The Journal of the House of Commons shows that on the seventeenth day of October 1666, under the grim subject heading of ‘Atheism’, the House ordered ‘That the Committee to which the Bill against Atheism and Profaneness is committed, be empowered to receive Information touching such books as tend to Atheism, Blasphemy, or Profaneness, or against the Essence or Attributes of God.’ Of particular interest to the House was the work of a certain Thomas Hobbes, written while he was exiled in Paris during the English Civil War. The work was titled Leviathan (published 1651). The Journal also records that the Committee was to ‘report the Matter, with their Opinions, to the House’, a charge they never fulfilled.

The charge of ‘atheism’, if compared with the use of the term today, takes on something of a different form if understood in historical context. When one considers that someone like Martin Luther could be accused of atheism for undermining mainstream theology, then the accusations against Hobbes are less alarming. The atheism that Hobbes was accused of indicates that some thought his ideas provoked beliefs that led to atheism. So, it is understandable that scholars are divided on the meaning of Hobbes's religious convictions for his political ideas. Perhaps they are divided over the meaning of his political ideas for his religious convictions? Whichever it is, I do not propose to resolve this ongoing debate. However, I will look to Hobbes as an exemplary character in the story of the secularisation of early modern political thought. Accusations of atheism directed towards Hobbes are not irrelevant. His understanding of nature, of natural law, and of the origins of society demonstrate that Hobbes desacralised political life, whether intentionally or not.

One central debate in Hobbes scholarship is over the relationship between Hobbes's theory of natural law and God. Indeed, the relationship has been under question ever since Hobbes began publishing his ideas on natural law, coming under sustained attack during his own time, and garnering him a reputation as a religiously subversive atheist. In this, Hobbes was not dissimilar to his contemporary, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), who made his provocative etiamsi daremus assertion in De jure belli ac pacis (1625).