Thomas Hobbes · Complete work
Part IV, Chapter XLIV, 1
Part IV, Chapter XLIV, 1 of 101. Read it here for reference, or continue through the entire work without leaving the reader.
Open the complete readerOriginal 17th-century English
OF SPIRITUALL DARKNESSE FROM MISINTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE
Besides these Soveraign Powers, Divine, and Humane, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another Power, namely, (Eph. 6. 12.), that of “the Rulers of the Darknesse of this world,” (Mat. 12. 26.), “the Kingdome of Satan,” and, (Mat. 9. 34.), “the Principality of Beelzebub over Daemons,” that is to say, over Phantasmes that appear in the Air: For which cause Satan is also called (Eph. 2. 2.) “the Prince of the Power of the Air;” and (because he ruleth in the darknesse of this world) (Joh. 16. 11.) “The Prince of this world;” And in consequence hereunto, they who are under his Dominion, in opposition to the faithfull (who are the Children Of The Light) are called the Children Of Darknesse. For seeing Beelzebub is Prince of Phantasmes, Inhabitants of his Dominion of Air and Darknesse, the Children of Darknesse, and these Daemons, Phantasmes, or Spirits of Illusion, signifie allegorically the same thing. This considered, the Kingdome of Darknesse, as it is set forth in these, and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a “Confederacy of Deceivers, that to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour by dark, and erroneous Doctrines, to extinguish in them the Light, both of Nature, and of the Gospell; and so to dis-prepare them for the Kingdome of God to come.”
As men that are utterly deprived from their Nativity, of the light of the bodily Eye, have no Idea at all, of any such light; and no man conceives in his imagination any greater light, than he hath at some time, or other perceived by his outward Senses: so also is it of the light of the Gospel, and of the light of the Understanding, that no man can conceive there is any greater degree of it, than that which he hath already attained unto. And from hence it comes to passe, that men have no other means to acknowledge their owne Darknesse, but onely by reasoning from the un-forseen mischances, that befall them in their ways; The Darkest part of the Kingdome of Satan, is that which is without the Church of God; that is to say, amongst them that beleeve not in Jesus Christ. But we cannot say, that therefore the Church enjoyeth (as the land of Goshen) all the light, which to the performance of the work enjoined us by God, is necessary. Whence comes it, that in Christendome there has been, almost from the time of the Apostles, such justling of one another out of their places, both by forraign, and Civill war? such stumbling at every little asperity of their own fortune, and every little eminence of that of other men? and such diversity of ways in running to the same mark, Felicity, if it be not Night amongst us, or at least a Mist? wee are therefore yet in the Dark.
The Enemy has been here in the Night of our naturall Ignorance, and sown the tares of Spirituall Errors; and that, First, by abusing, and putting out the light of the Scriptures: For we erre, not knowing the Scriptures. Secondly, by introducing the Daemonology of the Heathen Poets, that is to say, their fabulous Doctrine concerning Daemons, which are but Idols, or Phantasms of the braine, without any reall nature of their own, distinct from humane fancy; such as are dead mens Ghosts, and Fairies, and other matter of old Wives tales. Thirdly, by mixing with the Scripture divers reliques of the Religion, and much of the vain and erroneous Philosophy of the Greeks, especially of Aristotle. Fourthly, by mingling with both these, false, or uncertain Traditions, and fained, or uncertain History. And so we come to erre, by “giving heed to seducing Spirits,” and the Daemonology of such “as speak lies in Hypocrisie,” (or as it is in the Originall, 1 Tim. 4.1,2. “of those that play the part of lyars”) “with a seared conscience,” that is, contrary to their own knowledge. Concerning the first of these, which is the Seducing of men by abuse of Scripture, I intend to speak briefly in this Chapter.
