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Richard
Hooker by
C Sydney Carter
<<The Ecclesiastical
Polity
Hooker’s ecclesiastical
position was almost identical with that of his early friend and
patron, Bishop
Jewel, whom he revered as “the worthiest
divine that Christendom hath bred for the space of some hundreds
of years.” Jewel's famous Apology of the Church of England
had clearly outlined the Catholic foundation principles of the
Reformed English Church with its appeal to apostolic and primitive
antiquity. Hooker practically applied this position to Anglican
discipline against the Puritan clamour for the adoption of the
Genevan discipline. Jewel was concerned to expose Romish errors
and superstitions, while Hooker dealt directly with Puritan attacks
on the English national religious settlement. He had no sympathy
with the Genevan ideal of the Church ruling the State as God's
Kingdom, for with Hooker Church and Commonwealth were practically
convertible terms, since “regal power must be concerned
with man's eternal as well as his temporal welfare.” His
Tudor interpretation of the Royal Supremacy was that the State
must exercise an Erastian domination over the Church, whereas
the Puritans declared that “the civil magistrate is none
officer at all of the Church,” and he must “subject
himself unto the Church . . . and willingly abide the censures
of the Church.”
The Unity of the Church.
Jewel, in treating of the unity
of the Visible Church, had stressed the importance of an orderly
episcopal ministry, although he declared that “God's grace
is promised to one who feareth God and not to sees or successions.” Keble
in his Preface to Hooker's Works states that the Elizabethan
bishops and divines were content “to show that the government
by Archbishops and Bishops was ancient and allowable: they never
ventured to urge its exclusive claim or to connect it with the
validity of the Holy Sacraments.” In confirmation of this
statement we find that Hooker's patron, Archbishop Whitgift,
clearly asserts that “no certain manner or form of electing
ministers is prescribed in Scripture and that every Church may
do therein as it shall seem most expedient.” Hooker fully
concurred in this opinion, since he declares that the unity of
the Church consists in three essentials, the possession of “the
one Lord, the one Faith, and the one Baptism.” Although
he insisted that “without the work of the Ministry religion
by no means can possibly continue,” he asserts clearly
that “the complete form of Church polity . . . is not taught
in Scripture,” while “much that it hath taught may
become unrequisite, sometime because we need not use it, sometime
because we cannot.” And in this latter category he placed
the Reformed non-episcopal Churches, including the Scottish and
French, who, he declares, “have been driven without any
fault of their own by the necessity of the present times” to
practise a presbyterian form of government. He tells us that
in his earlier days he inclined to the view that on the death
of the Apostles the Churches agreed “for the preservation
of peace and order" to make one presbyter in each city chief
over the rest,” and “to translate into him that power
by virtue of which the Apostles, while they were alive, did preserve
and uphold order in the Church.” But in later years he
was more doubtful of this conjecture and he even boldly declared
that “surely the first institution of bishops was from
heaven and the Holy Ghost was the Author of it.”
Episcopacy and Ordination.
At the same time Hooker warned
the Bishops that “the Church can by universal consent upon
urgent cause take away this special authority” because “it
is rather the force of custom, whereby the Church having so long
found it good to continue under the regiment of her virtuous
bishops doth still uphold and honour them in that respect, than
that any such true and heavenly law can be showed by the evidence
whereof it may of a truth appear that the Lord Himself hath appointed
presbyters for ever to be under the regiment of bishops, in what
sort soever they behave themselves.” It is therefore fair
to conjecture that modern research into the origins of the early
Christian Ministry would probably have led Hooker to modify or
revise somewhat his definite assertion regarding the unique claims
of episcopal government. But in spite of his later “higher” view
of episcopacy, which was probably occasioned by the increasing
insistence of the extreme Puritans on the exclusive necessity
of a Presbyterian polity, Hooker was still prepared to admit,
as he did in commenting on the case of Theodore Beza's ordination
by Calvin, that “there may be sometimes very just and sufficient
reason to allow ordination without a bishop.”
He further recognizes a direct call of God to the Ministry, “when
God Himself doth of Himself raise up any, whose labour He uses
without requiring that men should authorize them; but then He
doth ratify their calling by manifest signs and tokens from heaven.” He
would therefore almost certainly have regarded Spurgeon or Moody
or General Booth as in this category. Again, in cases where it
is not possible to secure a bishop for ordination, Hooker admits
that the ordinary institution of God must be waived. And so he
adds: “we must not simply without exception urge a lineal
descent of power from the Apostles by continued succession of
bishops in every effectual ordination.” Professor Sisson
is therefore surely correct when he affirms that “there
is nothing in Hooker to serve as a foundation for an episcopacy
by Apostolic Succession and divine institution; indeed, his reservations
upon this matter might furnish ammunition for an opposition.”
