< His sayings. >

'Tis of custome in the lives of wise men to putt downe their sayings. Now if trueth (uncommon) delivered clearly and wittily may goe for a saying, his common discourse was full of them, and which for the most part were sharpe and significant.

Here insert the two printed papers of his sayings.

Quaere Mr. Ben. Tuke at the Ship in Paule's Church-yard for the paper of his sayings, which Dr. Francis Bernard and his brother Charles, etc.—a club—made.

The sheet of old Mr. Hobbes sayings was not published by his executor, as is there printed. 'Twas (indeed) donne by Mr. ... Blunt, Sir Henry Blunt's sonne, and 'tis well donne.

I sayd, somewhere before, that (though he was ready and happy in repartying in drollery) he did not care to give a present answer to a question, unless he had thoroughly considered it before: for he was against 'too hasty concluding,' which he did endeavour as much as he could to avoid.—This is in p. .

Thomas Hobbs <said> that if it were not for the gallowes, some men are of so cruell a nature as to take a delight in killing men more than I should to kill a bird.—Entred in idea.

When Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus first came out <1670>, Mr. Edmund Waller sent it to my lord of Devonshire and desired him to send him word what Mr. Hobbes said of it. Mr. H. told his lordship:—

Ne judicate ne judicemini.

He told me he had cut thorough him a barre's length, for he durst not write so boldly.

I have heard him inveigh much against the crueltie of Moyses for putting so many thousands to the sword for bowing to ... vide text.

I have heard him say that Aristotle was the worst teacher that ever was, the worst polititian and ethick—a countrey-fellow that could live in the world <would be> as good: but his rhetorique and discourse of animals was rare.

T. H.'s saying:—rather use an old woman that had many yeares been at sick people's bedsides, then the learnedst young unpractised physitian.

☞ I remember he was wont to say that 'old men were drowned inwardly, by their owne moysture; e.g. first, the feet swell; then, the legges; then, the belly; etc.'—This saying may be brought in, perhaps, as to the paragraph of his sicknesse and death.

<From> Elizabeth, viscountesse Purbec. When Mr. T. Hobbes was sick in France, the divines came to him, and tormented him (both Roman Catholic, Church of England, and Geneva). Sayd he to them 'Let me alone, or els I will detect all your cheates from Aaron to yourselves.' I thinke I have heard him speake something to this purpose.

Mr. Edmund Waller sayd to me, when I desired him to write some verses in praise of him, that he was afrayd of the churchmen: he quoted Horace—

Incedo per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso:

that, what was chiefly to be taken notice of in his elogie was that he, being but one, and a private person, pulled-downe all the churches, dispelled the mists of ignorance, and layd-open their priest-craft.