The greatest, and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost all the rest are either consequent, or subservient, is the wresting of it, to prove that the Kingdome of God, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that being dead, are to rise again at the last day: whereas the Kingdome of God was first instituted by the Ministery of Moses, over the Jews onely; who were therefore called his Peculiar People; and ceased afterward, in the election of Saul, when they refused to be governed by God any more, and demanded a King after the manner of the nations; which God himself consented unto, as I have more at large proved before, in the 35. Chapter. After that time, there was no other Kingdome of God in the world, by any Pact, or otherwise, than he ever was, is, and shall be King, of all men, and of all creatures, as governing according to his Will, by his infinite Power. Neverthelesse, he promised by his Prophets to restore this his Government to them again, when the time he hath in his secret counsell appointed for it shall bee fully come, and when they shall turn unto him by repentance, and amendment of life; and not onely so, but he invited also the Gentiles to come in, and enjoy the happinesse of his Reign, on the same conditions of conversion and repentance; and hee promised also to send his Son into the world, to expiate the sins of them all by his death, and to prepare them by his Doctrine, to receive him at his second coming: Which second coming not yet being, the Kingdome of God is not yet come, and wee are not now under any other Kings by Pact, but our Civill Soveraigns; saving onely, that Christian men are already in the Kingdome of Grace, in as much as they have already the Promise of being received at his comming againe.
Consequent to this Errour, that the present Church is Christs Kingdome, there ought to be some one Man, or Assembly, by whose mouth our Saviour (now in heaven) speaketh, giveth law, and which representeth his person to all Christians, or divers Men, or divers Assemblies that doe the same to divers parts of Christendome. This power Regal under Christ, being challenged, universally by that Pope, and in particular Common-wealths by Assemblies of the Pastors of the place, (when the Scripture gives it to none but to Civill Soveraigns,) comes to be so passionately disputed, that it putteth out the Light of Nature, and causeth so great a Darknesse in mens understanding, that they see not who it is to whom they have engaged their obedience.
Consequent to this claim of the Pope to Vicar Generall of Christ in the present Church, (supposed to be that Kingdom of his, to which we are addressed in the Gospel,) is the Doctrine, that it is necessary for a Christian King, to receive his Crown by a Bishop; as if it were from that Ceremony, that he derives the clause of Dei Gratia in his title; and that then onely he is made King by the favour of God, when he is crowned by the authority of Gods universall Viceregent on earth; and that every Bishop whosoever be his Soveraign, taketh at his Consecration an oath of absolute Obedience to the Pope, Consequent to the same, is the Doctrine of the fourth Councell of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the third, (Chap. 3. De Haereticis.) “That if a King at the Popes admonition, doe not purge his Kingdome of Haeresies, and being excommunicate for the same, doe not give satisfaction within a year, his Subjects are absolved of the bond of their obedience.” Where, by Haeresies are understood all opinions which the Church of Rome hath forbidden to be maintained. And by this means, as often as there is any repugnancy between the Politicall designes of the Pope, and other Christian Princes, as there is very often, there ariseth such a Mist amongst their Subjects, that they know not a stranger that thrusteth himself into the throne of their lawfull Prince, from him whom they had themselves placed there; and in this Darknesse of mind, are made to fight one against another, without discerning their enemies from their friends, under the conduct of another mans ambition.
From the same opinion, that the present Church is the Kingdome of God, it proceeds that Pastours, Deacons, and all other Ministers of the Church, take the name to themselves of the Clergy, giving to other Christians the name of Laity, that is, simply People. For Clergy signifies those, whose maintenance is that Revenue, which God having reserved to himselfe during his Reigne over the Israelites, assigned to the tribe of Levi (who were to be his publique Ministers, and had no portion of land set them out to live on, as their brethren) to be their inheritance. The Pope therefore, (pretending the present Church to be, as the Realme of Israel, the Kingdome of God) challenging to himselfe and his subordinate Ministers, the like revenue, as the Inheritance of God, the name of Clergy was sutable to that claime. And thence it is, that Tithes, or other tributes paid to the Levites, as Gods Right, amongst the Israelites, have a long time been demanded, and taken of Christians, by Ecclesiastiques, Jure Divino, that is, in Gods Right. By which meanes, the people every where were obliged to a double tribute; one to the State, another to the Clergy; whereof, that to the Clergy, being the tenth of their revenue, is double to that which a King of Athens (and esteemed a Tyrant) exacted of his subjects for the defraying of all publique charges: For he demanded no more but the twentieth part; and yet abundantly maintained therewith the Commonwealth. And in the Kingdome of the Jewes, during the Sacerdotall Reigne of God, the Tithes and Offerings were the whole Publique Revenue.