Hooker also makes it quite clear
that ordination, once it is conferred, should not be repeated since it is received
from “the
whole Catholic Church” to be “exercised effectually
in any part of the world without iterated ordination.” He
would not therefore approve of modern proposals for “supplementary” ordination
for non-episcopal ministers.
The Mystical Body
Again, Hooker,
like Jewel, fully affirms his belief in what our post-Communion thanksgiving
calls the “mystical
body of Thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful
people.” “Men predestinated in His secret purpose,” he
declares, “have their actual vocation or adoption likewise
intended unto that fellowship or society which is invisible
and really His true Church, through the grace of the Spirit
of Christ given them.” So Hooker adds that the failure
to distinguish between “the Church of God mystical and
visible has caused oversights not few nor light.” This
mystical body is, he asserts, invisible, since it cannot “be
sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts thereof
are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest are on
earth, although we do not discern whether they are truly and
infallibly of that body.” But,
he adds, it is “concerning this flock that our Lord and
Saviour promised. ‘I give unto them eternal life, they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of
my hands.’ They who are of this society have such marks
and notes of distinction from all others, as are not object
unto our sense, only unto God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth
their secret cogitations ; unto Him they are clear and manifest.”
Hooker clearly affirms his belief in the Calvinistic tenet of
final preservation of all such true believers in Christ. “The
faith of true believers,” he declares in his Sermon on
the “Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect,” “though
it have many grievous downfalls, yet it doth still continue invincible,
it conquereth and recovereth itself in the end.”
But Hooker equally asserts the unity of the Visible Church of
Christ, which, he declares, is “a sensibly known company,
continued from the first beginning of the world to the last end.” For “the
Visible Church of Jesus Christ is one in outward profession of
those things which supernaturally appertain to the very essence
of Christianity and are necessarily required in every Christian
man” - that is, their acceptance of “the one Lord,
whose servants they all profess to be, and the one Faith they
all acknowledge, and the one Baptism with which they are all
initiated.”
Scripture and Tradition
In dealing
with ecclesiastical tradition, Hooker admits its authority regarding indifferent
matters of “rites
and customs” which the Apostles ordained, although “they
did not commit them to writing,” and they were “of
the nature of things changeable.” On the other hand, the
doctrine of the Trinity and Infant Baptism were, he says, “not
dependent on Tradition but were deducible from Scripture.” And
he declares that “they which add traditions as part of
supernatural necessary truth, have not the truth, but are in
error.” “Whatsoever to make up the doctrine of man's
salvation is added, as in supply of the Scriptures’ insufficiency,
we reject it, Scripture purposing this, hath perfectly and fully
done it.” “Scripture,” he adds, “is such
a perfect storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that nothing can
ever need to be added.” Hooker would therefore scarcely
endorse the Rumanian Church declaration of 1935, “that
the Revelation of God is transmitted through the Holy Spirit
and the Holy Tradition.”
“The Scripture,” he declares, “yea, every
sentence thereof, is perfect and wanteth nothing requisite unto
that purpose for which God delivered the same.” And in
speaking of the profundity of Scripture Hooker anticipated, in
slightly different words, the oft-quoted statement of John Robinson
of Leyden-spoken to the Pilgrim Fathers as they set out on their
perilous adventure to the New World, “I am persuaded that
God hath much more light and truth to break forth from His holy
Word” - when he said, “Let us not think that as long
as the world doth endure, the wit of man shall be able to sound
the bottom of that which may be concluded out of the Scripture.” And
he adds that “there is in Scripture no defect, but that
any man, what place or calling soever he hold in the Church of
God, may have the light of his natural understanding so perfected
by Scripture that there can want no part of needful instruction
unto any good work which God Himself requires.” “How
miserable,” he declares, “had the state of the Church
of God been, if wanting the sacred Scripture we had no record
of His laws but only the memory of man receiving the same by
report and relation from his predecessors.”
