SOURCE: Thornton, L. S. “Hooker's System of Laws” and “Church and State.” In Richard Hooker: A Study of His Theology, pp. 25-40; 89-100. London: The MacMillan Co., 1924.

[In the following excerpt, Thornton examines of Hooker's hierarchy of laws and explores his concept of the proper relationship between church and state.]

We have had a preliminary glimpse into Hooker's mentality and have seen something of the differences which divided him from his Puritan opponents. We are now in a position to examine more closely his system of thought as it unfolds itself in the opening books of the Ecclesiastical Polity. The argument of Books I-IV develops directly out of positions taken up in the three Sermons on the book of Habakkuk and the other documents of the Temple Controversy. Thus the third Sermon, on The Nature of Pride,¹ gives, in the course of a discussion as to the nature of Justice, an incidental sketch of those distinctions of law which form the main theme of Book I. Again the question discussed in the second Sermon, Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown,² and the controversy with Rome on the subject, raised the whole problem as to the right attitude to be adopted towards Roman Catholics and the type of religion which they practise. This subject is taken up again in Book IV and prepares the way for Book V much in the same way as the Preface leads up to Books I-III. Hooker himself claims³ a continuous and coherent argument for the whole series of eight books. The first four lay foundations upon which the later ones build. Continuity is particularly clear all through Books I-V.

Of the whole series Books I and V are the most important. Books II-IV provide corollaries and connecting links. Books VI-VIII, as they were planned by Hooker, simply worked out a detailed justification of positions already made clear in outline.

In this Chapter we are concerned mainly with Book I. Here the real foundations of Hooker's whole theological position are set out in a broad scheme. It takes the form of a system of laws and there was reason for this in the historical situation. It has been said that the men of this period were devoted to the idea of law.⁴ This was natural in an age which saw the break up of mediæval society and all the confusion and unrest, both religious and political, which that involved. New ideas of polity, civil and religious, had been fermenting all through the century. Savonarola, Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, the Anabaptists at Munster, Calvin at Geneva, even the Papacy at Trent, diverse as they were in other respects, were all exercised with the problem of an ideal polity. Hooker also had his theory of such a polity and of the laws by which it should be governed. But his method of handling the idea of law stands in marked contrast to that of the age to which he belonged. We have seen in the last chapter that for most people in the sixteenth century authority had become an arbitrary thing. This was characteristic alike of Romanists and Protestants. But for Hooker, as faith must be rational, the same must be true of obedience to law. As the Creed which we profess cannot be finally at variance with the rules of evidence, so the laws to which we submit our wills can themselves be brought to the test of reason and judged thereby. To do this means to trace the whole system of laws back to their source in God; and here Hooker definitely takes up his stand along lines occupied three centuries earlier by St. Thomas Aquinas. He is a Thomist in the first principle enunciated in Book I. St. Thomas had maintained that the Divine Will acts only in accordance with Reason and that all law is traceable to an ultimate Law which is identical with the Divine Will and therefore rational.⁵ Duns Scotus is credited with an opposite opinion, from which it would seem to follow that not only all law, but morality itself is the product of arbitrary Will.⁶ As that position was afterwards to become characteristic of Unitarian Deism, it is worth while to notice that before he passes to the laws which govern creation, Hooker pauses to write a few cautious words about the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. ‘The being of God is a kind of law to his working,’ for His perfection is the ground of all created perfection. That perfection in Him is inscrutable, yet we know it to contain ‘natural, necessary and internal operations.’ Revelation tells us enough as to the interior order of the Triune Life to satisfy reason and assure us that this Mystery is the rational ground of all the ordered system which we find in the universe and in the life of man.⁷

Here we must notice another feature which Hooker's theology shares with that of Aquinas and in which it seems to contrast with the theological writers of the Reformation. Catholic theology was, in its first beginning, naive and somewhat free in its use of language. Later on terminology became fixed as logical distinctions were observed and enunciated. Thought and language became more precise as the complexities of truth became more explicit. This process was carried to its furthest limits by the schoolmen under the influence of Aristotelian methods of definition. The process became over-refined and the Renaissance was in part a reaction to a more human ideal of knowledge. In this reaction against scholastic subtleties some of the reformers, notably Luther, shared. Their conception of religious experience demanded greater psychological immediacy in that form of knowledge which theology has to handle,—immediacy, that is to say, in the sense of an intuitive grasp of truth unincumbered by a large apparatus of logical distinctions and qualifications; for these introduce complexity, where simplicity and intimacy of vision is desired. But simplicity may be bought at the expense of truth and often the simplicity of truth can only be preserved by unfolding its complexities. The Puritan platform had simplicity; but it was not necessarily the simplicity of truth. Hooker believed it to be a shallow and false simplicity. He turned back from this white-hot theology of an age of transition to the cooler, less sensational moulds into which Christian thought had settled in earlier centuries. Thus Hooker's first book represents a definite swing back of the pendulum from the theological methods of the Reformation to those of the best mediæval period. In this he was no mere reactionary. He never merely copies his predecessors, but he does learn from them; and he was wise enough to see the defects of reformation theology and its methods without losing his balance in an opposite direction. These remarks will find further illustration in later chapters; we must now return to our immediate subject.

