ABSTRACT
The literature of the great English Revolution is mainly a fugitive literature, that is to say, it arose from the necessities of the moment. A revolutionary literature may be said to have preceded the English Revolution in the realm of religion alone, and although religious questions were inseparable from politics, the works dealing with religion did not trench on the secular domain or question the existing social order. “Leviathan” is the sovereign autocrat of the Commonwealth, and although Hobbes decidedly favours an absolute monarchy as the most suitable form of government, he nevertheless declares the theory to be equally applicable, whether the absolute sovereignty of an individual or that of an assembly is in question. Oceana appeared in 1656, and at once produced various replies, nearly all of them coming from theologians.
