Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (general ebook reader txt) 📖

Psalmist, (Psal. 133.3.) “Upon Zion God commanded the blessing, even Life for evermore;”

for Zion, is in Jerusalem, upon Earth: as also that of S. Joh.

(Rev. 2.7.) “To him that overcommeth I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”

This was the tree of Adams Eternall life; but his life was to have been on Earth. The same seemeth to be confirmed again by St. Joh. (Rev. 21.2.) where he saith, “I John saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband:” and again v. 10. to the same effect: As if he should say, the new Jerusalem, the Paradise of God, at the coming again of Christ, should come down to Gods people from Heaven, and not they goe up to it from Earth. And this differs nothing from that, which the two men in white clothing (that is, the two Angels) said to the Apostles, that were looking upon Christ ascending (Acts 1.11.) “This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him go up into Heaven.”

Which soundeth as if they had said, he should come down to govern them under his Father, Eternally here; and not take them up to govern them in Heaven; and is conformable to the Restauration of the Kingdom of God, instituted under Moses; which was a Political government of the Jews on Earth. Again, that saying of our Saviour (Mat. 22.30.) “that in the Resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the Angels of God in heaven,” is a description of an Eternall Life, resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of Marriage. For seeing Adam, and Eve, if they had not sinned, had lived on Earth Eternally, in their individuall persons; it is manifest, they should not continually have procreated their kind. For if Immortals should have generated, as Mankind doth now; the Earth in a small time, would not have been able to afford them a place to stand on. The Jews that asked our Saviour the question, whose wife the woman that had married many brothers, should be, in the resurrection, knew not what were the consequences of Immortality; that there shal be no Generation, and consequently no marriage, no more than there is Marriage, or generation among the Angels. The comparison between that Eternall life which Adam lost, and our Saviour by his Victory over death hath recovered; holdeth also in this, that as Adam lost Eternall Life by his sin, and yet lived after it for a time; so the faithful Christian hath recovered Eternal Life by Christs passion, though he die a natural death, and remaine dead for a time; namely, till the Resurrection. For as Death is reckoned from the Condemnation of Adam, not from the Execution; so life is reckoned from the Absolution, not from the Resurrection of them that are elected in Christ.

 

Ascension Into Heaven

That the place wherein men are to live Eternally, after the Resurrection, is the Heavens, meaning by Heaven, those parts of the world, which are the most remote from Earth, as where the stars are, or above the stars, in another Higher Heaven, called Caelum Empyreum, (whereof there is no mention in Scripture, nor ground in Reason) is not easily to be drawn from any text that I can find. By the Kingdome of Heaven, is meant the Kingdome of the King that dwelleth in Heaven; and his Kingdome was the people of Israel, whom he ruled by the Prophets his Lieutenants, first Moses, and after him Eleazar, and the Soveraign Priests, till in the days of Samuel they rebelled, and would have a mortall man for their King, after the manner of other Nations.

And when our Saviour Christ, by the preaching of his Ministers, shall have perswaded the Jews to return, and called the Gentiles to his obedience, then shall there be a new Kingdome of Heaven, because our King shall then be God, whose Throne is Heaven; without any necessity evident in the Scripture, that man shall ascend to his happinesse any higher than Gods Footstool the Earth.

On the contrary, we find written (Joh. 3.13.) that “no man hath ascended into Heaven, but he that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man, that is in Heaven.” Where I observe by the way, that these words are not, as those which go immediately before, the words of our Saviour, but of St. John himself; for Christ was then not in Heaven, but upon the Earth. The like is said of David (Acts 2.34.) where St. Peter, to prove the Ascension of Christ, using the words of the Psalmist, (Psal. 16.10.) “Thou wilt not leave my soule in Hell, nor suffer thine Holy one to see corruption,”

saith, they were spoken (not of David, but) of Christ; and to prove it, addeth this Reason, “For David is not ascended into Heaven.”

But to this a man may easily answer, and say, that though their bodies were not to ascend till the generall day of Judgment, yet their souls were in Heaven as soon as they were departed from their bodies; which also seemeth to be confirmed by the words of our Saviour (Luke 20.37,38.) who proving the Resurrection out of the word of Moses, saith thus, “That the dead are raised, even Moses shewed, at the bush, when he calleth the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

