Note 27 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

It is in fact by way of a revolt against all theological ethic, as demonstrably a source of civil anarchy, that Hobbes formulates a strictly civic or legalist ethic, denying the supremacy of an abstract or à priori natural moral law (though he founded on natural law), as well as rejecting all supernatural illumination of the conscience.27 In the Church of Rome itself there had inevitably arisen the practice of Casuistry, in which to a certain extent ethics had to be rationally studied; and early Protestant Casuistry, repudiating the authority of the priest, had to rely still more on reason.