Richard Hooker – Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
I here set out Hooker’s understanding of the supremacy of God in the giving of laws which govern creation. In summary, Almighty God is the first cause of all things and is both a law unto himself and the source of all laws; the laws which govern creation cannot be broken by inanimate creatures; human beings are unique in creation, being created with the faculty of reason; human reason is affected by prejudice, the affections, desires, stubbornness and rationalised experience of humans such that reason can be used to justify evil; special knowledge is necessary for the will to bend toward it; human reason err and so invent laws contrary to the law of God; God has made special revelation in scripture for humans to employ reason to distinguish good and evil; hersey prevails where counterfeit reason is employed.
BOOK I. Ch. i. 1, 2.I. – Here Hooker sets out the difficulty of governance, viz resolving disputes concerning laws. Deep rooted prejudice and unwillingness to listen create disputes.
Whereas on the other side, if we maintain things that are established, we have not only to strive with a number of heavy prejudices deeply rooted in the hearts of men, who think that herein we serve the time, and speak in favour of the present state, because thereby we either hold or seek preferment; but also to bear such exceptions as minds so averted beforehand usually take against that which they are loth should be poured into them.
BOOK I. Ch. i. 3. In the case of disobedience to ecclesiastical law, Hooker establishes the need to discover first principles.
when they who withdraw their obedience pretend that the laws which they should obey are corrupt and vicious; for better examination of their quality, it behoveth the very foundation and root, the highest wellspring and fountain of them to be discovered.
And, when traditions are challenged, we are to set aside partial affections and have eyes and hearts to embrace what’s acceptable to Almighty God.
The Laws of the Church, whereby for so many ages together we have been guided in the exercise of Christian religion and the service of the true God, our rites, customs, and orders of ecclesiastical government, are called in question: we are accused as men that will not have Christ Jesus to rule over them, but have wilfully cast his statutes behind their backs, hating to be reformed and made subject unto the sceptre of his discipline. Behold therefore we offer the laws whereby we live unto the general trial and judgement of the whole world; heartily beseeching Almighty God, whom we desire to serve according to his own will, that both we and others (all kind of partial affection being clean laid aside) may have eyes to see and hearts to embrace the things that in his sight are most acceptable.
God, being the first cause of all things, is both a law to himself and the source of all law.
God therefore is a law both to himself, and to all other things besides. To himself he is a law in all those things, whereof our Saviour speaketh, saying, “My Father worketh as yet, so I.” God worketh nothing without cause. All those things which are done by him have some end for which they are done; and the end for which they are done is a reason of his will to do them.
Laws are imposed on all things God has made, otherwise, those things would also be infinite.
Howbeit undoubtedly a proper and certain reason there is of every finite work of God, inasmuch as there is a law imposed upon it; which if there were not, it should be infinite, even as the worker himself is.
God being the first source of all things, decrees that all things that come to pass, only do so because he wills them to do so.
That law eternal which God himself hath made to himself, and thereby worketh all things whereof he is the cause and author; that law in the admirable frame whereof shineth with most perfect beauty the countenance of that wisdom which hath testified concerning herself….This law therefore we may name eternal, being “that order which God before all ages hath set down with himself, for himself to do all things by.”
Hooker concludes that ‘natural law’ by which reasonable creatures are bound is only known by special revelation from God, Divine law.
That part of it which ordereth natural agents we call usually Nature’s law; that which Angels do clearly behold and without any swerving observe is a law Celestial and heavenly; the law of Reason, that which bindeth creatures reasonable in this world, and with which by reason they may most plainly perceive themselves bound; that which bindeth them, and is not known but by special revelation from God, Divine law; Human law, that which out of the law either of reason or of God men probably gathering to be expedient, they make it a law.
Hooker distinguishes between three things in creation, which act according to the law of God, first, those without comprehension of their actions obey the law second, the fouls, fish and beast, which have some cognition of their actions; and, third, humans who are reasonable beings, capable of comprehension of the law of God and so are able to make choices, bending the will to knowledge.
If fire consume the stubble, it chooseth not so to do, because the nature thereof is such that it can do no other. To choose is to will one thing before another. And to will is to bend our souls to the having or doing of that which they see to be good. Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason. So that two principal fountains there are of human action, Knowledge and Will; which Will, in things tending towards any end, is termed choice. Concerning Knowledge, “Behold, (saith Moses,) I have set before you this day good and evil, life and death.” Concerning Will, he addeth immediately, “Choose life;” that is to say, the things that tend unto life, them choose.