From the same mistaking of the present Church for the Kingdom of God, came in the distinction betweene the Civill and the Canon Laws: The civil Law being the acts of Soveraigns in their own Dominions, and the Canon Law being the Acts of the Pope in the same Dominions. Which Canons, though they were but Canons, that is, Rules Propounded, and but voluntarily received by Christian Princes, till the translation of the Empire to Charlemain; yet afterwards, as the power of the Pope encreased, became Rules Commanded, and the Emperours themselves (to avoyd greater mischiefes, which the people blinded might be led into) were forced to let them passe for Laws.
From hence it is, that in all Dominions, where the Popes Ecclesiasticall power is entirely received, Jewes, Turkes, and Gentiles, are in the Roman Church tolerated in their Religion, as farre forth, as in the exercise and profession thereof they offend not against the civill power: whereas in a Christian, though a stranger, not to be of the Roman Religion, is Capitall; because the Pope pretendeth that all Christians are his Subjects. For otherwise it were as much against the law of Nations, to persecute a Christian stranger, for professing the Religion of his owne country, as an Infidell; or rather more, in as much as they that are not against Christ, are with him.
From the same it is, that in every Christian State there are certaine men, that are exempt, by Ecclesiasticall liberty, from the tributes, and from the tribunals of the Civil State; for so are the secular Clergy, besides Monks and Friars, which in many places, bear so great a proportion to the common people, as if need were, there might be raised out of them alone, an Army, sufficient for any warre the Church militant should imploy them in, against their owne, or other Princes.
A second generall abuse of Scripture, is the turning of Consecration into Conjuration, or Enchantment. To Consecrate, is in Scripture, to Offer, Give, or Dedicate, in pious and decent language and gesture, a man, or any other thing to God, by separating of it from common use; that is to say, to Sanctifie, or make it Gods, and to be used only by those, whom God hath appointed to be his Publike Ministers, (as I have already proved at large in the 35. Chapter;) and thereby to change, not the thing Consecrated, but onely the use of it, from being Profane and common, to be Holy, and peculiar to Gods service. But when by such words, the nature of qualitie of the thing it selfe, is pretended to be changed, it is not Consecration, but either an extraordinary worke of God, or a vaine and impious Conjuration. But seeing (for the frequency of pretending the change of Nature in their Consecrations,) it cannot be esteemed a work extraordinary, it is no other than a Conjuration or Incantation, whereby they would have men to beleeve an alteration of Nature that is not, contrary to the testimony of mans Sight, and of all the rest of his Senses. As for example, when the Priest, in stead of Consecrating Bread and Wine to Gods peculiar service in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper, (which is but a separation of it from the common use, to signifie, that is, to put men in mind of their Redemption, by the Passion of Christ, whose body was broken, and blood shed upon the Crosse for our transgressions,) pretends, that by saying of the words of our Saviour, “This is my Body,” and “This is my Blood,” the nature of Bread is no more there, but his very Body; notwithstanding there appeared not to the Sight, or other Sense of the Receiver, any thing that appeareth not before the Consecration. The Egyptian Conjurers, that are said to have turned their Rods to Serpents, and the Water into Bloud, are thought but to have deluded the senses of the Spectators by a false shew of things, yet are esteemed Enchanters: But what should wee have thought of them, if there had appeared in their Rods nothing like a Serpent, and in the Water enchanted, nothing like Bloud, nor like any thing else but Water, but that they had faced down the King, that they were Serpents that looked like Rods, and that it was Bloud that seemed Water? That had been both Enchantment, and Lying. And yet in this daily act of the Priest, they doe the very same, by turning the holy words into the manner of a Charme, which produceth nothing now to the Sense; but they face us down, that it hath turned the Bread into a Man; nay more, into a God; and require men to worship it, as if it were our Saviour himself present God and Man, and thereby to commit most grosse Idolatry. For if it bee enough to excuse it of Idolatry, to say it is no more Bread, but God; why should not the same excuse serve the Egyptians, in case they had the faces to say, the Leeks, and Onyons they worshipped, were not very Leeks, and Onyons, but a Divinity under their Species, or likenesse. The words, “This is my Body,” are aequivalent to these, “This signifies, or represents my Body;” and it is an ordinary figure of Speech: but to take it literally, is an abuse; nor though so taken, can it extend any further, than to the Bread which Christ himself with his own hands Consecrated. For hee never said, that of what Bread soever, any Priest whatsoever, should say, “This is my Body,” or, “This is Christs Body,” the same should presently be transubstantiated. Nor did the Church of Rome ever establish this Transubstantiation, till the time of Innocent the third; which was not above 500. years agoe, when the Power of Popes was at the Highest, and the Darknesse of the time grown so great, as men discerned not the Bread that was given them to eat, especially when it was stamped with the figure of Christ upon the Crosse, as if they would have men beleeve it were Transubstantiated, not onely into the Body of Christ, but also into the Wood of his Crosse, and that they did eat both together in the Sacrament.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete 1651 English text (introduction, forty-seven chapters, review and conclusion) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity. Hobbes’s marginal summaries are omitted.