It is impossible, without transgressing the limits assigned to the present work, to give any adequate impression of the bold sweep and comprehensive vision displayed in Book I. The main scheme is undoubtedly modelled on St. Thomas' treatment of the same subject.⁸ In style the two writers are worlds apart, yet each has a dignity of his own. Apportionment of space and emphasis too is different; but in all the important features both of subject and method there is close agreement.

The Puritans were maintaining that for Christians there is only one law, the law of Scripture. This Hooker denied. Scripture has a supreme position of authority. But that position can only be understood rightly when we assign it to its proper place in a great hierarchy of laws, graded in rank and importance. There is first the Eternal Law as it exists in the Divine Mind, reflecting the hidden depths of God's own life. This is the rational ground of all the laws of the universe and these, gathered into one, may be called a second eternal law. Again we must subdivide. There is one law of natural objects, another of angels, a third of men. The last may be called the Law of Reason. It is the law imprinted upon the heart of every man, to which St. Paul appeals in Romans ii. 14-16. St. Thomas calls it the Natural Law, because it is to be regarded as part of the order of nature, that part by which the human race is governed. This law men can and ought to find out by themselves. It is to be distinguished therefore from that law which has come by special revelation, sometimes called Supernatural Law. To this revealed law Hooker, in his opening summary, gives the name of Divine Law; because it has been directly promulgated by God Himself either in the Old or in the New Testament.⁹ Yet in fact for both these writers the laws of nature and of grace are equally divine because both come from God, although the manner of their bestowal is different. Hooker also adopts the terms ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural,’ as his exposition proceeds.¹⁰ Once more, from these various types of law having a divine authentication we must distinguish Human Law framed by man himself. Under this heading come all the laws framed in human societies and amongst these we must distinguish civil from ecclesiastical law, national from international, private from public.

There is a further important distinction to be observed between Natural and Positive Law. It is first defined in the Sermon on Pride.¹¹ Law is said to be either ‘natural and immutable, or else subject unto change, otherwise called positive law.’ ‘There is no person whom, nor time wherein a law natural doth not bind.’ Possibly Hooker regarded this as the most important distinction of all. It was certainly one very damaging to the Puritan position. God has two methods of working in the world:—

(a) That manifold yet uniform process which we may call the natural order, and which in some sense includes also the life of man, is the expression of the Divine immanence. It is effected by the presence of God's Spirit everywhere in all the forms and ranks of creation and reaches its highest embodiment in the reason, conscience and capacities of man. This process with all its endless variety (a variety which includes at the highest point human free-will) has nevertheless an unchanging quality and this gives it the force of law. It is the law of life in the widest sense, a law which within its prescribed limits is immutable and to which all created life must conform. At its highest stage it governs the moral and spiritual life of man. It is the source of whatever truth and nobility there is in the natural moral life and religious aspirations of mankind; and it thus provides the soil into which the seed of a revelation may be cast. No other law can exceed it in authority or importance; for it provides the permanent foundation upon which all else in human life must be built.

(b) But upon this natural ground is wrought the history of the human race; which is so full of interesting developments, just because within the circle of natural law man has his own special sphere of freedom, where individual or national choice and character have room to unfold themselves in endless variety. Further, in the Christian reading of history there is also room for the Divine Will to operate freely for its own purposes, disclosing itself in a special revelation—a revelation which presents itself to man's conscience with authority and awakens his sense of obligation, yet which does not override the sphere of man's free choice, but rather meets it in its need and insufficiency. God works in the world through nature, but also through the kingdom of free-will; and it is here that there is room for Positive Law. This kind of law belongs peculiarly to the sphere of Will. Men are free to associate in a variety of social groupings; and in each of these the prevailing will is embodied in some form of positive law. These are human laws, but are ultimately based upon natural law and may actually give force and efficacy to some part of what is really laid upon us by natural obligation. Other parts of human law on the other hand may be simply matters of convenience, unimportant in themselves, yet the agreed means to some end which is more or less vital. So even these, though changeable by the common will, have behind them the authority of natural law, so long as they are in force. So far we have positive law in its natural human form. But the highest disclosure of law belongs to the history of revealed religion. Here a positive law is inaugurated which is the direct product of the Divine Will; it is Divine or Supernatural Law because it did not come by human discovery, not even by reflection upon the natural law written in the heart, nor through any natural achievement of man; it came with the authority of special acts of God, in which the Divine Will was disclosed first to Israel and then finally in Christ to His Church.

Yet though the laws contained in Scripture have such a unique position, they partake of the special characteristics of positive law. In part they are a reassertion of natural law, reinforcing its authority and rendering its contents clearer to our minds. In the New Testament natural law is raised to its highest level, met by grace and crowned with special ordinances which though positive are immutable because given by the Incarnate Son Himself. But Scripture also contains elements of law, which all Christians hold to be of transitory obligation, such as the judicial and ceremonial laws of the Old Testament.

