Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

London on foot, but to go on horseback; the weather being wet, and he no rider, he arrived at the Shunamite's House soaking, and sore, with a very bad cold, and doubt whether the two days' rest would so far recover him that he could preach. But the mistress of the house, a Mrs. Churchman, paid such exemplary attention to him, that when Sunday came he was equal to his duty. Then the good woman advised her grateful guest that, as he was of a tender constitution, he should take a wife who could nurse him, prolong his life, and make it comfortable. To this counsel the simple-hearted scholar duly assented, and asked Mrs. Churchman to find for him such a wife. She found him her own daughter Joan, whose chance of a husband seemed otherwise, perhaps, not of the best, since she had no money, and was neither good-looking nor good-tempered. Her father was a pious man, who had failed in business as a draper in Watling Street, and had been made keeper of the Shunamite's House because he was fit for the office, and in need of help to live. Hooker's marriage drew him from his quiet student life at Oxford. A small living was given to him near Aylesbury, at Drayton-Beauchamp, in December, 1584, and he had lived for about a year in his country parsonage when he was visited by his old pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer. They found him reading Horace in a field, and minding a few sheep while the servant was gone to his dinner and to help in household work. They sat with him until the man returned, then went with him into the house, but lost his company when Richard was called to rock the cradle of his firstborn. They left next day with no flattering opinion of Mrs. Hooker, but with increased reverence for their old tutor, whom they saw gently bearing a life of poverty in a home where there was no sympathy to cheer it. When Cranmer glanced at this on leaving, Hooker is said to have replied, "My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I that am none ought not to repine at what my wise Creator has appointed for me, but labour, as indeed I do daily, to submit mine to His will, and possess my soul in patience and peace."

The consequence of this visit was that Edwin Sandys strongly represented to his father, who was then Archbishop of York, Hooker's desert and need. The next opportunity was therefore taken of using patronage for the substantial improvement of his fortunes, and in March, 1585, Richard Hooker, then only thirty-four years old, was made Master of the Temple. Walter Travers, who had the Earl of Leicester for patron, had been appointed Evening Lecturer at the Temple. We have already spoken of him as a friend of Thomas Cartwright, and one of the leaders of the Furitan cause in the Church of England; the same who had been busy about the first separate Presbyterian congregation when that was

1 Hooker's wife. These details are from Izaak Walton's life of Hooker, and represent, perhaps too unfavourably, what friends said about Mrs. Hooker. She was very soon married again after Richard's death. Four months after the death of her first husband she was found dead in her bed, and the second husband-to whom she was then already joined-fell under unjust suspicion of having poisoned her.

formed at Wandsworth. The Puritan element was strong even in this society of lawyers, and many thought that Walter Travers should have been appointed to the place given to Richard Hooker. Hooker preached in the morning, Travers in the evening so it was said that "the forenoon sermon spake Canterbury; and the afternoon Geneva." Then Archbishop Whitgift prohibited the preaching of Travers. The prohibition was appealed against in vain. Whitgift's policy was the Queen's; he sought to compel unity. The Queen trusted him as she had trusted Archbishop Parker, practically transferred to him her supremacy over the Church of England, and called him "her little black husband." This treatment of Walter Travers raised a bitter controversy. Richard Hooker sought in his gentle way to maintain himself against it; the hardest thing said by him in the matter, being in reply to the accusations against him, "that he prayed before and not after his sermons; that in his prayers he named bishops; that he kneeled both when he prayed and when he received sacrament: and," he said, "other exceptions so like these, as but to name I should have thought a greater fault than to commit them."