OF SPIRITUAL DARKNESS ARISING FROM MISINTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE
Besides the sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have spoken so far, Scripture mentions another power: (Eph. 6. 12.) “the rulers of the darkness of this world,” (Mat. 12. 26.) “the kingdom of Satan,” and (Mat. 9. 34.) “the principality of Beelzebub over demons,” that is, over phantoms appearing in the air. For this reason Satan is also called (Eph. 2. 2.) “the prince of the power of the air,” and, because he rules in the darkness of this world, (Joh. 16. 11.) “the prince of this world.” Accordingly, those under his dominion, in contrast with the faithful, who are the children of the light, are called the children of darkness. Since Beelzebub is prince of phantoms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness and these demons, phantoms, or spirits of illusion signify allegorically the same thing. Considered in this light, the kingdom of darkness, as Scripture presents it here and elsewhere, is nothing other than a “confederacy of deceivers who, to gain dominion over men in this present world, endeavor through dark and erroneous doctrines to extinguish in them the light both of nature and of the Gospel, and thus unfit them for the Kingdom of God to come.”
People born utterly deprived of bodily sight have no idea of light; and no one can imagine a light greater than any he has at some time perceived with his outward senses. So it is also with the light of the Gospel and of understanding: no one can conceive a greater degree of it than he has already attained. Hence men have no means of recognizing their own darkness except by reasoning from the unforeseen mishaps they encounter on their way. The darkest part of Satan’s kingdom lies outside the Church of God, among those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. Yet we cannot therefore say that the Church, like the land of Goshen, enjoys all the light necessary to perform the work God has commanded us. Why, almost since the Apostles’ time, have people throughout Christendom jostled one another out of their places by foreign and civil war? Why do they stumble over the slightest roughness in their own fortunes and the slightest elevation in another’s? Why do they take such different paths toward the same goal, happiness, unless it is night among us, or at least mist? We are therefore still in the dark.
The enemy has come in the night of our natural ignorance and sown the weeds of spiritual error. He has done so first by misusing and extinguishing the light of Scripture: for we err because we do not know the Scriptures. Second, by introducing the demonology of the heathen poets—their fabulous teaching about demons, which are merely idols or phantoms of the brain, with no real nature apart from human imagination, such as the ghosts of dead men, fairies, and other stuff of old wives’ tales. Third, by mixing into Scripture various relics of Greek religion and much of the Greeks’ vain and erroneous philosophy, especially Aristotle’s. Fourth, by mingling with both of these false or uncertain traditions and fabricated or uncertain history. Thus we fall into error by “giving heed to seducing spirits” and to the demonology of those who “speak lies in hypocrisy”—or, as it stands in the original, 1 Tim. 4.1,2., “of those who play the part of liars”—“with a seared conscience,” that is, against their own knowledge. I intend to speak briefly in this chapter of the first of these methods: seducing men through the misuse of Scripture.
The greatest and chief misuse of Scripture, on which almost all the rest depend or which they serve, is to twist it into proof that the Kingdom of God, so often mentioned in Scripture, is the present Church, whether the multitude of Christians now living or those who, having died, will rise again on the last day. In fact, the Kingdom of God was first instituted through Moses’ ministry over the Jews alone, who were therefore called his peculiar people. It ended when Saul was chosen: they refused any longer to be governed by God and demanded a king after the fashion of the nations, to which God himself consented, as I have shown more fully in the 35. Chapter. After that time there was no other Kingdom of God in the world, established by covenant or otherwise, beyond God’s eternal kingship over all men and all creatures, whom he governs according to his will by his infinite power. Nevertheless, through his prophets he promised to restore his government over them when the time appointed in his secret counsel had fully come and when they had turned back to him in repentance and reformed their lives. More than this, he invited the Gentiles too to enter and enjoy the happiness of his reign on the same conditions of conversion and repentance. He promised also to send his Son into the world to expiate the sins of them all by his death and prepare them by his teaching to receive him at his second coming. Since that second coming has not yet occurred, the Kingdom of God has not yet come, and we are now subject by covenant to no kings but our civil sovereigns. The sole qualification is that Christians are already in the kingdom of grace, inasmuch as they already have the promise of admission when he comes again.