Hooker was convinced that all these distinctions were of vital importance, if society was to be saved from the popular but mistaken notions then in vogue. Nowhere was there greater confusion in people's minds than over those questions in which they found a conflict of Divine and human authority. To those who held that the Bible was the only source of authority for human legislation, much of the existing law, both civil and ecclesiastical, seemed to be pure usurpation. To such minds there were only two kinds of law, Divine and human. The former was set out in Scripture and was sufficiently explicit to furnish guidance for all human activities. Human law then could only have the narrowest possible range. It must be confined to the simple task of drawing out what was contained in Scripture and codifying it in a convenient form for immediate application to life; ‘the root of which error,’ Hooker comments, ‘is a misconceit that all laws are positive which men establish and all laws which God delivereth immutable. No, it is not the author which maketh, but the matter whereon they are made, that causeth laws to be thus distinguished.’¹²

Thus far we have noticed that Hooker distinguishes within the whole Divine order for the world a number of different laws each working in its own proper sphere. Yet the series is mutually dependent because it is one whole in which the most diverse laws interact upon one another's spheres of operation. Indeed these spheres are not always mutually exclusive; they intersect and ‘mixed’ laws result. Moreover, the whole series trace back to two main groups of distinctions, (a) Natural and Supernatural, (b) Natural and Positive. But these again cross one another; for positive law may be either natural or supernatural or a mixture of both. In all cases the term ‘positive’ draws attention to the presence of free-will whether in nature or in super-nature. It is to Hooker's doctrine of free-will that we must now turn; for it is one of the main keys to his position.

If the plan of Book I is examined it will be found that the main part of the argument divides into two large sections: (i) cc. v-x which examine the characteristics of natural law and its subdivisions, and (ii) cc. xi-xv which deal with supernatural law as found in Holy Scripture. But in both of these sections one of the main purposes is to draw out the large part played by the free action of will. In cc. v-x human free-will is the theme; in cc. xi-xv on the other hand it is the free action of Divine grace in the process of revelation. Particularly noticeable is the emphasis laid upon human free-will.

We have seen that the Puritans and other sectaries were strongly disposed to depreciate all human authority and government.¹³ What they wanted was a theocracy where God manifestly reigned. But Hooker had a ready answer. God's authority will not be vindicated by obscuring or denying the facts of human nature. The Reformation had originated in a protest against salvation through works. The reformers made grace so prominent in their scheme of salvation that they practically ruled out free-will altogether. In effect what was originally meant to be a reassertion of the Pauline and Augustinian doctrine of grace carried with it consequences which neither St. Paul nor St. Augustine would have acknowledged. Foremost amongst these consequences were two; on the one hand a general depreciation of human traditions in the sphere of corporate religion which first attacked ecclesiastical law and custom and then passed on to criticize all existing human governments. On the other hand another consequence, cutting deeper still, was the tendency to depreciate reason itself. The revised Augustinianism of the sixteenth century here departed widely from St. Augustine. If Luther and Calvin drew from that source their teaching about predestination, grace and the corruption of human nature, it was from the same source that St. Thomas and through him Hooker drew the whole doctrine of natural law with its emphasis on the natural light of reason. The Middle Ages had modified Augustine and drawn out and made explicit all his latent teaching about the value of the natural order and the dignity of the natural light in man. Generally speaking, Protestants discarded this side of him altogether. It is true that Hooker was able, in defence of his teaching in Book I, to appeal to Calvin, as one who made a ‘difference between natural and supernatural truth and laws.’¹⁴ But the tendency of Calvin's teaching was to stress the corruption and depravity of the whole man to the exclusion of all other considerations.¹⁵ The natural effect of such teaching was to inculcate a profound distrust of human nature as a whole. Through the fall reason was blinded and free-will was lost. The light of reason was a dangerous guide. To trust it was a mark of pride and folly, when we had the clearer and better light of the Gospel. How far Hooker ultimately diverged from Calvinism on these matters may be seen in his Answer to a Christian Letter, which belongs to the last years of his life. Here he deliberately stated his own conclusions on predestination and kindred topics in the form of a revised draft of Whitgift's Lambeth Articles, in which all the characteristic tenets of Calvin were whittled away.¹⁶ Mediæval thought had drawn a sound distinction between the kingdoms of natural law and supernatural grace. In the reformers' teaching revelation and grace took a form which overwhelmed man's natural faculties and left very little room for them to function. Hooker restored the balance once more for English thought. This is perhaps his greatest contribution to theology and it is the leading motif of Book I. With these considerations in mind let us now glance at some features of the argument.

