Leviathan

Contents

1. The Introduction 9 min 9

   Hobbes dedicates the book from Paris in April 1651 to Francis Godolphin, in memory of his brother Sidney, and claims to speak of the seat of power rather than of any person, between those who demand too much liberty and too much authority. The Introduction then presents the commonwealth as an artificial man, built by human art on the model of a machine, with sovereignty as its soul. It sets out the four parts of the book and its method: read mankind in yourself, since the passions are the same in all men.

2. I Of Sense 5 min 3

   All thoughts begin in sense. External bodies press on the sense organs; the motion passes inward to the brain and heart, whose pushing back appears to us as light, colour, sound or heat. These qualities are not in the objects, which are only matter in motion, but are appearances, or “fancy”, in the perceiver. Hobbes contrasts this mechanical account with the scholastic doctrine, taught in the universities from Aristotle, that objects send out visible and intelligible “species”, and promises to say later what in the universities needs amending.

3. II Of Imagination 15 min 3

   By the principle that a moving body keeps moving, sense leaves traces after the object is gone: imagination is “decaying sense”, and memory the same thing named for its fading. Much memory is experience. Dreams are imaginations of sleep, caused by disturbances in the body. Failing to tell dreams from waking visions, as Brutus did at Philippi, has bred belief in ghosts, fairies and witchcraft, which crafty men exploit; without such fears men would be fitter for civil obedience. Understanding is imagination raised by words or signs.

4. III Of the Consequence or Trayne of Imaginations 13 min 1

   Thoughts follow each other in trains that repeat earlier sequences of sense. Unguided trains wander, though even a strange question about the value of a Roman penny can be traced back to the civil war and the handing over of the king. Trains regulated by desire seek causes or possible effects; the second kind is found only in man. Prudence is foresight drawn from experience and is fallible. Beasts share these faculties; what distinguishes man comes from speech. Whatever we imagine is finite, so God is named to honour him, not conceived.

5. IV Of Speech 23 min 4

   Speech, the noblest human invention, consists of names and their connection; without it there would be neither commonwealth, society, contract nor peace. Its uses are to register thoughts, teach, declare our wills and give pleasure; each has a corresponding abuse. Only names are universal; things are individual. Words make general reasoning and numbering possible, and truth and falsehood belong to speech, not things. Hence the need for definitions, as in geometry. Words are “wise mens counters” but “the mony of fooles”. Names compounded of contradictions, such as incorporeal substance, are insignificant sounds.

6. V Of Reason, and Science 18 min 3

   Reason is reckoning: adding and subtracting the consequences of general names. No one man’s reason is certain, so disputes need an agreed arbitrator or end in blows. Error is a mistaken expectation; absurdity is speech without meaning, to which philosophers are most prone because they do not begin from definitions. Hobbes lists seven causes of absurdity, mocking scholastic terms such as transubstantiation and free will. Science, the knowledge of consequences, is acquired by industry, not born with us; its end is the benefit of mankind, while metaphors and ambiguous words lead to contention and sedition.

7. VI Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions, Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by Which They Are Expressed 29 min 4

   Voluntary motion begins in imagination as small internal motions called endeavour. Endeavour toward a thing is appetite or desire, away from it aversion. Good and evil are names for what each person desires or hates; there is no common rule except one set by the commonwealth or an agreed arbitrator. Hobbes then defines the passions as compounds of these: hope, fear, courage, covetousness, ambition, curiosity, religion (“feare of power invisible”), glory, pity and many more. Deliberation is the succession of appetites and fears; the will is the last appetite. Felicity is continual success, since life is motion.

8. VII Of the Ends or Resolutions of Discourse 8 min 1

   Every discourse ends in judgement or is left in doubt. No discourse can give absolute knowledge of fact; science is only conditional knowledge of the consequences of names. Reasoning that does not start from definitions ends in opinion, and men give their opinions the name of conscience to make them seem untouchable. When we believe something on another’s word, our faith is in that person. So belief that the Scriptures are God’s word, without direct revelation, is faith in the Church, and belief in history is faith in historians.