From the error that the present Church is Christ’s kingdom follows the supposed need for some one man or assembly through whose mouth our Savior, now in heaven, speaks and gives law, and who represents his person to all Christians—or for several men or assemblies to do the same for different parts of Christendom. This royal power under Christ is claimed universally by the Pope and, within particular Commonwealths, by assemblies of local pastors, though Scripture grants it to none but civil sovereigns. The dispute over it grows so passionate that it puts out the light of nature and casts men’s understanding into such darkness that they cannot see to whom they have pledged obedience.
From the Pope’s claim to be Christ’s vicar general in the present Church, supposedly the kingdom to which the Gospel summons us, follows the doctrine that a Christian king must receive his crown from a bishop, as though it were through that ceremony that he derived the words Dei Gratia in his title, and as though only when crowned by the authority of God’s universal viceroy on earth were he made king by God’s favor. It follows also that every bishop, whoever his sovereign may be, takes at his consecration an oath of absolute obedience to the Pope. From the same claim comes the doctrine of the fourth Council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the third (Chap. 3. De Haereticis.): “If a king, upon the Pope’s admonition, does not purge his kingdom of heresies, and, having been excommunicated for it, does not make satisfaction within a year, his subjects are released from their obligation of obedience.” By heresies are meant all opinions the Church of Rome has forbidden men to maintain. Thus, whenever the Pope’s political designs conflict with those of other Christian princes, as they often do, such a mist rises among their subjects that they cannot distinguish a stranger who thrusts himself onto their lawful prince’s throne from the prince they themselves placed there. In this darkness of mind they are made to fight one another, unable to tell enemies from friends, under the guidance of another man’s ambition.
From the same opinion that the present Church is the Kingdom of God comes the practice by which pastors, deacons, and all other ministers of the Church take for themselves the name clergy, giving other Christians the name laity, meaning simply the people. For clergy means those whose maintenance comes from the revenue God reserved for himself during his reign over the Israelites and assigned as an inheritance to the tribe of Levi, who were to be his public ministers and, unlike their brothers, received no land to live on. The Pope, then, pretending that the present Church is, like the realm of Israel, the Kingdom of God, claimed a like revenue as God’s inheritance for himself and his subordinate ministers; the name clergy suited that claim. Hence ecclesiastics have long demanded and taken from Christians tithes and other payments made to the Levites among the Israelites as God’s right, claiming them Jure Divino, that is, by God’s right. The people were thus everywhere obliged to pay two tributes, one to the state and another to the clergy. The clergy’s share, a tenth of their income, is twice what a king of Athens, regarded as a tyrant, exacted from his subjects to meet every public expense: he demanded no more than a twentieth, yet maintained the Commonwealth abundantly with it. And in the kingdom of the Jews, during God’s priestly reign, tithes and offerings made up the entire public revenue.
From the same confusion of the present Church with the Kingdom of God arose the distinction between civil and canon law: civil law consists of the acts of sovereigns in their own dominions, canon law of the Pope’s acts within those same dominions. These canons were only canons—that is, proposed rules, accepted voluntarily by Christian princes—until the transfer of the Empire to Charlemagne. Afterwards, as papal power increased, they became commanded rules, and the emperors themselves, to avoid greater evils into which a blinded people might be led, were forced to let them pass as laws.
Hence, in all dominions where the Pope’s ecclesiastical power is fully accepted, the Roman Church tolerates Jews, Turks, and Gentiles in their religions, so long as their practice and profession do not offend the civil power; yet for a Christian, even a foreigner, not to belong to the Roman religion is a capital offense, because the Pope claims all Christians as his subjects. Otherwise it would be as contrary to the law of nations to persecute a foreign Christian for professing the religion of his own country as to persecute an unbeliever, or more so, since those who are not against Christ are with him.
Hence also in every Christian state certain men are exempt, by ecclesiastical liberty, from the taxes and courts of the civil state. The secular clergy enjoy this exemption, as do monks and friars, who in many places form so large a proportion of the common people that, should the need arise, an army sufficient for any war the Church militant might wage against its own or other princes could be raised from them alone.
