Note 355 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

Warburton has most acutely distinguished between the intention of Hobbes and that of some of his successors. The bishop does not consider Hobbes as an enemy to religion, not even to the Christian; and even doubts whether he has attacked it in “The Leviathan.” At all events, he has “taken direct contrary measures from those of Bayle, Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and all that school. They maliciously endeavoured to show the Gospel was unreasonable; Hobbes, as reasonable as his admirable wit could represent it: they contended for the most unbounded toleration, Hobbes for the most rigorous conformity.” See the “Alliance between Church and State,” book i. c. v. It is curious to observe the noble disciple of Hobbes, Lord Bolingbroke, a strenuous advocate for his political and moral opinions, enraged at what he calls his “High Church notions.” Trenchard and Gordon, in their Independent Whig, No. 44, that libel on the clergy, accuse them of Atheism and Hobbism; while some divines as earnestly reject Hobbes as an Atheist! Our temperate sage, though angried at that spirit of contradiction which he had raised, must, however, have sometimes smiled both on his advocates and his adversaries!