Literary Criticism (1400-1800)

Hooker, Richard | Bryan D. Spinks (essay date 1999)

Bryan D. Spinks (essay date 1999)

SOURCE: Spinks, Bryan D. “Sacraments and Hooker's Ordo Salutis: Instruments of Participation in God.” In Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker, pp. 109-33. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999.

[In the following essay, Spinks explores Hooker's understanding of the purpose of the sacraments]

Hooker explained the place and purpose of sacraments thus:

Christ and his holie Spirit with all theire blessed effectes, though enteringe into the soule of man wee are not able to apprehend or expresse how, doe notwithstandinge give notize of the tymes when they use to make there accesse, because it pleaseth almightie God to communicate by sensible meanes those blessinges which are incomprehensible. Seinge therefore that grace is a consequent of Sacramentes, a thinge which accompanieth them as theire...

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