9. VIII Of the Vertues Commonly Called Intellectual; and Their Contrary Defects 30 min 2

   Intellectual virtues are abilities valued by comparison. Natural wit combines quick imagination with steady direction to an end; fancy finds likenesses, judgement differences, and discretion is needed in every kind of writing and speech. Prudence comes from experience; craft is prudence using dishonest means. Differences of wit come from the passions, chiefly the desire of power, of which riches, knowledge and honour are sorts. Excessive passion is madness, visible in seditious multitudes and in claims to inspiration. Hobbes explains biblical demoniacs as madmen and treats scholastic jargon as a kind of madness.

10. IX Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge 6 min 1

    Knowledge is of two kinds: knowledge of fact, which is sense and memory and is recorded in natural and civil history, and science, the conditional knowledge of consequences, recorded in books of philosophy. A table divides philosophy into natural philosophy, running from first philosophy, geometry and mechanics through physics, astronomy, optics, music, ethics, poetry, rhetoric and logic, and civil philosophy, which treats the rights and duties of sovereigns and subjects.

11. X Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour and Worthiness 23 min 5

    A man’s power is his present means to obtain some future good, natural or instrumental. Riches with liberality, reputation, friends, eloquence and success are all power; the greatest is the united power of a commonwealth. A man’s worth is his price, what would be given for the use of his power, set by the buyer, not the seller. Honouring and dishonouring are signs of how we value others; the commonwealth’s valuation is dignity. Hobbes lists the ways of honouring, traces coats of arms and titles to the ancient Germans and Romans, and distinguishes worthiness from merit.

12. XI Of the Difference of Manners 19 min 4

    Manners here mean the qualities that bear on living together in peace. There is no final end or highest good; felicity is a continual progress of desire, and all men share “a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death”, because present means cannot be secured without more. Competition breeds war; desire of ease, fear of death and love of arts incline men to obedience. Ignorance of causes and of the meaning of words makes men credulous and dependent on others. Anxiety about the future and curiosity about causes are the natural seed of religion.

13. XII Of Religion 33 min 6

    Religion is found only in man, and grows from his curiosity about causes, his anxiety about the future and his ignorance of real causes. Its four natural seeds are belief in ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and taking chance events for omens. These seeds were cultivated by pagan lawgivers as part of human politics, to keep the people obedient, and by God’s own prophets as divine politics. Religions decline when their teachers lose the reputation of wisdom, sincerity and love, or lack miracles; all changes of religion come from “unpleasing Priests”.

14. XIII Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, as Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery 13 min 9

    Hobbes describes men without a common power. Because they are roughly equal in strength and wit, they hope for the same things and become enemies; competition, distrust and glory drive them to attack first. The result is a war “of every man, against every man”, understood as a lasting disposition to fight, in which there is no industry, agriculture, trade, arts or society, and life is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”. Evidence comes from locked doors, American “savages”, civil war and rival kings. In that condition nothing is unjust and nothing is owned; fear of death and reason point the way out.

15. XIV Of the First and Second Naturall Lawes, and of Contracts 31 min 6

    The right of nature is each person’s liberty to preserve himself by any means, and in the war of all it extends to everything, even others’ bodies. Reason’s first law is to seek peace; the second is to lay down that right on the same terms as others. Hobbes then analyses how rights are renounced or transferred: contract, covenant, free gift, and the words that bind. Covenants of mutual trust are void without a power to enforce them; covenants extorted by fear are valid; a covenant not to defend oneself is always void. Oaths add nothing to an obligation.

16. XV Of Other Lawes of Nature 37 min 7

    The third law of nature, to keep covenants, is the origin of justice, but justice and property exist only once a coercive power makes covenants safe. Hobbes refutes “the Foole” who thinks breaking faith can be rational, rejects the scholastic idea of commutative justice as equal value, and lists further laws: gratitude, accommodation, pardon, forward-looking punishment, and laws against contempt, pride and arrogance, along with equity, common use, lot, safe conduct and arbitration. All reduce to the Golden Rule. They bind the conscience always but outward action only where it is safe, and their science is the true moral philosophy.

17. XVI Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated 12 min 4

    A person is one whose words or actions are taken as his own or as representing another’s. The word comes from the theatre mask. When an actor acts with the authority of an author, the author owns the act and is bound by it. Churches, hospitals, children, madmen and even false gods can be personated, though only within a state. A multitude becomes one person when one man or one assembly represents it with each member’s consent; in an assembly the majority’s voice counts as the voice of all.

