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Richard
Hooker by
C Sydney Carter
<<Hooker's
Marriage
Hooker had commenced
this “justification of the laws of
our Ecclesiastical Polity” at the Temple, but in order
to secure the necessary peace and quiet to complete such a serious
undertaking, he persuaded Whitgift in 1591 to appoint him to
the country parish of Boscum near Salisbury. But although he
resigned his Mastership of the Temple this year, it is doubtful
if he spent much, if any, time at Boscum, as he apparently continued
to reside at his father-in-law's house in London from 1591 to
1595. It was here he wrote most of his famous treatise. Employing
Churchman's servant as his amanuensis, he was able to profit
from the assistance and advice of his former pupils Sandys and
Cranmer, and also that of his learned friend Dr. John Spenser.
By 1593 he had written and, with the financial backing of his
friend Edwin Sandys (now a prominent M.P.), had succeeded in
publishing the first four books of his Ecclesiastical
Polity,
which he had vainly tried to persuade publishers to print at
their own risk! It is interesting- to learn that Sandys paid
his friend £10 for the first four books of this famous
work, which as Professor Sisson well says “was a manifesto
of the first importance to which the Church returns at every
crisis to seek justification and vindication.” It was a
work of conspicuous literary merit. In fact, Professor Sisson
adds that “in the long and crowded roll of great English
men of letters there is no figure of greater significance to
the instructed mind than Hooker.” The work was written
with such evidence of ability and learning and in such a sweet
and reasonable spirit as to earn the high praise even of Pope
Clement VIII, who declared that it contained “the seeds
of eternity.”
In this great treatise Hooker reviews the whole Puritan controversy
from its inception at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. Further,
at Whitgift's request, he continues the latter's controversy
with Thomas Cartwright (the very able presbyterian Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge), which the Archbishop's numerous
pastoral duties prevented him from finishing. The crisis of the
Puritan attack on the Elizabethan Church Settlement was very
real at this time. The presbyterian faction possessed most able
advocates and champions, and the scurrilous Marprelate Tracts
were in full swing. Hooker's book therefore appearing at this
juncture, was certainly used as a political and ecclesiastical
buttress for the Government's severely repressive laws against
Puritan and Separatist worship. But inevitably also it contained
a clear exposition of his evangelical theology.
In his Preface Hooker gives a lamentable picture of the unsavoury
and unchristlike development of fanatical censoriousness and
intolerance, of which each age, including our own, can furnish
melancholy illustrations. Hooker's sincere, but inevitably unattainable,
design in his writings was “not to provoke any, but rather
to satisfy all tender consciences.”
On
Calvinistic Discipline. - To the Puritan contention that
the Calvinistic form of discipline should be binding on all Churches,
Hooker declared that although he considered Calvin " incomparably
the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy," yet
no Scripture could prove his discipline to be necessary for all
Churches, however beneficial it may have been for the city of
Geneva. It was impossible as well as unsuitable, Hooker argued,
to bring Church discipline to the exact standard of the Apostles'
days, of which we were now ignorant. Moreover, in opposition
to the Puritans, he had declared that Scripture had not enforced
any one special form of Church polity and that “laws touching
matters of Order are changeable by the power of the Church, articles
concerning doctrine not so.” But he maintained that episcopacy “agrees
best with the sacred Scripture.” The Puritans asserted
that the Church of England had corrupted the right form of Church
polity with manifold Popish rites and ceremonies.”
Scripture
as the Rule of Faith. – In his Second Book Hooker
exposes the fallacy of the Puritan platform that “Scripture
is the only rule of our actions.” “The Scripture,” he
retorts, “is only part of the rule by which to discern
when the actions of men are good.” He makes it clear, however,
that we are “forever bound to believe what the Scripture
teaches in the special mysteries of salvation.” God teaches,
he affirms, “not only through the sacred Scriptures, but
by the glorious works of Nature." Archbishop Tillotson,
a century later, emphasized the reasonableness of Christianity,
and Hooker in a measure forestalls him, as he certainly does
not regard the divine Revelation as excluding the use of reason.
The light of reason, he declares, binds men “to the natural
law whose seat is the bosom of God,” although this needs
supplementing by " the inner light of
the Gospel.”
For Hooker fully emphasizes the supremacy and final authority
of Scripture. “There is great odds,” he asserts, “between
things devised by men, although agreeable with the law of Nature,
and things in Scripture, set down by the finger of the Holy Ghost.” He
is also in no doubt about its full inspiration. “We are
to know,” he declares, “that the Word of God is His
heavenly truth touching matters of eternal life and uttered unto
men, unto Prophets and Apostles, by immediate divine inspiration,
from them to us by their books and writings…. We have
therefore no Word of God but the Scripture.” But he replies
to the Puritans: “Make all things sin, which we do by the
direction of Nature's light and by the rule of common discretion
without thinking at all upon Scripture, and parents will cause
their children to sin, as oft as they cause them to do anything,
before they come to years of capacity and be ripe for knowledge
in the Scripture.”
Puritan
Intolerance. - Hooker recalled the progressive development
of Puritan intolerance which strikingly resembled that of the
early Montanists in their claim that the Spirit had instructed
them that their discipline was divinely commanded, and that its
adoption had sealed them as God's children. The natural next
step was to declare, “We are of God : he that knoweth God
heareth us. As for the rest, ye are of the world.” You
cannot reason, Hooker well says, with complacent and self-confident
Christians who are convinced that they alone are God's elect.
His sweet spirit of moderation is well displayed when he predicts
that " there will come a time when three words uttered with
charity shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand
volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.” Had
both Laud and the Puritans realized this truth, their intolerant
persecuting policy would not have disgraced the pages of Church
History.
Hooker had no patience with the censorious spirit. “Let
us beware,” he says, “lest if we make too many ways
of denying Christ we scarce leave any way for ourselves truly
and soundly to confess Him." But his Christlike and tolerant
outlook was in striking contrast to the prevailing persecuting
spirit of those days as illustrated by Thomas Cartwright, who
declared, “Heretics ought to be put to death now. If this
be bloody and extreme, I am content to be so counted with the
Holy Ghost.”
>>His
ecclesiastical position
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