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Leighton Library has 1671 2nd edition of "The creed of Mr. Hobbes examined; in a feigned conference between him and a student in divinity" by Thomas Tenison
Added at 07:25 on 29 September 2025
The Leighton Library has a 1671 2nd edition of "The creed of Mr. Hobbes examined; in a feigned conference between him and a student in divinity" by English church leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Tenison who was born #OnThisDay 29 September 1636.
It’s a fictional dialogue between Hobbes and a divinity student. Tenison uses this setup to challenge Hobbes’s controversial ideas about religion, society, and government - especially Hobbes’s belief that absolute power (a Leviathan) is necessary to keep people in line.
Thomas Hobbes was one of the founders of modern political philosophy and political science. Later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison crowned two British monarchs.
The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes has been regarded as a high point of a century of great philosophical achievement. Responses to his materialist system and secular analysis of society was generally strongly hostile, as his ideas were viewed as being challenging. Hobbes was seen as dangerously secular. He argued that religion should be subordinate to the state, and that people give up their freedoms to a sovereign for peace. Tenison thought this was a recipe for tyranny. Tenison’s book defends traditional Christian doctrine and the authority of the Church against Hobbes’s rationalist, materialist views.