The main purpose of cc. v-x is to re-establish human law by disclosing the natural grounds of its authority. This is found to rest upon unalterable facts of human nature. Man is the crown of the natural order and that which gives him his unique position in that order is his possession of moral freedom. He possesses a natural light of reason whereby he can recognize the Good and a free-will whereby he can choose the Good and identify himself with it. In this indeed his capacities do but continue the whole tendency of nature herself, only carrying it a further stage. God is the supreme Good and ‘all things in the world are said in some sort to seek the highest and to covet more or less the participation of God Himself,’ because all things in some sort tend towards the perfection of their innate potentialities. Man fulfils this law in a higher way. His end is ‘the greatest conformity with God,’ and to this he must proceed by the exercise of his rational and moral faculties. His proper activity is twofold, knowledge of truth and exercise of virtue; and both of these involve a process of growth and education. Although there is a sense in which we are born with a full moral endowment, yet there are ‘steps and degrees’ by which the soul of man ‘riseth unto perfection of knowledge.’ There are no short cuts. All must make the same laborious ascent. No infallible illumination can dispossess reason from her task of pursuing truth. It is a painful task, often accompanied by mistakes and this makes the will disinclined for the effort required. For will waits upon reason to indicate the path it must pursue. It seeks instinctively for the Good, but only reason can show it where the true Good lies; how it is to be recognized and attained. The Good has its own marks of authentication; it has an inherent beauty of its own which convinces the heart, when it is once seen. God has left traces of Himself in our nature which make it possible for us to find out for ourselves the laws by which He would have us walk. Thus when men make laws ‘they seem the makers of those laws which indeed are His, and they but only the finders of them out.’¹⁷ Yet men are left free to choose and make, because freedom is the highest expression of nature's law; and when freedom is misused nature herself protests. Natural rewards and punishments follow upon men's actions; conscience bears witness to the justice of this and so refers us back to God, the Author of nature's system. Thus men are permitted to work out their own destiny; they combine by natural inclination and consent to make laws and to guard them with sanctions whose justification runs back into the whole system of nature.

We notice in all this an interaction between freedom and necessity. Men choose their own laws; but whatever they choose must in fact be grounded upon natural law. Yet this very freedom to choose makes nature too narrow a bed for man. He craves a higher happiness than he can make for himself on earth, choose how he may. Moreover, he needs salvation from sin and no natural law can furnish him with that. The whole analysis of man's position in the system of nature undertaken in this part of Hooker's argument shows that man's life embraces various stages and levels of existence, each of which points on to the next. At each stage happiness is the end sought; the life of sense cannot satisfy and points us on to the intellectual and moral life. But this too is inadequate and points upward to a heavenly beatitude beyond the realm of nature. We cannot rightly fulfil nature's own law of the moral life; how much less attain those levels which lie beyond it. Here, where nature fails, God meets us by His own free act and unfolds in Scripture a supernatural way; a second stage in man's upward ascent, not contrary to the first, but intended to crown and complete it (cc. xi-xv). The continuity of the two is shown in the fact that Scripture contains many elements of natural truth. In part this was rendered necessary by the ravages of sin, which have blinded men's vision even of those things which they ought to know by the light of reason. Thus Scripture is in part a republication of natural law. But still more does it contain things of such high excellency that they never could have entered into the heart of man, gifts and promises revealed by God's free grace.

Thus it is that the condescending Will of God has bestowed on us a positive law which is not human but Divine. Yet though we speak of the ‘Old Law’ and the ‘New Law’ of Christ, we must not read this word too narrowly. Scripture is not a code of mandatory rules all standing on one level. As the laws of reason are ‘mandatory, permissive and admonitory’ and are really laws of life of infinite variety and many degrees of obligation, so too must revelation be understood. Much of the Puritan error was due to a dull literalism of interpretation which robbed Scripture of all human interest. It sets before us in many parts and fashions a way of supernatural life. It shows how God completed the work of natural education in a higher school, which first trained a nation and then inaugurated a New Life on earth. Revelation was given in stages and degrees analogous to, but higher than, the stages and degrees of man's natural progress. Thus the Scriptures are an organic unity; and the key to their interpretation is not to be found in isolated texts or sections but in the purpose which gives unity to the whole. The Old Testament has significance for Christians only as it prepares for and leads up to the New; the revelation in Christ must be understood in the light of truths and tendencies manifested in the Old Covenant. The Scriptures again must be interpreted by the light of reason; for this is just what we do when we trace out the unity of the whole process of revelation by attending to its end and purpose.¹⁸ Thus the two orders of nature and super-nature are found to corroborate one another and to be mutually dependent. These two test one another and any human tradition which will stand the test of neither is self-condemned; for it is a departure from the greatest tradition in human history, that in which these many strands are found woven together.

It is by these principles alone that Scripture can be safely used as the unique authority which it is. The point is further developed in Book II; but enough has been said on this subject to introduce us to a further stage in the argument which we are considering.

.....

The last three books of the Ecclesiastical Polity cannot stand on the same footing with the first five books. They were left unrevised and almost the whole of the original Book VI has been lost. Something, however, must be said about their teaching in the present chapter.

