R

IV

HOOKER

THE WISE THEOLOGIAN

ICHARD HOOKER, the most renowned

of English theologians since the Reformation, was born probably in March 1553-54, in the last year of the reign of Edward VI., and two years before the burning of Archbishop Cranmer.

It is said that either Cardinal Allen or Dr. Stapleton, learned Romanists in Italy at the time of the publication of the first four books of the Ecclesiastical Polity, sent for them, and after reading them declared to Pope Clement VIII., that though he had lately said he never met with an English book whose writer deserved the name of an author, yet there now appeared a wonder to them, and it would be so to his Holiness if it were in Latin; for a poor, obscure English priest had written four such Books of Laws and Church

Polity, and in a style that expressed such a grave and so humble a majesty, with such clear demonstration of reason, that in all their readings they had not met any that exceeded him. The Pope begged Dr. Stapleton to read him the first book in Latin; and when he had heard it, remarked: "There is no learning that this man hath not searched into; nothing too hard for his understanding: this man indeed deserves the name of an author; his books will get reverence by age, for there is in them such seeds of eternity, that if the rest be like this, they shall last till the last fire shall consume all learning.”

King James I., on coming to England in succession to Elizabeth, asked Archbishop Whitgift for the author of the Church Polity; and when he heard that he died a year before Queen Elizabeth, who received the news of his death with very much sorrow, he replied: "And I receive it with no less, that I shall want the desired happiness of seeing and discoursing with that man, from whose Books I have received such satisfaction: indeed, my Lord, I have received more satisfaction in reading a leaf, or paragraph, in Mr. Hooker, though it were but about the fashion of

Churches, or Church-musick, or the like, but especially of the Sacraments, than I have had in the reading particular large treatises written but of one of those subjects by others, though very learned men; and I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language, but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason; and that backed with the authority of the Scripture, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil. And though many others write well, yet in the next age they will be forgotten; but doubtless there is in every page of Mr. Hooker's book the picture of a divine soul, such pictures of Truth and Reason, and drawn in so sacred colours, that they shall never fade, but give an immortal memory to the author."1

Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I., says in her Relation at the end of Icon Basilike, "He bid me read Bishop Andrewes' Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bishop Laud's book against Fisher, which would ground me against Popery." Charles I. also recommended it to his children "as an excelscruples, and

lent means to satisfy private

1 Walton's Lives.

settle the public peace of the Church and Kingdom."

Hallam's estimate of Hooker is worth transcribing at length: "While the scenes of pride and persecution on the one hand, and and of sectarian insolence on the other, were deforming the bosom of the English Church, she found a defender of her institutions in one. who mingled in these vulgar controversies like a knight of romance amongst caitiff brawlers, with arms of finer temper and worthy to be proved in a nobler field. Richard Hooker, Master of the Temple, published the first four books of his Ecclesiastical Polity in 1594; the fifth, three years afterwards; and dying in 1600, left behind three which did not see the light till 1647. This eminent work may justly be reckoned to mark an era in our literature; for if passages of much good sense and even of a vigorous eloquence are scattered in several earlier writers in prose, yet none of these, except perhaps Latimer and Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia, can be said to have acquired enough reputation to be generally known even by name, much less are read in the present day; and it is indeed not a little remarkable that England, until near the end

of the sixteenth century, had given few proofs in literature of that intellectual power which was about to develope itself in Shakespeare and Bacon. We cannot indeed place Hooker (but whom dare we to place?) by the side of these master-spirits; yet he has abundant claims to be counted among the luminaries of English literature. He not only opened the mine, but explored the depths, of our native eloquence. So stately and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in sentences, SO grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vulgarity in his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that I know not whether any later writer has more admirably displayed the capacities of our language, or produced passages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity."

In answer to the narrow dogmatism of the Puritans, who despised all considerations except the mere letter of Scripture, the importance of which was extolled by the strictest theory of verbal inspiration, Hooker "took a far

1 Constit. Hist., i., p. 214.