The bitterness of personal contention pained Hooker acutely. He could not take part in it, and it distracted him when he would give pure thought to the principles involved in the dispute. There was a great controversy within the Church, a desire for truth and right was at the heart of it on both sides, but on each side, as usual, blind passion was eloquent, and there were many partisans who never looked below the surface. Hooker desired escape out of the noise, that he might make a right use of his powers in God's service, and at last he wrote this letter to the Archbishop :

My Lord,-When I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage: but I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; and indeed God and Nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. My lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers here have proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions; and to satisfy that, I have consulted the Scripture, and other laws, both human and divine, whether the conscience of him and others of his judgment might be so far complied with 'as to alter our frame of church-government, our manner of God's worship, our praising and praying to Him, and our established ceremonies, as often as his and other tender consciences shall require us. And in this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise in which I intend a justification of the Laws of our Ecclesiastical Polity; in which design God and His holy angels shall at the last great day bear me that witness which my conscience now does, that my meaning is not to provoke any, but rather to satisfy all tender consciences; and I shall never be able to do this but where I may study, and pray for God's blessing on my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions; and therefore, if your grace can judge me worthy of such a favour, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun.

The result of this pleading was that, in the year 1591, Richard Hooker resigned the more lucrative and, in a worldly sense, important office of Master of the Temple, and was presented to the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire, about six miles from Salisbury, and to a prebend of small value-NetherAvon-in Salisbury Cathedral. At Boscombe he was remote enough from strife of cities, and would be free to use his pen while doing his duty to his parishioners; for the whole population of his parish was scarcely above a hundred. Richard Hooker lived four years at Boscombe-from 1591 to 1595and there he completed by March, 1593, the first four of the eight books which he had planned as the natural division of his work. They were first published in 1594. The spirit and plan of the whole work are thus expressed by Hooker himself in his "Preface to them that seek (as they term it) the Reformation of Laws and Orders Ecclesiastical in the Church of England." First, as to its spirit, let this passage testify:

Amongst ourselves, there was in King Edward's days some question moved, by reason of a few men's scrupulosity, touching certain things. And beyond seas, of them which fled in the days of Queen Mary, some contenting themselves abroad with the use of their own service book at home, authorised before their departure out of the realm; others liking better the Common Prayer Book of the Church of Geneva translated; those smaller contentions before begun were by this mean somewhat increased. Under the happy reign of her Majesty which now is, the greatest matter a while contended for was the wearing of the cap and surplice, till there came Admonitions directed unto the High Court of Parliament, by men who, concealing their names, thought it glory enough to discover their minds and affections, which now were universally bent even against all the orders and laws wherein this church is found unconformable to the platform of Geneva. Concerning the defender of which Admonitions, all that I mean to say is but this:-There will come a time when three words uttered with charity and meekness, shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit. But the manner of men's writing must not alienate our hearts from the truth, if it appear they have the truth: as the followers of the same defender doth think he hath, and in that persuasion they follow him, no otherwise than himself doth Calvin, Beza, and others, with the like persuasion that they in this cause had the truth. We being as fully persuaded otherwise, it resteth that some kind of trial be used to find out which part is in error.

[blocks in formation]

Nor is mine own intent any other in these several books of discourse, than to make it appear unto you that for the Ecclesiastical Laws of this land we are led by great reason to observe them, and ye by no necessity bound to impugn them. It is no part of my secret meaning to draw you hereby into hatred, or to set upon the face of this cause any fairer gloss than the naked truth doth afford; but my whole endeavour is to resolve the conscience, and to show as near as I can what in this controversy the heart is to think, if it will follow the light of sound and sincere judgment, without either cloud of prejudice or mist of passionate affection. Wherefore, seeing

