Of course, Hobbes’ contemporaries
viewed these arguments with deep suspicion.
The loudest and most numerous of
Hobbes’ opponents condemned his dismissal
of religious authority as political
atheism. Others, such as the republican
James Harrington, criticised him for
replacing an ancient ‘art of government’,
based upon ‘the foundation of common
right or interest’, with a modern art of
government by means of which ‘some man,
or some few men, subject a city or a nation,
and rule it according unto his or their
private interest’. The one, according to
Harrington, was a de jure government
based on the rule of laws rather than men;
the other a de facto government based on
the rule of men rather than laws (Harrington,
[1656] 1992: 8–9).