A second general misuse of Scripture is to turn consecration into conjuration, or enchantment. In Scripture, to consecrate is to offer, give, or dedicate a person or anything else to God in pious and fitting words and gestures, separating it from common use. That is, it is to sanctify it, to make it God’s, for use only by those whom God has appointed his public ministers, as I proved at length in the 35. Chapter. Consecration changes not the thing consecrated but only its use, from profane and common to holy and set apart for God’s service. But when words are supposed to change the nature or quality of the thing itself, this is not consecration but either an extraordinary work of God or a vain and impious conjuration. And since claims of a change of nature in their consecrations are so frequent that they cannot be counted extraordinary works, they are nothing but conjuration or incantation. By these means they would have men believe in a change of nature that does not occur, against the testimony of sight and all their other senses. For example, instead of consecrating bread and wine to God’s special service in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper—which is simply setting them apart from common use to signify, and thus remind men of, their redemption through Christ’s Passion, his body broken and blood shed on the cross for our transgressions—the priest claims that by speaking our Savior’s words, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” the bread’s nature is no longer present and his very body is there. Yet the recipient sees or senses nothing that was not evident before consecration. The Egyptian conjurers said to have turned their rods into serpents and water into blood are thought to have deceived spectators’ senses with false appearances, and are therefore called enchanters. But what would we have thought if their rods had shown nothing like serpents, and the enchanted water nothing like blood or anything other than water, and they had nevertheless insisted to the king’s face that these were serpents that looked like rods and blood that looked like water? That would have been enchantment and lying together. And yet the priests do precisely the same in their daily rite, turning holy words into a kind of charm that produces nothing perceptible to the senses. They insist to our faces that it has turned bread into a man—indeed, into a God—and demand that men worship it as if it were our Savior himself, present as God and man, thereby committing the grossest idolatry. If saying it is no longer bread but God is enough to excuse such idolatry, why would the same excuse not serve the Egyptians if they had the nerve to say the leeks and onions they worshiped were not actual leeks and onions but a divinity beneath their appearance or likeness? The words “This is my body” are equivalent to “This signifies, or represents, my body,” an ordinary figure of speech; to take them literally is an abuse. Even if they were taken literally, they could extend no further than the bread Christ himself consecrated with his own hands. For he never said that any bread whatsoever, over which any priest whatsoever should say “This is my body” or “This is Christ’s body,” would instantly be transubstantiated. Nor did the Church of Rome establish this transubstantiation until the time of Innocent the third, no more than 500. years ago, when papal power stood at its height and the darkness of the age had grown so deep that men could not recognize the bread given them to eat—especially when it was stamped with Christ’s figure upon the cross, as though they were meant to believe it had been transubstantiated not only into Christ’s body but also into the wood of his cross, and that they ate both together in the sacrament.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete 1651 English text (introduction, forty-seven chapters, review and conclusion). Hobbes’s marginal summaries are omitted.
On spiritual darkness caused by misinterpreting Scripture
Besides the divine and human sovereign powers I have discussed so far, Scripture mentions another power. It speaks of “the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6. 12.), “the kingdom of Satan” (Mat. 12. 26.), and “the rule of Beelzebub over demons” (Mat. 9. 34.). These demons are apparitions that appear in the air. That is why Satan is also called “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2. 2.). And because he rules in this world's darkness, he is called “the prince of this world” (Joh. 16. 11.). Accordingly, people under his rule are called children of darkness, in contrast to the faithful, who are children of the light. Beelzebub is prince of apparitions, the inhabitants of his realm of air and darkness. Thus children of darkness and demons, apparitions, or deceptive spirits stand for the same thing in this allegory. In light of this, the kingdom of darkness described here and elsewhere in Scripture is simply a “league of deceivers.” They want power over people in this world. Through obscure and mistaken teachings, they try to put out the light of both nature and the gospel in people's minds, and so make them unready for the coming kingdom of God.