that laws and ordinances in particular, whether such as we observe, or such as yourselves would have established, when the mind doth sift and examine them, it must needs have often recourse to a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kinds, and qualities of laws in general, whereof, unless it be thoroughly informed, there will appear no certainty to stay our persuasion upon:. I have for that cause set down in the first place an introduction on both sides needful to be considered: declaring therein what law is, how different kinds of laws there are, and what force they are of according unto each kind. This done because ye suppose the laws for which ye strive are found in Scripture, but those not for which we strive, and upon this surmise are drawn to hold it as the very main pillar of your whole cause, that Scripture ought to be the only rule of all our actions, and consequently that the Church orders which we observe being not commanded in Scripture are offensive and displeasant unto God-I have spent the second book in sifting of this point, which standeth with you for the first and chiefest principle whereon ye build. Whereunto the next in degree is, that as God will have always a Church upon earth while the world doth continue, and that Church stand in need of government, of which government it behoveth Himself to be both the author and teacher; so it cannot stand with duty, that man should ever presume in any wise to change and alter the same; and therefore, that in Scripture there must of necessity be found some particular form of Ecclesiastical Polity, the laws whereof admit not any kind of alteration. The first three books being thus ended, the fourth proceedeth from the general grounds and foundations of your cause, unto your general accusations against us, as having in the orders of our Church (for so you pretend) corrupted the right form of Church Polity with manifold Popish rites and ceremonies, which certain Reformed Churches have banished from amongst them, and have thereby given us such example as (you think) we ought to follow. This your assertion hath herein drawn us to make search, whether these be just excep tions against the customs of our Church, when ye plead that they are the same which the Church of Rome hath, or that they are not the same which some other Reformed Churches have devised. Of those four books which remain and are bestowed about the specialties of that cause which lieth in controversy, the first examineth the causes by you alleged, wherefore the Public Duties of Christian religion, as our prayers, our sacraments, and the rest, should not be ordered in such sort as with us they are; nor that power whereby the persons of men are consecrated unto the ministry, be disposed of in such manner as the Laws of this Church do allow. The second and third are concerning the power of Jurisdictionthe one, whether laymen, such as your governing elders are, ought in all congregations for ever to be invested with that power; the other, whether bishops may have that power over other pastors, and therewithal that honour which with us they have. And because, besides the power of order which all consecrated persons have, and the power of jurisdiction which neither they all, nor they only have, there is a third power-a power of ecclesiastical dominion-communicable, as we think, unto persons not ecclesiastical, and most fit to be restrained unto the Prince our sovereign commander over the whole body politic: the eighth book we have allotted unto this question, and have sifted therein your objections against those Pre-eminences Royal which thereunto appertain.

Thus have I laid before you the brief of these my travails, and presented under your view the limbs of that cause litigious between us; the whole entire body whereof being thus compact, it shall be no troublesome thing for any man to find each particular controversy's resting-place, and the coherence

[blocks in formation]

The fourth, of general exceptions taken against the Laws of our Polity, as being Popish and banished out of certain Reformed Churches.

The fifth, of our laws that concern the Public Religious Duties of the Church, and the manner of bestowing that power of order, which enableth men in sundry degrees and callings to execute the same.

The sixth, of the power of Jurisdiction, which the reformed platform claimeth unto lay-elders, with others.

The seventh, of the power of Jurisdiction, and the honour which is annexed thereunto in Bishops.

The eighth, of the power of ecclesiastical dominion or Supreme Authority, which with us the highest governor or Prince hath, as well in regard of domestical jurisdictions as of that other foreignly claimed by the Bishop of Rome.

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small]

Richard Hooker opens the first book of his "Ecclesiastical Polity" with observations on the disadvantage in argument at which they are placed who maintain the conservative point of view, and on the fact that he may seem for a time tedious and obscure to many who find difficulty upon unfamiliar ground, since he intends to reason from first causes, holding that way to be best for the ascertainment of truth. Conclusions so arrived at will be surer, and when reached will also help us to understand the first principles more clearly. Do we who maintain Church Law uphold only a vain tradition? Let us seek the truth as to this matter. What are Laws? The just means to an end, subject to their author, God, who is the First Cause of Order and of Law. He uses in all things means towards ends, for the accomplishment of which He limits the use of His infinite power. God's purposes are not always known to us, "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 hath made to Himself a law eternal, whereby He worketh all things of which He is the cause and author. "That little thereof which we darkly apprehend, we admire; the rest with religious ignorance we humbly and meekly adore."

God's law is eternal and immutable; a part of it His promises declare, and all else must be in

accord with them. God's eternal purpose, which He keeps, is the first law eternal. The second eternal law is that which man makes for himself in true accord with Reason and Revelation.