The greater part of Book VI, as we now have it, consists of a fragmentary treatise on Penance which should strictly be ranked amongst the opuscula. It deals with the important subjects of penitence and the use of auricular confession. Limitations of space forbid any adequate discussion of it here. The treatise (unlike the Polity) is mainly directed against contemporary Roman theology; the positions specially attacked in it are (a) the doctrine that there can be no forgiveness except through auricular confession, or at least (in extreme cases) the desire of absolution; with the consequence that confession should be held compulsory for all; (b) the doctrine that grace is transmitted sacramentally through the words of absolution. Hooker makes confession voluntary and absolution simply declaratory of forgiveness already bestowed.

The lost Book VI contained Hooker's detailed criticism of the Puritan proposals for a reformed ministry of the Presbyterian type. An idea of the subjects discussed can be obtained by glancing through those parts of Whitgift's Works which deal with this subject.¹⁹ Book VII is devoted to a defence of the Catholic ministry, episcopacy and apostolic succession, subjects already briefly discussed in the closing chapters of Book V; whilst Book VIII gives us Hooker's theory of the right relations between Church and State. On the subject of the ministry, which was the burning subject of his day, Hooker took up unmistakably Catholic ground. Writing of episcopacy, he says, ‘which to have been ordained of God, I am for my own part even as resolutely persuaded as that any other kind of government in the world whatsoever is of God.’²⁰ It is true that at the end of a long historical argument justifying belief in the necessity of episcopacy, he states the possibility of two exceptions to this rule: (1) the case of men directly raised up by God, (2) the case of a Church which ‘must needs have some ordained and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain.’ It is by no means clear whether these exceptions are intended to provide a loophole for the reformed ministries. The language used is perhaps deliberately left vague; and in the case of (1) it is declared that in such cases God ‘doth ratify their calling by manifold signs and tokens from heaven.’ It is difficult to see how it could be said that such a condition was fulfilled in the case of the Reformers.²¹

If we compare Hooker's defence of episcopacy with recent discussions of the subject we find little real change in the respective positions occupied by the opposing parties. To give an illustration, Hooker was fully aware that the words ἑπίsκοποs and πρεsβύτεροs are interchangeable in the New Testament and his argument from the use of such words to the actual history of the ministry loses none of its effectiveness to-day.²² He was convinced that the three orders of Catholic hierarchy derived through episcopal succession were the only form of ministry which could claim unbroken continuity and apostolic authority. In the course of his argument he makes it clear that this succession is necessary because the ministry receives its authority from above, from Christ through the Apostles;²³ whereas the Puritan form of ministry only provided a commission from the congregation. In this respect the teaching of Books V and VII must have an important bearing upon our estimate of the positions taken up in Book VIII. Modern Erastians who regard the English clergy as officials appointed by the State to maintain a national establishment have no right to claim Hooker as their spiritual father. We may or may not approve his theory of the relation between Church and State; his doctrine of the ministry is the ancient Catholic doctrine which was later to be revived by the Tractarians and upheld by their successors. It would be just as unfair to equate the purely utilitarian conception of the ministry current in some Protestant circles to-day with the position taken up by Hooker's opponents. For they at least believed they were advocating not merely a convenient piece of organization but a divinely-appointed system commanded in the Scriptures. Thus both Hooker and his opponents believed in a divinely-appointed ministry. They differed as to its actual historical embodiment and as to the mode of its authorization. Another point on which all religious parties were theoretically agreed in this controversy as against the modern Erastian was that the Church has the right to possess her own laws and discipline; differences arose over the questions as to how that right should be guarded and secured. This is the subject of Book VIII. Romanists and Puritans alike favoured a doctrine of separation between Church and State, while Hooker on the other hand clung to what was in essence the old theory of mediæval Christendom. According to this theory Church and State are one society under two aspects. For centuries men had not had to contemplate any form of citizenship which was not in theory Christian. Membership in the Church was synonymous with membership in society. The two things were one; and only two in so far as the Christian life involves a double citizenship, a heavenly and an earthly. In this one society there were two forms of authority corresponding to its two aspects, civil and religious. These two authorities found their highest embodiment for the mediæval Christian in the Emperor and the Pope. But what was the relation of these two to one another? On that point a long controversy had raged, each side claiming the ultimate Divine authority on earth. On the Papal side were St. Thomas Aquinas and the theologians generally; on the imperial side great Catholic names like those of Dante and Marsilius of Padua. The Papal claim to supremacy was answered by a like claim on the part of the emperors. The Papacy won the battle and its sovereignty became more absolute, while that of the Empire weakened and decayed; yet not without handing on the contest to its vigorous successors, the national sovereignties which gradually emerged out of mediæval society. At the Reformation Papacy and Empire were for the time in alliance against this new power and thus the old controversy took a new form. The successors of Dante and the Ghibellines now supported national sovereignty against Papal aggression. Absolutism was the fashion of the age; consequently those who rebelled against Papal oppression and the mediæval abuses in religion which were associated with the Papacy were compelled, wherever it was possible, to fall back upon the only other form of effective absolutism in existence, namely national sovereignty. The conditions in England were conspicuously favourable to such a course and this explains the policy of the Tudor sovereigns and their success in claiming the title of ‘supreme Head’ or ‘supreme Governor’ of the Church of England. They simply pressed the old imperial policy of the Middle Ages to its logical conclusions under the new condition of nationalism. A large part of Book VIII is devoted to the explanation and defence of the title ‘supreme Head’ (although the phrase had actually been dropped by Queen Elizabeth). It is to be noticed that Hooker, like Whitgift before him, is quite unconscious of any radical change in the principles of Church government having taken place in this country. Elizabeth in his view fills the same rôle as Constantine the Great and Charlemagne had done in the Primitive Church and in the Middle Ages. But others viewed the situation very differently. It was becoming increasingly difficult to think in terms of mediæval society, for the old order had already past away. European society was no longer a theocracy. Although in theory every Englishman was still a Churchman, that ideal was destined to become less and less true to fact. Christendom had fallen to pieces; yet the Elizabethan theory of Church and State was an attempt to preserve the substance of it in a national form. What really happened was that a bare semblance of the old theocracy was maintained under the garb of national alliances between Church and State; whilst in fact the whole fabric of civilization became increasingly secularized.