For he is not a God of the Dead, but of the Living; for they all live to him.” But if these words be to be understood only of the Immortality of the Soul, they prove not at all that which our Saviour intended to prove, which was the Resurrection of the Body, that is to say, the Immortality of the Man. Therefore our Saviour meaneth, that those Patriarchs were Immortall; not by a property consequent to the essence, and nature of mankind, but by the will of God, that was pleased of his mere grace, to bestow Eternall Life upon the faithfull. And though at that time the Patriarchs and many other faithfull men were Dead, yet as it is in the text, they Lived To God; that is, they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sinnes, and ordained to Life eternall at the Resurrection. That the Soul of man is in its own nature Eternall, and a living Creature independent on the Body; or that any meer man is Immortall, otherwise than by the Resurrection in the last day, (except Enos and Elias,) is a doctrine not apparent in Scripture. The whole 14. Chapter of Job, which is the speech not of his friends, but of himselfe, is a complaint of this Mortality of Nature; and yet no contradiction of the Immortality at the Resurrection. “There is hope of a tree,” (saith hee verse 7.) “if it be cast down, Though the root thereof wax old, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet when it scenteth the water it will bud, and bring forth boughes like a Plant. But man dyeth, and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the Ghost, and where is he?” and (verse 12.) “man lyeth down, and riseth not, till the heavens be no more.”

But when is it, that the heavens shall be no more? St. Peter tells us, that it is at the generall Resurrection. For in his 2. Epistle, 3. Chapter, and 7. verse, he saith, that “the Heavens and the Earth that are now, are reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment, and perdition of ungodly men,” and (verse 12.) “looking for, and hasting to the comming of God, wherein the Heavens shall be on fire, and shall be dissolved, and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat.

Neverthelesse, we according to the promise look for new Heavens, and a new Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousnesse.” Therefore where Job saith, man riseth not till the Heavens be no more; it is all one, as if he had said, the Immortall Life (and Soule and Life in the Scripture, do usually signifie the same thing) beginneth not in man, till the Resurrection, and day of Judgment; and hath for cause, not his specificall nature, and generation; but the Promise.

For St. Peter saies not, ” Wee look for new heavens, and a new earth, (from Nature) but from Promise.”

 

Lastly, seeing it hath been already proved out of divers evident places of Scripture, in the 35. chapter of this book, that the Kingdom of God is a Civil Commonwealth, where God himself is Soveraign, by vertue first of the Old, and since of the New Covenant, wherein he reigneth by his Vicar, or Lieutenant; the same places do therefore also prove, that after the comming again of our Saviour in his Majesty, and glory, to reign actually, and Eternally; the Kingdom of God is to be on Earth. But because this doctrine (though proved out of places of Scripture not few, nor obscure) will appear to most men a novelty; I doe but propound it; maintaining nothing in this, or any other paradox of Religion; but attending the end of that dispute of the sword, concerning the Authority, (not yet amongst my Countrey-men decided,) by which all sorts of doctrine are to bee approved, or rejected; and whose commands, both in speech, and writing, (whatsoever be the opinions of private men) must by all men, that mean to be protected by their Laws, be obeyed. For the points of doctrine concerning the Kingdome (of) God, have so great influence on the Kingdome of Man, as not to be determined, but by them, that under God have the Soveraign Power.

 

The Place After Judgment, Of Those Who Were Never In The Kingdome Of God, Or Having Been In, Are Cast Out

As the Kingdome of God, and Eternall Life, so also Gods Enemies, and their Torments after Judgment, appear by the Scripture, to have their place on Earth. The name of the place, where all men remain till the Resurrection, that were either buryed, or swallowed up of the Earth, is usually called in Scripture, by words that signifie Under Ground; which the Latines read generally Infernus, and Inferni, and the Greeks Hades; that is to say, a place where men cannot see; and containeth as well the Grave, as any other deeper place.

But for the place of the damned after the Resurrection, it is not determined, neither in the Old, nor New Testament, by any note of situation; but onely by the company: as that it shall bee, where such wicked men were, as God in former times in extraordinary, and miraculous manner, had destroyed from off the face of the Earth: As for Example, that they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomelesse pit; because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom, were swallowed up alive into the earth. Not that the Writers of the Scripture would have us beleeve, there could be in the globe of the Earth, which is not only finite, but also (compared to the height of the Stars) of no considerable magnitude, a pit without a bottome; that is, a hole of infinite depth, such as the Greeks in their Daemonologie (that is to say, in their doctrine concerning Daemons,) and after them, the Romans called Tartarus; of which Virgill sayes, Bis patet in praeceps, tantem tenditque sub umbras, Quantus ad aethereum coeli suspectus Olympum: for that is a thing the proportion of Earth to Heaven cannot bear: but that wee should beleeve them there, indefinitely, where those men are, on whom God inflicted that Exemplary punnishment.

 

The Congregation Of Giants

Again, because those mighty