18. XVII Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth 13 min 5

    Opening Part II, Hobbes argues that the laws of nature are useless without a power to enforce them, since “Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words”. Small groups, large but divided multitudes and temporary alliances all fail to give security. Bees and ants live peaceably without government, but men compete for honour, judge their rulers and agree only by artifice. The only remedy is for everyone to covenant with everyone to authorise one man or assembly to bear their person. This generates the commonwealth, “that great LEVIATHAN”, a “Mortall God”. Sovereignty arises by institution or by acquisition.

19. XVIII Of the Rights of Soveraignes by Institution 25 min 7

    From the covenant that institutes a commonwealth Hobbes derives twelve rights of the sovereign. Subjects cannot change the form of government or plead a covenant with God; the sovereign makes no covenant and so cannot forfeit power; dissenters must submit; nothing he does is injury, and he cannot be punished. He judges the means of peace and the doctrines to be taught, makes the rules of property, judges all controversies, makes war and peace, appoints officers, rewards, punishes and confers honour. These rights are indivisible; belief in their division between King, Lords and Commons caused the civil war.

20. XIX Of the Severall Kinds of Common-wealth by Institution, and of Succession to the Soveraigne Power 27 min 3

    There are only three kinds of commonwealth, monarchy, aristocracy and democracy; tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy are the same forms disliked. Hobbes compares them by convenience rather than power and prefers monarchy: the king’s private interest coincides with the public one, he can take secret counsel from anyone, his decisions are steadier, and he cannot quarrel with himself. Elective and limited kings are not really sovereign. Succession, an “Artificiall Eternity”, belongs to the present sovereign, shown by will, custom or presumed natural affection, and may lawfully pass even to a foreigner.

21. XX Of Dominion Paternall and Despoticall 23 min 4

    A commonwealth acquired by force differs from an instituted one only in that men submit to the one they fear; the sovereign’s rights are the same. Dominion over children comes from consent, not generation; in nature, without contract, it belongs to the mother. Despotic dominion over the conquered comes from the covenant of the vanquished, not victory itself: a servant who is trusted with liberty is bound, a chained slave is not. Hobbes confirms absolute sovereignty from Scripture, from Moses and Samuel to Christ’s taking of the ass, and answers the objection that no such power has been practised.

22. XXI Of the Liberty of Subjects 29 min 7

    Liberty properly means absence of external impediments, and it is compatible with fear and with necessity. Subjects’ liberty lies in what the laws leave unregulated, such as buying, selling and choosing a trade, and it does not limit the sovereign’s power of life and death. The liberty praised by ancient writers was the state’s, not the citizen’s, and classical learning bred rebellion. Subjects keep the rights they could not transfer: to defend their bodies, refuse self-accusation, and sometimes refuse dangerous service. Obedience lasts only as long as the sovereign can protect, and ends with conquest, captivity, banishment or abdication.

23. XXII Of Systemes Subject, Politicall, and Private 32 min 6

    Hobbes turns to the parts of the commonwealth, starting with “systems”, the organised groups within it. He classifies them as regular or irregular, political or private, lawful or unlawful, and insists that every subordinate body’s power is limited by its charter and the law. He works out who is liable for the debts and offences of corporations, analyses merchant companies as a “double monopoly”, and condemns private leagues, factions, private retinues and large crowds as unnecessary within a state or dangerous to it.

24. XXIII Of the Publique Ministers of Soveraign Power 12 min 2

    Public ministers are those the sovereign employs to act in its political person, not servants of the ruler’s household. Hobbes surveys regents and governors, treasury and military officers, teachers of the people, judges, officers of execution and ambassadors, and compares each to an organ of the body: nerves, voice, hands, eye, ear. He praises the English jury as a court the defendant has effectively chosen, and argues that counsellors who only advise are not public ministers.

25. XXIV Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a Common-wealth 17 min 7

    The “nutrition” of a commonwealth is its plenty, which depends on labour; its distribution, which is property and exists only by the sovereign’s law; its “concoction” into money; and the conveyance of money to public use. Hobbes argues that all land was originally distributed by the sovereign, that no fixed public estate can fund a state, and that the sovereign regulates foreign trade and contracts. Money circulates like blood. Colonies are the commonwealth’s children, freed or kept as provinces.

