Behemoth

dialogues concerning the memorable civil war in his Majesty's dominions from 1640 to 1660. The first contains the seed of it, certain opinions in divinity and politics. The second hath the growth of it in declarations, remonstrances, and other writings between the King and Parliament published. The two last are a very short epitome of the war itself, drawn out of Mr. Heath's chronicle. There can be nothing more instructive towards loyalty and justice than will be the memory, while it lasts, of that war. Your Lordship may do with it what you please. I petition not to have it published. But I pray your Lordship not to desist to be favourable as you have been, to me that am, My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble and obliged servant, THOMAS HOBBES. * BEHEMOTH; *OR, THE LONG PARLIAMENT.* DIALOGUE I. A. If in time, as in place, there were degrees of high and low, I verily believe that the highest of time would be that which passed between the years of 1640 and 1660. For he that thence, as from the Devil's Mountain, should have looked upon the world and observed the actions of men, especially in England, might have had a prospect of all kinds of injustice, and of all kinds of folly, that the world could afford, and how they were produced by their '"dams* hypocrisy and self-conceit, whereof the one is double iniquity, and the other double folly. B. I should be glad to behold that prospect. You that have lived in that time and in that part of your age, wherein men used to see best into good and evil, I pray you to set me (that could not then see so well) upon the same mountain, by the relation of the actions you then saw, and of their causes, pretensions, justice, order, artifice, and event. A.…