If Hooker's theory of Church and State was to prove sound it could only be on two suppositions—(a) the legitimacy of National Churches, and (b) the practical identity of the Church of England with the English people. If nationality was a legitimate development then kings had as much right as emperors to regulate the affairs of the Church within their borders. Mediæval religion baptized all natural relationships, including those of government and law. According to Dante the emperor was the source of all law for Christendom, because all law, whether civil or ecclesiastical, ultimately rests on a natural foundation.²⁴ Translate this theory into terms of a single nationality and you have Hooker's doctrine of the sovereign's relation to the Church of England as ‘supreme Head’ or ‘Governor’. This does not, however, mean either that the sovereign usurps the proper functions of the clergy or that they derive their authority from him. In their priestly and prophetic functions he has no part. But he rules as the anointed representative of Christ's Kingship and therefore in the government of the Church the clergy hold their powers in part at least from him as well as from Our Lord Himself. Moreover in the Early Church the faithful laity had some voice in the choice of their clergy. In the early Middle Ages it was customary to obtain the emperor's consent to the consecration of a newly-elected Pope.²⁵ Thus, too, in later times sovereigns came to act on behalf of the consensus fidelium in bringing its influence to bear on the hierarchy. Hooker was faced by the Puritan demand for revival of popular election. He replied that the sovereign as the highest natural authority, himself a son of the Church, might representatively fulfil this function for the whole body as organ of the consensus fidelium.²⁶

Now all this presupposed not only that the sovereign should act with personal responsibility as a faithful son of the Church and steward of theocracy; but also that the people whom he ruled as king should be united-in loyal obedience to the National Church. In the course of the seventeenth century both these conditions from various causes ceased to exist. The theocratic vision faded away like a dream and the alliance of Church and State which to Hooker seemed so reasonable has become to us an almost unmeaning form, an unreal and increasingly unworkable system which shackles the true life of the Church by tying her to the chariot wheels of a secularized State. Hooker could not be expected to foresee all the evils which would result from royal supremacy over the Church; but we may well wonder that he was so easily contented with the Elizabethan compromise. Papal aggression had been banished; but that very fact meant a very serious shifting of the balance of power. Henceforth there was nothing to temper or control the absolutism of the State. It can only be said that the alternative solutions of this problem were at the time no better than the one Hooker favoured. Men had had long and bitter experience of Papal tyranny; the tyranny of the kirk and its elders was not more inviting; and beyond these lay anabaptist anarchy.

Within the seeming harmony of Church and State, to which the Elizabethan bishops and theologians gave their allegiance, there lay the certainty of future trouble. In making the sovereign supreme they had not really reduced the two authorities to one. The case of the Lutheran states in Northern Europe was no real parallel. For there Luther's doctrine of an Invisible Church had wholly triumphed; with the logical consequence that outward Church order was handed over to the godly prince.²⁷ There was no Lutheran claim to apostolic succession through the hierarchy like that which Hooker sets up in Book VII. Now here we come upon another point in which different parts of Hooker's scheme were never properly related to one another. For after all it can hardly be denied that the scheme includes three distinct theories of the Church which cannot be made to harmonize.

1. As a child of the Reformation he accepted the Protestant doctrine of an Invisible Church of the Elect (Book III).

2. As a theologian he accepted the Catholic doctrine of Church government by Bishops possessing apostolic authority through a visible succession (Book VII).

3. As a political philosopher he believed in the mediæval Church-State, and as a practical statesman he accepted it in its modified national form subject to royal supremacy (Book VIII).