26. XXV Of Counsell 20 min 2

    Hobbes distinguishes command, which serves the speaker’s will, from counsel, which appeals to the hearer’s benefit and so cannot oblige or be punished when asked for. Exhortation, counsel pressed with oratory, betrays the counsellor’s own interest. A good counsellor has interests consistent with the ruler’s, speaks plainly, knows the business and the records, and is best heard alone, not in an assembly, which he compares to being wheeled to a tennis ball in a barrow.

27. XXVI Of Civill Lawes 55 min 5

    Civil law is the sovereign’s command, made known by sufficient signs, distinguishing right from wrong. The sovereign is the sole legislator and is not bound by its own laws; custom is law only by its silent consent; the law of nature and civil law contain each other. Hobbes attacks the common lawyers, Coke above all, insists that law needs a known author and authorised interpretation by judges, rejects binding precedent, and distinguishes law from right and from charter.

28. XXVII Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations 40 min 4

    A sin is any breach or contempt of law; a crime is a sin that shows itself in word or deed and so can be accused before a judge. Hobbes traces crime to ignorance, false principles and passions such as vanity, presumption of riches or friends, and fear. He sets out what excuses entirely (no means to know the law, captivity, terror of death, starvation, the sovereign’s command) and what aggravates or extenuates an offence.

29. XXVIII Of Punishments, and Rewards 22 min 4

    Punishment is harm inflicted by public authority on a transgressor to make wills obedient. The right to punish is the sovereign’s retained natural right, not a gift of the subjects. Hobbes excludes private revenge, unheard condemnations, retroactive or excessive penalties and harm to declared enemies; rebels may be treated as enemies. He lists corporal, pecuniary, ignominious, imprisoning and exiling punishments, discusses rewards and salaries, and explains the title image of Leviathan from the Book of Job.

30. XXIX Of Those Things That Weaken, or Tend to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth 28 min 6

    Commonwealths die of internal diseases caused by their makers. Hobbes lists them: sovereigns who accept too little power; seditious doctrines (private judgement of good and evil, erroneous conscience, inspiration, the sovereign subject to law, absolute private property, divided sovereignty); imitation of neighbours and of Greek and Roman writers; rival spiritual authority; mixed government; shortage of money; monopolies; popular subjects; overgrown towns and corporations; and finally defeat in war, which dissolves the commonwealth.

31. XXX Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative 42 min 8

    The sovereign’s office is the people’s safety, including all the comforts of life won by lawful industry. Hobbes says the sovereign must keep its essential rights and have them taught, mapping the lessons onto the Ten Commandments, and he blames the universities for teaching sedition. He calls for equal justice, taxes laid on consumption, public relief for the disabled, forced work for the able-bodied, emigration of surplus poor, clear and necessary laws, measured punishments and rewards, and able counsellors and commanders.

32. XXXI Of the Kingdome of God by Nature 31 min 3

    To know when civil obedience conflicts with God’s law, Hobbes describes the natural kingdom of God, in which God rules those who believe in his providence through natural reason. God’s right to rule rests on irresistible power, as the Book of Job shows. Reason prescribes the attributes and actions of honour due to God; public worship must be uniform, and its signs are set by the sovereign. Part II ends with Hobbes’s hope that a sovereign will read and teach his book.

33. XXXII Of the Principles of Christian Politiques 13 min 5

    Part III opens by adding revelation to the natural reason on which Parts I and II rested. Reason is not to be given up, and mysteries are to be accepted by an obedient will, not by forcing belief. Since a claim that God has spoken to someone in a dream, vision or inspiration cannot oblige anyone else, scripture gives two marks of a true prophet, which must go together: miracles, and teaching no religion but the established one. Miracles have now ceased, so scripture takes the place of prophecy.

34. XXXIII Of the Number, Antiquity, Scope, Authority, and Interpreters of the Books of Holy Scripture 30 min 5

    Canonical books are laws, and only the sovereign makes law, so the canon is whatever the Church of England has authorised. Using internal evidence, Hobbes argues that the Pentateuch and most of the historical books were written long after their events, and that the Old Testament took its present form after the Babylonian exile. The New Testament was collected by later church governors. Scripture's authority therefore comes from whoever makes it law. The question becomes whether Christian sovereigns are absolute in their own territories or subject to a Vicar of Christ.