People born completely blind have no idea of visible light. No one can imagine a brighter light than any they have perceived with their senses. The same is true of the light of the gospel and of understanding: no one can conceive of a greater degree of it than they have already reached. So people can recognize their own darkness only by reasoning from the unexpected accidents that happen along their way. The darkest part of Satan's kingdom lies outside God's church, among those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. But this does not mean the church enjoys, like the land of Goshen, all the light needed to do the work God has assigned us. If it is not night among us, or at least foggy, why has Christendom seen people pushing one another out of place through foreign and civil wars almost since the apostles' time? Why do they stumble over every small hardship of their own and every small advantage of another's? Why do they take so many different paths toward the same goal, happiness? We are still in the dark.
During the night of our natural ignorance, the enemy came here and sowed the weeds of spiritual error. First, he misused and put out the light of Scripture: we go wrong because we do not know the Scriptures. Second, he brought in the demonology of pagan poets, their invented teaching about demons. These demons are merely idols or figments of the mind, with no reality apart from human imagination. They include ghosts of dead people, fairies, and other things in old wives' tales. Third, he mixed into Scripture various remnants of Greek religion and much of the Greeks' empty and mistaken philosophy, especially Aristotle's. Fourth, he mixed false or uncertain traditions and invented or uncertain histories with all this. This is how we come to err by “paying attention to deceiving spirits” and to the demonology of those “who speak lies hypocritically” (or, as the original says at 1 Tim. 4.1,2., “who play the part of liars”), “with a seared conscience”—that is, against their own knowledge. In this chapter I will briefly discuss the first of these ways of deceiving people: the misuse of Scripture.
The greatest misuse of Scripture, from which almost all the others follow or which they serve, is to twist it into proof that the kingdom of God so often mentioned there means today's church. On that reading, it consists of Christians now alive and those who have died and will rise again on the last day. But God's kingdom was first established over the Jews alone through Moses. That is why they were called his special people. It ended when they chose Saul, refused any longer to be ruled by God, and demanded a king like other nations. God himself agreed, as I showed more fully in Chapter 35. After that, there was no kingdom of God in the world based on a covenant or on anything else, except in the sense that God always has been, is, and will be king of all people and creatures, ruling by his infinite power according to his will. Yet through his prophets he promised to restore that government to the Jews when the time appointed in his secret counsel had fully come, and when they returned to him through repentance and reform of their lives. He also invited the Gentiles to share the happiness of his reign on the same terms of conversion and repentance. And he promised to send his Son into the world to atone by his death for the sins of all of them and to prepare them by his teaching to receive him at his second coming. Since that second coming has not happened, God's kingdom has not yet come. We are now bound by covenant to no kings except our civil sovereigns. The only qualification is that Christians are already in the kingdom of grace, since they already have the promise of admission when he returns.
If the present church were Christ's kingdom, it would follow that there must be a man or assembly through whom our Savior, now in heaven, speaks and gives laws, and who represents him to all Christians. Or there must be several men or assemblies doing this for different parts of Christendom. The Pope claims this kingly power under Christ everywhere, while assemblies of local pastors claim it in individual Commonwealths. But Scripture grants it only to civil sovereigns. The resulting dispute grows so heated that it puts out the light of nature. It so darkens people's understanding that they cannot see to whom they have pledged obedience.
The Pope's claim to be Christ's chief deputy in the present church—which is supposed to be the kingdom promised in the gospel—has another consequence. It leads to the teaching that a Christian king must receive his crown from a bishop, as though this ceremony gave him the words Dei Gratia, “by the grace of God,” in his title. On that view, he becomes king by God's favor only when crowned under the authority of God's universal deputy on earth. It also leads to the view that every bishop, whoever his sovereign is, takes an oath of absolute obedience to the Pope when consecrated. Another consequence is the teaching of the fourth Council of Lateran, held under Pope Innocent the third (Chap. 3. De Haereticis.): “If a king, after the Pope warns him, does not purge his kingdom of heresies, and after being excommunicated for this does not make amends within a year, his subjects are released from their duty to obey him.” Here “heresies” means all opinions the Roman Church forbids anyone to uphold. Thus whenever the Pope's political plans conflict with those of other Christian princes, as they often do, a fog descends over their subjects. They cannot tell a stranger forcing his way onto their rightful prince's throne from the prince they themselves put there. In this mental darkness, another man's ambition leads them to fight one another without knowing friend from enemy.