No wonder that men of different parties and of diverse opinions are accustomed to appeal to Hooker in support of their views! It is worth while to compare with this strange complex the relative positions occupied by other groups in Hooker's day. It may be said generally that Lutherans combined (1) and (3), the Invisible Church and the national Church-State under royal supremacy. The Reformed programme emanating from republican Switzerland combined (1) with a republican form of (3); but they also shared with Romanists the conviction that the spiritual authority should dominate the civil. Rome became the trustee of the clerical side of the mediæval tradition, thus combining (2) with that form of (3) which lay nearest to it. It is well to turn from these somewhat bewildering distinctions to consider the subject from another angle. It has to be borne in mind that the later books of the Ecclesiastical Polity are deliberately built upon a foundation laid in the earlier books. All the problems discussed in these later books are already implicit in Hooker's system of laws. The system set out theoretically in Book I may be made to appear a harmonious whole. Transferred to the world of affairs and history it discloses divergent principles which actually give rise to endless conflicts and oppositions. Granted that civil and ecclesiastical laws are traceable to one Divine source, what is to happen when they conflict or when the human authorities from which they issue are at variance and pull different ways? Romanists and Puritans answered that the two authorities must be disentangled and separate spheres of action marked out for them. On the Roman side this view led to a doctrine of two distinct societies, each complete and perfect in its own order and organization. Dualism was frankly recognized. Hooker, on the other hand clung to the Thomist doctrine of a single whole containing within itself a plurality of parts organically connected, diverging in function, yet not incompatible with one another. That is the conception embodied in Aquinas' system of laws and reproduced by Hooker in Book I. St. Thomas saw his system actually embodied in the Christendom of his day with its civic order and culture crowned and blessed by supernatural religion; an unbroken whole as yet, although the whole of its life was grouped in two stages, natural and supernatural, and acknowledged politically two sources of authority in the civil power and the hierarchy. Behind this double political authority lay a double authority in the world of thought—Reason and Revelation. Here also were two principles running back to one source; distinct and different, yet mutually compatible, authorities which might be held together within one system of thought. Now Hooker, as we have already seen, gave his whole-hearted allegiance to these general principles in his First Book. His theory of Church and State is an attempt to apply these same principles to the world of politics under the changed conditions introduced by the Reformation. There is this further modification that with Dante as against Aquinas he concludes that since the natural order is prior to and more fundamental than the supernatural, natural human authority must have priority and even supremacy over the hierarchy in the external sphere of government. This is not explicitly stated in Book VIII, but is implicit in his treatment of the subject. He would no doubt be influenced in favour of this view by his belief in an Invisible Church; for that belief, wherever it is held, has a natural tendency to weaken the supernatural dignity of ecclesiastical institutions. But he also believed in the Divine right of episcopal authority and had no desire to weaken it.

When St. Thomas wrote his Summa, the two authorities were at war with one another. He must, then, have been fully aware of the tension of diverging principles in the political sphere; just as in the theoretical sphere he was deeply conscious of a tension between reason and revealed religion.²⁸ Yet he boldly placed both these antinomies within the unity of his system of laws. Ultimately the double strain, theoretical and practical, proved too much for the mediæval world. In a unified world-order like that of the Middle Ages the chief danger must be that of internal conflict and disruption. But when disruption has taken place and amid the surrounding chaos men attempt reconstruction on some more restricted field, the most urgent task may well seem to be that of holding a single fort against attacks coming from without. Internal unity is the first consideration. So in Tudor England the tension of Church and State must be changed to a close alliance. National liberty was preserved at the expense of a compromise and the Church had the worst of the compromise; for in attaining local liberties she lost a large measure of her spiritual liberty. Yet it would be most unfair to conclude that Hooker wrote merely to defend a worldly alliance with the ruling power. He wrote often enough like one defending a sorely-besieged position. He seems to have felt that the Church of England was in real danger of succumbing to her many enemies.²⁹ More than once he set himself to justify her threatened endowments and to warn men against the sin of sacrilege.³⁰ Yet he defended her temporalities not for their own sake, but because he believed in her spiritual vocation and above all in the stewardship of truth committed to her. If in other ways she was crippled by the Elizabethan settlement, she still retained the gift of intellectual freedom. In that respect at least there had been no conscious compromise. Of the two great mediæval conflicts she did not shrink from this one. It is her peculiar conflict, we might almost dare to say. She does not shrink from it to-day; and herein lies a promise that in other spheres as well, she will yet recover larger spiritual liberty, when her day comes.

Notes

1. Works, iii, 597ff.

2. Ibid., pp. 483ff.

3. Preface, §vii.

4. Figgis, Divine Right of Kings, second edition, p. 245.

5. Summa Theologica, I, QQ. xix. 3, xxi. 4, xxv. 5; II. i. Q. xciii. 4.

6. See Max Müller's ed. of Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, vol. i, Introductory essay on history of philosophy, p. 105 and note; Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, ii, 130-4; Dorner, History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (E.T.), Div. II, i, 339-53; Harnack, History of Dogma, vi. (E.T.)., 178-81; T. B. Strong, Christian Ethics, pp. 282-6, 299-309. In spite of Luther's opposition to free will in man as taught by Duns Scotus, he was strongly influenced by the Scotist conception of arbitrary Will in God (e.g. Bondage of the Will, Part III, Sections 28 and 39). Dr. Strong has suggested a similar connection between Calvin and Ockham (Christian Ethics, p. 307 and note).

