Thomas Hobbes

“ For there, to love is to be delighted with the image or conception of the thing loved; but God is unconceivable; to love God therefore, in the Scripture, is to obey his commandments, and to love one another. Also to trust God is different from our trusting one another. For when a man trusteth a man, chap. IX, sect. 9, he layeth aside his own endeavour; but if we do so in our trust to God Almighty, we disobey him; and how shall we trust to him we disobey? To trust to God Almighty therefore is to refer to his good pleasure all that is above our own power to effect. ”

“ Hitherto of the knowledge of things natural, and of the passions that arise naturally from them. Now forasmuch as we give names not only to things natural, but also to supernatural; and by all names we ought to have some meaning and conception: it followeth in the next place, to consider what thoughts and imaginations of the mind we have, when we take into our mouths the most blessed name of GOD, and the names of those virtues we attribute unto him; as also, what image cometh into the mind at hearing the name of spirit, or the name of angel, good or bad. ”

“ The faith therefore wherewith we believe, is the work of the Spirit of God, in that sense, by which the Spirit of God giveth to one man wisdom and cunning in workmanship more than to another; and by which he effecteth also in other points pertaining to our ordinary life, that one man believeth that, which upon the same grounds another doth not; and one man reverenceth the opinion, and obeyeth the commands of his superiors, and others not. ”

“ And thus all men that will consider, may naturally know that God is, though not what he is; even as a man though born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing is fire; yet he cannot but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warmeth him.
3. And whereas we attribute to God Almighty, seeing, hearing, speaking, knowing, loving, and the like; by which names we understand something in the men to whom we attribute them, we understand nothing by them in the nature of God. ”

“ But the signs to distinguish whether a spirit be good or evil, are the same by which we distinguish whether a man or a tree be good or evil: namely actions and fruit. For there be lying spirits wherewith men are inspired sometimes, as well as with spirits of truth. And we are commanded in Scripture, to judge of the spirits by their doctrine, and not of the doctrine by the spirits. For miracles, our Saviour hath forbidden us to rule our faith by them, Matt. 24, 24. And Saint Paul saith, Gal. 1, 8: Though an angel from heaven preach unto you otherwise, &c. ”

“ The attributes therefore given unto the Deity, are such as signify either our incapacity, or our reverence; our incapacity, when we say: incomprehensible and infinite: our reverence, when we give him those names, which amongst us are the names of those things we most magnify and commend, as omnipotent, omniscient, just, merciful, &c. ”

“ Concerning other spirits, which some men call spirits incorporeal, and some corporeal, it is not possible, by natural means only, to come to knowledge of so much, as that there are such things. We who are Christians acknowledge that there be angels good and evil; and that they are spirits, and that the soul of man is a spirit; and that these spirits are immortal. But, to know it, that is to say, to have natural evidence of the same: it is impossible. For all evidence is conception, as it is said chap. VI, sect. 3; and all conception is imagination and proceedeth from sense: chap. ”

“ Forasmuch as God Almighty. is incomprehensible, it followeth that we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and consequently all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, excepting only this: that there is a God. For the effects we acknowledge naturally, do necessarily include a power of their producing, before they were produced; and that power presupposeth something existent that hath such power ”

“ It is true, that the heathens, and all nations of the world, have acknowledged that there are spirits, which for the most part they hold to be incorporeal; whereby it may be thought that a man by natural reason, may arrive, without the knowledge of Scripture, to the knowledge of this ”