Against Hobbes
Although Parker was thought to be close to the arguments on Hobbes on state power (and this opinion is still current), he went to lengths to attack Hobbes on the grounds of atheism, a common charge brought up against him. In A Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Law of Nature (1681) Parker developed earlier work, and also adapted arguments from the De legibus naturae (1672) of Richard Cumberland. He contradicts Hobbes on human nature as selfish, and argues that our understanding of natural law develops from our understanding of nature, without the requirement that it be innate.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Parker (bishop Of Oxford)
Famous quotes containing the word hobbes:
“Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life it self is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Faeroe, no more than without Sense.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“But his Lordship [tells] ... us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Nor ... can I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)