7. Works, i, 200-1.

8. Summa Theologica, II. i, QQ. 90-108.

9. See Summa, II. i, Q. xcv. 3, cp. xciii. 3; and Hooker, i, 382 and note.

10. Cp. also ‘Answer to a Christian Letter’, Works ii, Appendix I, pp. 542ff.

11. Works, iii, 618-19.

12. Sermon III Works, iii, 619.

13. Cp. Preface, i, 173-94.

14. Works, ii, 543. In the ‘Answer to a Christian Letter’. This letter was written in criticism of Hooker's work. See Calvin, Inst., i, 3.

15. Instit., ii, 3ff.

16. Works, ii, 537-97, especially the last paragraph and Editor's note, pp. 596-7.

17. Ibid., i, 228.

18. Cp. Book II. viii. 5, Ibid., i, 333.

19. Cp. also the notes of Cranmer and Sandys, Works, iii, 108-39 and Keble's Preface, ibid., vol. i, pp. xxxiv-xxxix.

20. Ibid., iii, 143.

21. Ibid., iii. 230-2.

22. Ibid., iii, 146-8 and 151; cp. also p. 162, note 2, quoting Saravia's Tract, p. 67.

23. Cp. Book V, chap. 77.

24. De Monarchiâ: especially Bk. III, concluding chapters. Cp. Wicksteed. Dante and Aquinas, c. viii.

25. Works, iii, 423.

26. Cp. Wakeman, History of the Church of England, ed. 1914, Note D, The Royal Supremacy.

27. Cp. Figgis, Gerson to Grotius, chap. iii.

28. Cp. P. H. Wicksteed, Reactions of Dogma and Philosophy, Lecture III.

29. See the Preface to Book V.

30. Book V, cc. lxxix-lxxx; Book VII, cc. xxi-xxiv.

Bibliography

(i) Editions of Hooker's Works

The works of that learned and judicious divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, with an account of his life and death by Isaac Walton. Arranged by John Keble. Seventh Edition revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget. 1888.

Contents.—

Vol. I.—Preface by Keble, Life of Hooker by Walton (with insertions from Strype) Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Preface and Books I-IV.

Vol. II.—Book V with Dedicatory Letter to Archbishop Whitgift.

Appendix I.—Fragments of an Answer to the Letter of Certain English Protestants.

Appendix II.—Concerning the New Church Discipline. An excellent letter written by Mr. G. Cranmer to Mr. R. H.

Vol. III.—Books VI-VIII. Book VI is followed by an appendix containing Notes by George Cranmer and Edwin Sandys on Book VI as sent to them in manuscript.

Book VIII is followed by four appendices containing other fragments and notes.

Two Sermons on the book of Habakkuk (1) on Faith, (2) on Justification.

A Supplication made to the Council by Master Walter Travers.

Mr. Hooker's Answer to the Supplication that Mr. Travers made to the Council.

Sermon III on The Nature of Pride.

Sermon IV. A Remedy against Sorrow and Fear.

Sermons V and VI on St. Jude's Epistle. Authorship unknown.

A Sermon found among the papers of Bishop Andrews. Authorship unknown.

Hooker. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I. Edited by R. W. Church. Oxford. 1896.

An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. By Francis Paget, Oxford, 1899.

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The Fifth Book. By Richard Hooker. Edited by Ronald Bayne. London. 1902.

This edition contains the full text of A Christian Letter of Certain English Protestants with Hooker's marginal comments upon it (Appendix No. II) followed by the fragmentary answer printed in Works, Vol. II (See above).

(ii) Articles on Hooker will be found in the following:—

Chambers' Biographical Dictionary.

Dictionary of General Biography (Cates).

Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. IX, 1908. Sir Sidney Lee.

Dictionary of English Church History. 1912. D. Macleane.

(iii) The following will also be found useful:—

Dorner. History of the Doctrine of Person of Christ. Division II, Vol. II (English Translation by Simon).

Frere, W. H. History of the Church of England (1558-1625). Edited by Stephens and Hunt.

Figgis, J. N. From Gerson to Grotius.

———. The Divine Right of Kings (Second Edition. 1913.)

Maurice, F. D. A History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. Vol. IV (Modern period); especially Chapter V.

Robertson, A. Regnum Dei (Bampton Lectures); especially Lecture VII.

Stone, Darwell. A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Vol. II; Chapters IX and XII.

Strong, T. B. Christian Ethics. (Bampton Lectures). Lectures VI and VII and note to Lecture VI.

Wicksteed, P. H. The Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy, illustrated from the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas (Hibbert Lectures), especially Lectures III and VII.