The view that the present church is God's kingdom also makes pastors, deacons, and other church ministers call themselves the clergy, while they call other Christians the laity, meaning simply “the people.” The word clergy means those whose livelihood comes from the revenue God reserved for himself while he reigned over the Israelites and assigned as an inheritance to the tribe of Levi. The Levites were to be his public ministers. Unlike their brothers, they received no share of land to live on. The Pope claims that the present church, like ancient Israel, is God's kingdom, and claims the same revenue as God's inheritance for himself and his subordinate ministers. The name “clergy” suits that claim. That is why church officials have long demanded and collected from Christians tithes and other payments once paid to the Levites as God's due among the Israelites. They claim these payments Jure Divino, by God's right. Everywhere this has burdened people with two taxes, one to the state and another to the clergy. The clergy's share, a tenth of their income, is twice what a king of Athens, considered a tyrant, took from his subjects to meet all public expenses. He took only a twentieth and still supported the Commonwealth amply. In the Jewish kingdom, while God ruled through the priests, tithes and offerings made up all public revenue.
Confusing the present church with God's kingdom also produced a division between civil and canon law. Civil laws are the acts of sovereigns within their territories. Canon laws are the Pope's acts within those same territories. Until the transfer of the Empire to Charlemagne, those canons were only proposed rules, which Christian princes accepted voluntarily. Later, as the Pope's power grew, they became commanded rules. Even emperors had to let them pass as laws to prevent worse trouble into which a misled public might be drawn.
This is why, in lands where the Pope's ecclesiastical power is fully accepted, Jews, Turks, and Gentiles are allowed to practice their religions within the Roman Church, provided their practice and profession do not offend against civil authority. But a Christian, even a foreigner, faces death for not following the Roman religion, because the Pope claims all Christians as his subjects. Otherwise, persecuting a Christian foreigner for professing his country's religion would violate the law of nations as much as persecuting a nonbeliever would, or more: whoever is not against Christ is with him.
For the same reason, certain people in every Christian state are exempt from taxes and civil courts by ecclesiastical privilege. The secular clergy enjoy this exemption, as do monks and friars. In many places they make up so large a share of the population that, if needed, they alone could supply an army big enough for any war the militant church might send them to fight against their own princes or others.
A second widespread misuse of Scripture turns consecration into conjuring or enchantment. In Scripture, to consecrate means to offer, give, or dedicate a person or thing to God in reverent, appropriate words and gestures by setting it apart from ordinary use. That is to make it holy, to make it God's, for use only by those God has appointed as his public ministers, as I explained fully in Chapter 35. This changes not the consecrated thing itself but its use, from ordinary to holy and reserved for God's service. When someone claims that such words change a thing's very nature or quality, this is not consecration. It is either an extraordinary work of God or empty, impious conjuring. Since claims to change nature during consecration are made so often, these cannot be called extraordinary works. They are just incantations meant to make people believe a change has occurred despite what their eyes and all their other senses tell them. For example, the priest should dedicate bread and wine to God's special use in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Setting them apart from ordinary use signifies and reminds people of their redemption through Christ's suffering: his body was broken and his blood shed on the cross for our sins. Instead, the priest claims that by saying our Savior's words, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” the bread ceases to be bread and becomes his actual body, though those receiving it see and sense no difference from before the consecration. Egyptian conjurers are said to have changed rods into serpents and water into blood. People think they merely fooled onlookers' senses with false appearances, yet still call them enchanters. But suppose their rods looked nothing like serpents and their water looked like nothing but water, and they still insisted to the king that the rods were serpents and the water blood. We would call that both enchantment and lying. Priests do exactly this every day. They turn sacred words into a charm that produces no perceptible effect and insist that bread has become a man, indeed a God. They demand that people worship it as though our Savior himself were there as God and man, thus committing gross idolatry. If saying “it is not bread any longer but God” excuses idolatry, why could the Egyptians not say that the leeks and onions they worshiped were not really leeks and onions but a divinity beneath their outward appearance? “This is my body” means “This signifies or represents my body.” That is a common figure of speech. Taking it literally is a misuse. Even if taken literally, it could apply only to the bread Christ himself consecrated with his own hands. He never said that any bread would instantly change its substance when any priest said, “This is my body” or “This is Christ's body.” The Roman Church did not establish this change of substance until Innocent the third's time, no more than 500. years ago, when papal power was greatest and the age so dark that people could not recognize the bread given them to eat. This was especially so when it bore an image of Christ on the cross, as though people were meant to believe it had turned not only into Christ's body but also into the wood of his cross, and that they ate both in the sacrament.