argument that Hobbes's political theory requires a God in order to oblige men to leave the state of nature was first made by Howard Warrender, The political philosophy of Hobbes: his theory of obligation (Oxford, 1957). Warrender made Hobbes a kind of theist, but F. C. Hood pushed the Warrender thesis one step further, and presented Hobbes as a Calvinist predestinarian.
96. F. C. Hood, The divine politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964). This line of thinking has recently culminated in
97. A. P. Martinich, The two gods of 'Leviathan': Thomas Hobbes on religion and politics (Cambridge, 1992).
98. Suffice it to note that commentators as diverse as Leo Strauss and Quentin Skinner have agreed that, on religious questions, Hobbes did not write with sincerity.
99. Leo Strauss, The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Chicago, 1936), p. 18;
100. Quentin Skinner, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 13-14.
101. The prevailing tenor of Payne's letter to Hobbes only heightens doubts about the sincerity of Leviathan's earnest scriptural argumentation on the issue (for instance) of constituting clergy.
102. Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 363-9.
103. In this transcription, spelling and punctuation are maintained as in the original letter, but abbreviations have been expanded for clarity. Harleian 6942 is not conventionally foliated, but rather the letters within it are each assigned a number. The four sides of letter 153 are indicated by marks 153a-d.
104. The ellipses in this sentence occur in the manuscript and seem to indicate an exclusion of text.