The Church of Rome
The attitude to the Church of
Rome of Jewel and Hooker was practically identical. Jewel admitted that Christ's
Gospel had “once been truly set forth in it,” and
that we only left it “of necessity and much against our
wills because it was manifest that it had departed from God's
Word.” Similarly Hooker declared that in “the main
points of Christian Truth we gladly acknowledge them to be of
the family of Jesus Christ.” But he adds: “We dare
not communicate with Rome concerning her gross and grievous abominations,” and
he includes in these her doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass. “He
cannot love the Lord Jesus with his heart who can brook to see
a mingle-mangle of religion and superstition, ministers and massing
priests, light and darkness, truth and error.”
Hooker fully justifies the Anglican breach with Rome when he
says: “That which the Papists call schism, we know to be
our reasonable service unto God and obedience to His voice, which
crieth shrill in our ears, ‘Go out of Babylon, My people,
that ye be not partakers of her sins.’ ” But he makes
me it quite clear that this separation involved for the Church
of England no departure from the ancient Catholic Church, because “to
reform ourselves is not to sever ourselves from the Church we
were of before. In the Church we were and we are so still.”
The Eucharist, Priesthood, and Absolution.
In dealing with
the burning controversy of the Presence of Christ in the Lord's
Supper, Hooker stated clearly that “the real Presence of
Christ's most blessed body and blood is not . . . to be sought
for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament.” And
he wishes that “more would give themselves to meditate
with silence what we have by the sacrament, and to dispute less
of the ‘manner how’ we feed on Christ.” He
confesses that “I see not which way it should be gathered
by the words of Christ when and where the bread is His body or
the cup His blood, but only in the very heart and soul of him
which receiveth them” - language perfectly in accord with
the injunction in the words of delivery, “Feed on Him in
thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” Hooker had no sacerdotal
leanings and his teaching on priesthood, absolution, and confession
is quite definite. He asks how the word “priesthood” can
be applied to the Ministry since “sacrifice is now no part
of it.” He explains that it was due to the Fathers calling
the Ministry of the Gospel priesthood, “in regard to what
the Gospel hath proportionable to ancient sacrifices, namely,
the Communion of the blessed Body and Blood of Christ,” although “it
has properly now no sacrifice.” The clergy, he says, “are
either presbyters or deacons.” And he remarks that he would
rather call them presbyters than priests, because to many “the
name priest is odious, though without cause, for the people when
they hear the name no more draw their
minds to any cogitation of sacrifice than the name senator or
alderman causeth them to think upon old age.” He adds: “In
truth the word presbyter doth seem more fit, and in propriety
of speech more agreeable, than priest with the drift of the whole
Gospel of Jesus Christ.” What better title, he concludes, “could
be given them than the reverend name of presbyters or fatherly
guides”?
Although, like Jewel, Hooker would not condemn private Confession
as “unlawful”, he points out that “the Church
of England hath thought it the safer way to refer men's hidden
crimes unto God and themselves only”; and he explains that
the Anglican view of repentance relies “chiefly upon the
inward conversion of the heart.” Auricular Confession had,
he declared, “no warrant in Scripture.” “St.
John says, ‘If we confess our sins God is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins.’ Doth St. John say if we confess
to the priest God is righteous to forgive, and if not, that our
sins are unpardonable? No, but the titles of God – ‘just’ and ‘righteous’ -
do import that He pardons sin only for His promise's sake.” “The
cause of remission of sins,” Hooker declares, “is
grace, and the condition repentance.” Absolution does not
really take away sin, “but only ascertains us of God's
most gracious and merciful pardon.” “The priest doth
never in absolution,” he says again, “either forgive
the act or remove the punishment of sin. . . . God alone doth
truly give, and private ministerial absolution only declares
remission of sins.” “If,” he adds, “the
penitent is truly contrite, he hath absolution . . . before absolution.”
Theological Position
Hooker, as
we have seen, was a strong opponent of Calvinistic discipline; but in doctrine,
in common with practically all the contemporary Anglican divines, he was
definitely Calvinist. His views on Predestination are in line
with the praeterition theory of St. Augustine. “To God’s
foreknown elect, final continuance of grace is given,” he
declares. That such elect souls “should be finally seduced
and clean drawn away from God is a thing impossible.” “I
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,” is, he
affirms, our safety. On the other hand he declares that “inward
grace, whereby to be saved, is deservedly not given unto all
men.” But he explains that it is “only their sins
which condemn those to whom God's saving mercy does not extend.” In
fact his conclusions on this deeply mysterious subject are only
a slight modification of the Lambeth Articles Of 1595, agreed
to by Archbishops Whitgift and Bancroft, one of which asserted
that “it is not placed within the will and power of every
man to be saved.”
>> Closing
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