ABSTRACT
Books III and IV, then, form in a sense Hobbes's contribution to the study of faith, both as a system of revealed truth and as a faculty of the mind. But at a much earlier point in Leviathan, immediately afier drawing his distinction between experiential knowledge of facts and logical knowledge of the consequences of verbal affirmations, he had turned his attention to the question of what faith was; and it will aid our study of his eschatology if we keep in mind what he there said:
When a man's discourse beginneth not at definitions, it beginneth either at some other contemplation of his own, and then it is still called opinion; or it beginneth at some saying of another, of whose ability to know the truth and of whose honesty in not deceiving he doubteth not; and then the discourse is not so much concerning the thing as
the person, and the resolution is called BELIEF and FAITH: faith in the man, belief both of the man and of the truth of what he says. So that in belief are two opinions, one of the saying of the man, the other of his virtue .... But we are to observe that this phrase, I believe in [and its Greek and Latin equivalents] are never used but in the writings of divines. Instead of them in other writings are put, I believe him [etc.] . . . [and] this singularity of the ecclesiastic use of the word hath raised many disputes about the right object of the Christian faith.
