Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Preface and Book I)

Summary

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is Richard Hooker's defence of the order of the Church of England as settled under Elizabeth I, written against the Puritan party that wished to replace government by bishops with the presbyterian discipline practised at Geneva. The library text contains the Preface and Book I, the opening portion of a work in eight books; the Everyman printing it comes from also includes editorial footnotes, a few of which remain in this OCR text, while that printing's modern introduction is omitted. The Preface is addressed to those who seek, as they term it, the reformation of the laws and orders ecclesiastical. Hooker begins by explaining that he writes so that posterity may know the established church was not abandoned in silence. He then traces the origin of the disciplinarian programme to John Calvin's work at Geneva, praising Calvin as incomparably the wisest man the French church ever had, while arguing that the Genevan arrangement grew out of local circumstances, a popular city government and a need for order, rather than from a pattern commanded in Scripture. He examines how the cause has won followers in England, asks its leaders whether they will submit to any judgment higher than their own, warns of the disorders that he thinks would follow if the discipline were imposed, and closes by urging his opponents to examine their opinions point by point and to deem it not impossible that they might err. Book I, Concerning Laws and Their Several Kinds in General, steps back from the controversy to ask what law is. Hooker defines law broadly as any rule or canon by which actions are framed toward their end. He distinguishes the law eternal that God has set for himself, the law of nature obeyed by natural agents, the celestial law of the angels, the law of reason that binds human beings as rational creatures, the human laws by which political societies are ordered, the law of nations, and the divine law revealed in Scripture. Human beings discover the law of reason by the light of understanding, and the general and perpetual consent of mankind is a sign of what nature teaches. Political societies arise because people cannot live well alone, and their laws have binding force through the consent of the governed, given directly or through representatives. Scripture supplies supernatural laws that reason could not find and repeats many natural ones, but it does not settle every detail of church government, some of whose positive laws may change with circumstances. The concluding chapter states the purpose of the whole: to show that good laws come from the Father of lights and to give readers a method for judging any disputed ordinance by its first causes. Books I to IV first appeared together in 1593 (title page often dated 1594), Book V in 1597, and the remaining books after Hooker's death.

Top Lessons

• Law as a ladder from God to the city

  Hooker does not begin with the disputed question of bishops but with the nature of law itself, tracing a single idea of ordered action from God's own being through the stars, the angels, human reason and political societies. By setting the controversy inside this larger order, he invites his readers to judge it calmly by first principles rather than by party feeling.

• Reason and Scripture as partners

  Hooker holds that God teaches both by the light of reason and by revelation. Scripture contains truths reason could never reach and is sufficient for salvation, but it also presupposes and restates natural law, and it does not prescribe every detail of church order. The Christian must therefore use reason, consent and tradition in matters Scripture leaves open.

• Consent and the authority of human laws

  In Book I, chapter X, Hooker argues that political societies arise by agreement and that human laws bind because public approbation has made them, whether the people consent directly or through those authorized to act for them. Later writers, John Locke among them, quoted this chapter with approval.

• Charity in controversy

  The Preface is a model of earnest disagreement: Hooker praises Calvin, calls his opponents brethren, admits that their zeal first made him think they must have strong reasons, and asks them to weigh what is spoken rather than who speaks. Students can study how he joins firm conviction to courtesy.

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Medical Lens

A work of theology and legal philosophy without medical subject matter. Book I's account of how the soul begins without knowledge and grows by degrees through the senses and reason belongs to the history of psychology in a broad sense, but the text contains no discussion of disease or healing.