The claim of this section is that the release clause of chapter XXI places the judgment of whether protection persists with the subject, and does so in a verb of sight, while chapter XXIX's condemnation of private judgment leaves room for exactly such a judgment in cases the law has not determined. The section adds to the legitimacy debate the point that Hobbes's theory, read at its edge, makes the visibility of protection, rather than its fairness or its acceptance, the condition on which obedience ends.
6.1The paragraph
The section in the source file is a single paragraph, and it is quoted whole:
The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. The Soveraignty is the Soule of the Common-wealth; which once departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it. The end of Obedience is Protection; which, wheresoever a man seeth it, either in his own, or in anothers sword, Nature applyeth his obedience to it, and his endeavour to maintaine it. And though Soveraignty, in the intention of them that make it, be immortall; yet is it in its own nature, not only subject to violent death, by forreign war; but also through the ignorance, and passions of men, it hath in it, from the very institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality, by Intestine Discord.
Five steps can be distinguished.
The first sentence measures obligation by capacity: obligation lasts as long as "the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them." It is not the sovereign's good intentions, nor the fairness of procedures, nor the subject's consent renewed day by day, that sustain the duty. It is the power to protect.
The second gives the reason: the natural right of self-protection "can by no Covenant be relinquished". There is a residue the covenant never took. When "none else can protect them", the residue returns to use.
The third is an image: sovereignty is the soul of the commonwealth, and once the soul has "departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it." The members do not decide to stop moving; they simply no longer receive motion. On this image, the end of obligation is not a choice but a fact about where motion comes from.
The fourth contains the phrase the article turns on. "The end of Obedience is Protection; which, wheresoever a man seeth it, either in his own, or in anothers sword, Nature applyeth his obedience to it, and his endeavour to maintaine it." Obedience goes where protection is seen. The verb is "seeth", and its subject is "a man", any one person. There is no judge here, no assembly, no sovereign deciding that protection has lapsed. The individual sees protection, or does not, and nature does the rest.
The fifth recalls the mortality of the "Mortall God": sovereignty, intended to be immortal, carries "from the very institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality".
6.2What the subject must see
Read together with chapters XIII and XVII, the paragraph sets out what a subject must be able to see in order to use the release it grants. Three things can be named, and the naming is this article's.
The subject must see whether there is protection now. This is the plain sense of "wheresoever a man seeth it". But chapter XIII made assurance, not the absence of attack, the mark of peace. To see protection, then, is to see assurance: a positive sign that the power is there, not merely the absence of a sign that it has gone.
The subject must see where protection comes from. The paragraph allows that it may be seen "either in his own, or in anothers sword". Obedience moves to whichever source protects. A subject who cannot see where the protecting power now lies cannot apply obedience to it.
The subject must see the scope of what is required. The obligation was given, in chapter XVII, "in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie". A subject who cannot tell whether a given demand falls within that scope cannot tell whether the obligation reaches it.
None of these is a matter of fairness, in Tyler's sense, or of the order being understood and possible, in Barnard's. They concern the existence, the location and the reach of protection. A subject may judge an authority fair and still not know whether it is able to protect; a subject may understand an order and still not see whether the power behind it remains.
6.3The tension with private judgment
Hobbes is famously hostile to private judgment. Chapter XXIX, whose relevant sections the source file prints, lists among the diseases of a commonwealth the seditious doctrine "That every private man is Judge of Good and Evill actions." The next sentences, however, limit the condemnation:
This is true in the condition of meer Nature, where there are no Civill Lawes; and also under Civill Government, in such cases as are not determined by the Law. But otherwise, it is manifest, that the measure of Good and Evill actions, is the Civill Law; and the Judge the Legislator, who is alwayes Representative of the Common-wealth.
Private judgment is not wholly condemned. It is "true" in two places: in the condition of nature, and "under Civill Government, in such cases as are not determined by the Law." The doctrine is seditious only "otherwise". Chapter XXI's release clause sits comfortably beside this exception. Where protection has failed, the condition of nature has in effect returned, and private judgment is the only judgment there is. Where the law has not determined a case, private judgment is again allowed.
The passage on conscience in the same chapter adds the reason for Hobbes's worry: "the Law is the publique Conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided." The subject who follows the law is guided by a public conscience; the subject in a case the law does not determine has only a private one. Section 7 returns to this distinction, because the scene it reads is, on its face, a case that no order determined.
6.4Who judges: Hobbes beside Schmitt
Schmitt's Political Theology locates the decision on the exception, including whether the constitution is to be suspended as a whole, with the sovereign (Schmitt 1922). Carl Schmitt served the Nazi regime from 1933, and critics read his theory of the exception in that light. Set beside chapter XXI, the contrast is clear. On Schmitt's account, as the study's note summarises it, the decision whether the normal situation holds belongs to the one who stands outside and yet within the order. On Hobbes's release clause, the judgment whether protection still holds belongs to each person who sees, or fails to see, it. The two accounts can coexist, since a sovereign may decide on the exception while a subject judges whether that sovereign can still protect; but they put the crucial judgment in different hands. Chapter XVIII's "no Judge to decide the controversie" marks the point where Hobbes's sovereign cannot help: whether the sovereign still protects is not something the sovereign can be asked to certify.
6.5The katechon and the mortal god
Hobbes does not use the word katechon, but the release clause sets his sovereign beside the letter's holder, who "now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way" (2 Thessalonians 2:7). The holder of chapter XXI is mortal by nature, and its removal is not foretold but noticed by subjects. The comparison is limited: the letter names what is held back as evil and promises a coming that ends it, while Hobbes describes no coming, only the return of war. Esposito's reading of the katechon as immunity, a protection that keeps within it what it protects against (Esposito 2002), fits one feature of the design: the sovereign holds back violence by monopolising it, through the "terror" of chapter XVII.
6.6What chapter XXI adds
Chapter XXI adds to the legitimacy debate a condition on the end of obedience that the positions of Section 2 do not state. Obligation lapses when protection lapses; the lapse is perceived by the individual subject; and the perception concerns the existence, the source and the reach of protection. A restraint whose protection cannot be seen is, on this reading, one whose end cannot be judged. The next section turns to a scene in which that is the situation.