Theodicy

part is not disposed to spare the other, and manifests rather too much scorn for theology, and for the terminology of the Schoolmen, which is apparently favoured by the bishop.

2. One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him. Yet he speaks sometimes as if what is said about God were only compliments, that is to say expressions proper for paying him honour, but not for knowing him. He testifies also that it seems to him that the pains of the wicked must end in their destruction: this opinion closely approaches that of the Socinians, but it seems that Mr. Hobbes goes much further. His philosophy, which asserts that bodies alone are substances, hardly appears favourable to the providence of God and the immortality of the soul. On other subjects nevertheless he says very reasonable things. He shows clearly that nothing comes about by chance, or rather that chance only signifies the ignorance of causes that produce the effect, and that for each effect there must be a concurrence of all the sufficient conditions anterior to the event, not one of which, manifestly, can be lacking when the event is to follow, because they are conditions: the event, moreover, does not fail to follow when these conditions exist all together, because they are sufficient conditions. All which amounts to the same as I have said so many times, that everything comes to pass as a result of determining reasons, the knowledge [395] whereof, if we had it, would make us know at the same time why the thing has happened and why it did not go otherwise.