Hooker distinguishes between appetite and will.
The object of Appetite is whatsoever sensible good may be wished for; the object of Will is that good which Reason doth lead us to seek. Affections, as joy, and grief, and fear, and anger, with such like, being as it were the sundry fashions and forms of Appetite, can neither rise at the conceit of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose but rise at the sight of some things. Wherefore it is not altogether in our power, whether we will be stirred with affections or no: whereas actions which issue from the disposition of the Will are in the power thereof to be performed or stayed.
The strength of Human appetite can cause human reason to teach that the object for which that appetite exists is good. Even then the will can choose to take or leave.
Sensible Goodness is most apparent, near, and present; which causeth the Appetite to be therewith strongly provoked. Now pursuit and refusal in the Will do follow, the one the affirmation the other the negation of goodness, which the understanding apprehendeth, grounding itself upon sense, unless some higher Reason do chance to teach the contrary.
BOOK I. Ch. vii. 7. Reason therefore may rightly discern the thing which is good, and yet the Will of man not incline itself thereunto, as oft as the prejudice of sensible experience doth oversway.
Nor let any man think that this doth make any thing for the just excuse of iniquity. For there was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not preferred before a greater, and that wilfully; which cannot be done without the singular disgrace of Nature, and the utter disturbance of that divine order, whereby the preeminence of chiefest acceptation is by the best things worthily challenged. There is not that good which concerneth us, but it hath evidence enough for itself, if Reason were diligent to search it out. Through neglect thereof, abused we are with the show of that which is not; sometimes the subtilty of Satan inveigling us as it did Eve, sometimes the hastiness of our Wills preventing the more considerate advice of sound Reason.
If Reason err, we fall into evil, and are so far forth deprived of the general perfection we seek. Seeing therefore that for the framing of men’s actions the knowledge of good from evil is necessary, it only resteth that we search how this may be had.
As reason may err, the revelation of God’s law in scripture is necessary for men’s direction.
BOOK I. Ch. x. 15. xi. 1. All I will presently say is this: whether it be for the finding out of any thing whereunto divine law bindeth us, but yet in such sort that men are not thereof on all sides resolved; or for the setting down of some uniform judgement to stand touching such things, as being neither way matters of necessity, are notwithstanding offensive and scandalous when there is open opposition about them; be it for the ending of strifes, touching matters of Christian belief, wherein the one part may seem to have probable cause of dissenting from the other; or be it concerning matters of polity, order, and regiment in the church; I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with so great instancy gave as concerning peace and unity, if we did all concur in desire to have the use of ancient councils again renewed, rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and that of all other the worst, which is by sword.
It followeth therefore that a new foundation being laid, we now adjoin hereunto that which cometh in the next place to be spoken of; namely, wherefore God hath himself by Scripture made known such laws as serve for direction of men.
Wherefore God hath by Scripture further made known such supernatural laws, as do serve for men’s direction.
Hooker then turns to the gospel of Christ and the gift of faith by God’s supernatural grace.
Behold how the wisdom of God hath revealed a way mystical and supernatural, a way directing unto the same end of life by a course which groundeth itself upon the guiltiness of sin, and through sin desert of condemnation and death. For in this way the first thing is the tender compassion of God respecting us drowned and swallowed up in misery; the next is redemption out of the same by the precious death and merit of a mighty Saviour, which hath witnessed of himself, saying “I am the way,” the way that leadeth us from misery into bliss. This supernatural way had God in himself prepared before all worlds.
…concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity, without which there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that law which God himself hath from heaven revealed? There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from the mouth of the eternal God.
In light of the gospel, the law of God remains for our instruction such that they are either not easily discovered by other means or no reasonable man can be ignorant of them.
When supernatural duties are necessarily exacted, natural are not rejected as needless. The law of God therefore is, though principally delivered for instruction in the one.
the Scripture aboundeth with so great store of laws in this kind: for they are either such as we of ourselves could not easily have found out, and then the benefit is not small to have them readily set down to our hands; or if they be so clear and manifest that no man endued with reason can lightly be ignorant of them, yet the Spirit as it were borrowing them from the school of Nature, as serving to prove things less manifest, and to induce a persuasion of somewhat which were in itself more hard and dark, unless it should in such sort be cleared, the very applying of them unto cases particular is not without most singular use and profit many ways for men’s instruction. Besides, be they plain of themselves or obscure, the evidence of God’s own testimony added to the natural assent of reason concerning the certainty of them, doth not a little comfort and confirm the same.