Eternal Law is of three kinds, according to the kinds of things that are subject to it: (a) natural law, which orders natural agents; (b) heavenly, observed by the angels; (c) human, "that which, out of the law either of reason or of God, men probably gathering to be expedient, they make it a law."

God's will is fixed in the Law of Nature on which human life depends. But Hooker's philosophy here falters a little, for he sees an occasional swerving which he ascribes to the defect of matter cursed for the sin of man, and he does not point out that some operations may appear only to be irregular till we completely understand the laws that govern them. "But howsoever," Hooker says, "these swervings are now and then incident to the course of nature, nevertheless so constantly the laws of nature are by natural agents observed, that no man denieth but those things which nature worketh are wrought, either always or for the most part, after one and the same manner." What causes this uniform obedience to law? The works of Nature are the will of God. "Those things which Nature is said to do, are by divine art performed, using Nature as an instrument; nor is there any such art or know

ledge divine in Nature herself working, but in the guide of Nature's work." His guidance accords with that determining of means to ends which "is rightly termed by the name of Providence. The same being referred unto the things themselves here disposed by it, was wont by the ancient to be called Natural Destiny." Each force of nature is subject to its own law, and bound also to serve the common good of all.

To Heavenly Law the angels pay perfect obedience. With intellectual desire to resemble God in goodness and do good to His creatures, especially to Men, in whom they see themselves beneath themselves, the Angels love, adore, and imitate. Individually they praise God; they work together in God's army; as fellow-servants with men they are God's ministers of grace. When Angels fell through pride it was by reflex of their understanding on themselves, and they became dispersed labourers against the law of God. They have been honoured as themselves gods before light came into the world.

The argument next proceeds to its especial topic, Human Law.

Except in God, there is in all things higher possibility that breeds desire towards perfection, which is Goodness, looking to the highest, namely, to that which is nearest God. Everything helps in some way, and is therefore good. Man especially aspires. God is eternal: and man, therefore, seeks continued life, a long personal life and continuance by offspring. God is immutable: and man, therefore, seeks fixity of purpose. God is exact and man, therefore, seeks precision in details. These desires are so bound to us that we hardly observe them. But external perfections of truth and virtue (desired as they become known) are sought more noticeably, and still after the pattern of God.

Angels have all knowledge of which they are capable: Men grow towards it. Of natural agents, living animals may excel men in the lower things of sense, as stones excel animals in firmness and durability; but the soul of Man as he grows in reason reaches beyond sensible things. With the right helps of art and study, men as they might be would excel men as they are, not less than men as they are excel the simpleton. The very first man who took the right way-Aristotle-excelled all before and after him. To the praise of the method of Aristotle Hooker adds his dispraise of the method of Ramus.' Education and instruction make us capable of Law. By reason we attain to knowledge beyond that of the

senses.

We act sometimes for the goodness we find in the mere stir and change; and sometimes only for the end to be attained. In either case we act freely. We choose that which seems good in our eyes. Knowledge and Will determine choice. Will seeks the good to which Reason points; Appetite

1 Ramus. Pierre La Ramée, born in 1515, son of a poor labourer, had from childhood an intense desire for knowledge. By working in the day and studying at night, he enabled himself to graduate at the age of twenty-oue, and with an ardent tendency to place reason above mere authority, in graduating maintained as his thesis that "all Aristotle said was false." After a brilliant intellectual career, he perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

that which satisfies the Senses. Affections rise involuntarily at the sight of some things; the Will has power to stay their action. "Appetite is the Will's solicitor, and the Will is Appetite's controller." Reason enough to give Will power over Appetite makes action upon Appetite also voluntary; and this even when, half unobserved, the Appetite assents by not dissenting or using power to prevent.

Children and men without reason are guided by the reason of others. Reason seeks only such good as it judges to be possible. Good may be attainable by ways avoided for unpleasantness, and Evil (never desired for itself) may be sought for some appearance of goodness in the ways to it. Goodness moves only when apparent; while hidden it is neglected. Sensible good is always obvious, and is sought till higher reason comes to show the higher object of desire. In all sin a lesser good is preferred to the greater which reason can make known. The root of this, says Hooker, is the Curse, weakening the instrument, the soul within the flesh. Man seeking the utmost good fails in discernment of it.