35. XXXIV Of the Signification of Spirit, Angel, and Inspiration in the Books of Holy Scripture 35 min 3

    Body and substance mean the same thing, so “incorporeal substance” is a contradiction. In scripture, “spirit” means wind or breath, extraordinary gifts of the understanding, strong passions, prophetic dreams, life itself, authority derived from a superior, or aerial bodies. It never means an incorporeal ghost. Angels are usually supernatural images raised in the fancy, though New Testament texts persuade Hobbes that permanent and corporeal angels also exist. “Inspiration” is a metaphor for God giving life or grace.

36. XXXV Of the Signification in Scripture of Kingdome of God, of Holy, Sacred, and Sacrament 21 min 4

    In scripture, the Kingdom of God is mostly not heaven or grace but a real civil kingdom. God ruled Israel by a covenant, first made with Abraham and renewed at Sinai, through Moses and the high priests. That kingdom ended when Israel chose Saul, and Christ is to restore it. Hobbes complains that translators turned the “sacerdotal kingdom” into a “kingdom of priests” and so hid the king's religious rights. “Holy” means God's property, as “public” means the commonwealth's. Sacraments are signs of admission into God's kingdom and oaths of allegiance to it.

37. XXXVI Of the Word of God, and of Prophets 45 min 2

    The Word of God means God's speech, the doctrine about God, its effects, or the dictates of reason. A prophet may be a spokesman, a foreteller, or someone speaking incoherently. God spoke to most prophets in dreams and visions, and to Moses and the high priests in a manner not explained. Subordinate prophets had their Spirit derived from the supreme prophet, as the seventy elders had from Moses. Since anyone who claims to show the way to salvation claims to rule, every prophet must be tested against the doctrine of the sovereign, who is the supreme prophet.

38. XXXVII Of Miracles, and Their Use 20 min 3

    A miracle is a work that causes wonder because it is rare and has no known natural cause, so what is a miracle to one person may not be to another. Miracles serve to win credit for God's messengers among the elect. Hobbes defines one as a work of God beyond the ordinary course of nature, revealing an extraordinary minister. Enchanters only deceive their audience, and fraud by confederates is easy. Claimed miracles are to be judged by God's lieutenant, the sovereign. Private belief stays free, but public profession follows public reason.

39. XXXVIII Of the Signification in Scripture of Eternall Life, Hell, Salvation, the World to Come, and Redemption 44 min 4

    Because hope of eternal life and fear of eternal torment outweigh any earthly sanction, these doctrines matter to the state. Hobbes argues that eternal life, lost by Adam, will be regained on earth after the resurrection. The soul is not naturally immortal. The images of hell (the pit, the giants, the lake of fire, outer darkness, Gehenna) are metaphors, Satan is an office rather than a name, and the damned suffer a second death. Salvation will be on earth, centred on Jerusalem. Redemption is a price God chose to accept, not an equivalent for sin.

40. XXXIX Of the Signification in Scripture of the Word Church 7 min 2

    “Church” means a house of worship, all Christians, the elect, or an assembly. Only an assembly called by lawful authority can act as one person. A church is a company of Christians united in one sovereign, at whose command they assemble, so no universal church exists. A Christian commonwealth and a church are the same thing, temporal and spiritual government are two words for one power, and the civil sovereign is the chief pastor.

41. XL Of the Rights of the Kingdome of God, in Abraham, Moses, the High Priests, and the Kings of Judah 29 min 4

    Abraham, as sovereign of his family, alone received God's commands, interpreted them, and could punish private claims to the Spirit. Moses's authority rested on the people's consent at Sinai, and he held supremacy in religion and policy alike. After him it passed to the high priests and then, from Saul onward, to the kings, with priests becoming ministers. In practice the Israelites obeyed only successful rulers and revolted under pretexts of justice or religion. Throughout, whoever held the sovereignty also governed public worship.

42. XLI Of the Office of Our Blessed Saviour 21 min 2

    Christ's office has three parts, which correspond to three times: redeemer by his sacrifice, teacher who prepares the elect, and king, an office that begins only at the resurrection. While on earth he claimed no present kingdom, told his followers to obey those in Moses's seat and to pay tribute to Caesar, and broke no Jewish or Roman law. His future reign is subordinate to the Father's, as Moses's was. God is represented as one person by Moses and as another by Christ.