Hooker points out that differing opinions are due to imbecility and that ignorance blinds whole nations so that gross iniquity is judged not to be sin.
BOOK I. Ch. xii. 2. Wherefore inasmuch as our actions are conversant about things beset with many circumstances, which cause men of sundry wits to be also of sundry judgments concerning that which ought to be done; requisite it cannot but seem the rule of divine law should herein help our imbecility, that we might the more infallibly understand what is good and what evil. The first principles of the Law of Nature are easy; hard it were to find men ignorant of them. But concerning the duty which Nature’s law doth require at the hands of men in a number of things particular, so far hath the natural understanding even of sundry whole nations been darkened, that they have not discerned no not gross iniquity to be sin. Again, being so prone as we are to fawn upon ourselves, and to be ignorant as much as may be of our own deformities, without the feeling sense whereof we are most wretched, even so much the more, because not knowing them we cannot so much as desire to have them taken away: how should our festered sores be cured, but that God hath delivered a law as sharp as the two-edged sword, piercing the very closest and most unsearchable corners of the heart, which the Law of Nature can hardly, human laws by no means possible, reach unto? Hereby we know even secret concupiscence to be sin, and are made fearful to offend though it be but in a wandering cogitation.
Hooker states that it is not possible to agree to disagree. We are not permitted to imagine a difference.
BOOK III. Ch. iii. 1-3.III. So that if we imagine a difference where there is none, that matters of discipline are different from matters of faith and salvation; and that they themselves so teach which are our reprovers. because we distinguish where we should not, it may not be denied that we misdistinguish.
Hooker sets out the limits of the authority of scripture on matters of indifference, such as the wearing of a wedding ring, eating different kinds of meat, celebrating festivals on various days, genuflexion, kneeling etc and then establishes four rules for establishing polity.
so easy it is for every man living to err, and so hard to wrest from any man’s mouth the plain acknowledgment of error, that what hath been once inconsiderately defended, the same is commonly persisted in, as long as wit by whetting itself is able to find out any shift, be it never so slight, whereby to escape out of the hands of present contradiction. Their meaning who first did plead against the Polity of the Church of England, urging that “nothing ought to be established in the Church which is not commanded by the word of God;”
there are general commandments for all things, to the end, that even such cases as are not in Scripture particularly mentioned, might not be left to any to order at their pleasure only with caution, that nothing be done against the word of God: and that for this cause the Apostle hath set down in Scripture four general rules, requiring such things alone to be received in the Church as do best and nearest agree with the same rules, that so all things in the Church may be appointed, not only not against, but by and according to the word of God. The rules are these, “Nothing scandalous or offensive unto any, especially unto the Church of God;” “All things in order and with seemliness;” “All unto edification;” finally, “All to the glory of God.” Of which kind how many might be gathered out of the Scripture, if it were necessary to take so much pains? Which rules they that urge, minding thereby to prove that nothing may be done in the Church but what Scripture commandeth, must needs hold that they tie the Church of Christ no otherwise than only because we find them there set down by the finger of the Holy Ghost.
Heresy prevaileth only by a counterfeit show of reason.
Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered unto the world by revelation, and it presumeth us taught otherwise that itself is divine and sacred.
Laws are to be made for the ordering of the Church which are not repugnant to the word of God.
How laws for the regiment of the Church may be made by the advice of men following therein the light of reason, and how those laws being not repugnant to the word of God are approved in his sight. Laws for the Church are not made as they should be, unless the makers follow such direction as they ought to be guided by: wherein that Scripture standeth not the Church of God in any stead, or serveth nothing at all to direct, but may be let pass as needless to be consulted with, we judge it profane, impious, and irreligious to think.
Humans might hold that the law is changeable but where Christ forbids change, then we may not change laws against his will. If laws have been made which are contrary to scripture, then those laws may be altered.
Whether Christ have forbidden all change of those laws which are set down in Scripture. This we hold and grant for truth, that those very laws which of their own nature are changeable, be notwithstanding uncapable of change, if he which gave them, being of authority so to do, forbid absolutely to change them; neither may they admit alteration against the will of such a law-maker. Albeit therefore we do not find any cause why of right there should be necessarily an immutable form set down in holy Scripture; nevertheless if indeed there have been at any time a church polity so set down, the change whereof the sacred Scripture doth forbid, surely for men to alter those laws which God for perpetuity hath established were presumption most intolerable.
Transforming Grace 