Hobbes on Church and State

Abstract

De Cive is a dry, closely-argued treatise. Leviathan is a far more impassioned work. That is especially true of the last two parts, which discuss religion and church-state relations. After 1640 the collapse of the church courts and of censorship (which had been in the hands of the clergy) made it easy for people to publish anticlerical and heterodox doctrines. For a while, it seemed that a harsh and intolerant Presbyterian system of church government might be established in England. But a coalition between congregationalists or Independents (supported by Oliver Cromwell), Erastians (including John Seiden), and radical religious sects (such as the Baptists) ensured the defeat of the Presbyterians by 1648. In the next few years a great many authors put forward schemes for the reform of the church and universities. Hobbes was one of a large number of writers who attacked the clergy’s pretensions to power, and who advocated educational reform. He hoped that the universities would abandon scholastic theology in favour of scientific research. The same hope informed the thinking of Sir Francis Bacon and of Samuel Hartlib’s circle of friends, which was much influenced by Bacon.¹