43. XLII Of Power Ecclesiasticall 3 h 23 min 28

    Hobbes's longest chapter argues that Christ left his ministers a power to teach, not to command. The apostles and their successors were schoolmasters whose precepts were counsel, and excommunication without the civil power meant only refusing a person's company. The power to make Scripture law, to appoint pastors, to fix their maintenance and to judge heresy belongs to the civil sovereign, who is supreme pastor in his own dominions and may baptize and consecrate if he wishes. The second half is a book-by-book refutation of Cardinal Bellarmine's defence of papal power, ending with his doctrine of an indirect papal power to depose kings.

44. XLIII Of What Is Necessary for a Mans Reception into the Kingdome of Heaven 42 min 8

    To settle the conflict between obeying God and obeying the sovereign, Hobbes reduces what is necessary for salvation to two things: faith that Jesus is the Christ, and a sincere will to obey the laws, meaning the laws of nature and the civil laws. He proves the single article from the gospels, the apostles' preaching and the ease of the faith, and treats other doctrines as consequences of it. A Christian sovereign can therefore never command what salvation forbids. Under an infidel ruler, Christians should conform outwardly or accept martyrdom, never rebel.

45. XLIV Of Spirituall Darknesse from Misinterpretation of Scripture 1 h 11 min 7

    Part IV opens by defining the Kingdom of Darkness as a “confederacy of deceivers” who use false doctrine to gain power in this world, and names four sources of their errors. This chapter treats the first, the abuse of Scripture. The chief error is that the present Church is the kingdom of God, from which follow the pope’s claims over kings, the name and tithes of the clergy, canon law and clerical exemptions. Hobbes then attacks the Mass and the exorcisms of baptism as conjuration, argues that the soul is not naturally immortal, and answers Bellarmine’s texts for purgatory one by one.

46. XLV Of Daemonology, and Other Reliques of the Religion of the Gentiles 55 min 7

    The second source of darkness is pagan demonology. Hobbes explains belief in ghosts and demons as a misreading of images in the brain, which pagan rulers organised into a cult for obedience, and which reached the Jews and the Church through Greek influence. Scripture, he argues, teaches no incorporeal spirits, and the possessed were madmen. He defines worship, image and idolatry, holds that worship compelled by the sovereign is no idolatry, and traces the worship of images and saints, the pope’s title of Pontifex Maximus, processions, candles and holy days to pagan Rome.

47. XLVI Of Darknesse from Vain Philosophy, and Fabulous Traditions 50 min 7

    The third and fourth sources of darkness are vain philosophy and false tradition. Hobbes defines philosophy as reasoning from causes to effects for human use, traces it to the leisure of great commonwealths, and finds the Greek schools useless. The universities teach “Aristotelity” in the service of Rome. He attacks scholastic doctrines of separated essences, eternity as a standing now, and empty explanations in physics, then Aristotle’s politics, the rule of laws rather than men, inquisition into conscience and private interpretation. He ends with legends of saints and ghosts and the clergy’s suppression of true science.

48. XLVII Of the Benefit That Proceedeth from Such Darknesse, and to Whom It Accreweth 25 min 8

    Applying the Roman judge’s question “cui bono”, Hobbes asks who profits from the doctrines of the previous chapters, and answers: the pope and the Roman clergy, and the Presbyterians too. He lists the doctrines that secure their power, from infallibility and clerical exemptions to purgatory, exorcism and the scholastic philosophy of the universities. He traces how clerical power was tied in three knots and untied in England in reverse order, praises a qualified Independency, and closes with a satire of the papacy as the ghost of the Roman Empire and a kingdom of fairies.

49. A Review, and Conclusion 26 min 6

    Hobbes answers the objection that human nature cannot support civil duty, citing Sidney Godolphin, and adds a new law of nature: to defend in war the power that protects in peace. He sets out when a subject may lawfully submit to a conqueror, defines conquest, and warns rulers against justifying their origins. After notes on executions by zeal and on Moses, he defends the book’s doctrine and style, proposes that it be taught in the universities, and ends by naming its theme, the mutual relation between protection and obedience.