We discern by knowledge of causes and by observation of signs. The latter way, though less sure, is easier and fitter for the weakness of the age. A sign of evident goodness is general acceptance. The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God Himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, Nature herself must needs have taught; and God being the author of Nature, her voice is but His instrument. By her from Him we receive whatsoever in such sort we learn. Much truth is thus open to the common light of reason.

As Hooker's argument advances from stage to stage he inserts little summaries of it at successive resting-places, and we come now to the first of the summaries, which is this::

A Law therefore generally taken, is a directive rule unto goodness of operation. The rule of divine operations outward, is the definitive appointment of God's own wisdom set down within Himself. The rule of natural agents that work by simple necessity, is the determination of the wisdom of God, known to God Himself the principal director of them, but not unto them that are directed to execute the same. The rule of natural agents which work after a sort of their own accord, as the beasts do, is the judgment of common sense or fancy concerning the sensible goodness of those objects wherewith they are moved. The rule of ghostly or immaterial natures, as spirits and angels, is their intuitive intellectual judgment concerning the amiable beauty and high goodness of that object which with unspeakable joy and delight doth set them on work. The rule of voluntary agents on earth is the sentence that Reason giveth concerning the goodness of those things which they are to do. And the sentences which Reason giveth are some more, some less general, before it come to define in particular actions what is

good.

We pass then to the next stage of Richard Hooker's argument upon the nature of Law. The main principles of reason are, he says, in themselves apparent. The greater good should be chosen before the lesser: but choice errs where the lesser good is seen, the greater unseen. We seek knowledge for the pre

servation of life, and beyond that also, firstly for its own sake, for the delight in contemplation itself, and secondly for its use in providing rules of action.

We know all things either as they are in themselves, or as they are in mutual relation to one another. The knowledge of what man is in reference to himself, and of other things in relation to man, is at the source of all natural laws which govern human actions. The best things produce the best operations, and considering that all parts of man concur in producing human actions, it cannot be well if the diviner part, the soul, do not direct the baser. "This is therefore the first Law, whereby the highest power of the mind requireth general obedience at the hands of all the rest concurring with it unto action."

So we may seek for the several grand mandates of the understanding part of man which control his Will; whether they import his duty to God or to his fellow-man.

Even the natural man seems to know that there is a God on whom all things depend; who is therefore to be honoured, of whom we ask what we desire, as children of their father, and of whom we learn "what is in effect the same that we read, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;' which Law our Saviour doth term the First and the Great Commandment."

Touching the next, which as our Saviour addeth is like unto this (he meaneth in amplitude and largeness, inasmuch as it is the root out of which all laws of Duty to Menward have grown, as out of the former all offices of Religion towards God), the like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is their duty no less to love others than themselves. For seeing those things which are equal must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive all good, even as much at every man's hand as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men, we all being of one and the same nature? To have any thing offered them repugnant to this desire must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me: so that if I do harm I must look to suffer; there being no reason that others should show greater measure of love to me than they have by me shewed unto them. My desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant; as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That sith we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain ; with such like.

sive, declaring only what may be done; or thirdly, admonitory, opening what is most convenient for us to do. For there are degrees of goodness in action, and a Law is properly that of which Reason says that it must be done; and the Law of Reason is that which men have found out for themselves that they are all and always bound to in their actions.

Laws of Reason have these marks: (1) They who keep them act as nature works, in a fit harmony without superfluity and defect. (2) They are investigable by Reason without the aid of Revelation. (3) They are so investigable that the knowledge of them is general; the world has always been acquainted with them. Each particular man may not know them, but he can with natural perfection of wit and ripeness of judgment find them out, and of the general principles of them it is not easy to find men ignorant. "Law Rational, therefore, which men commonly use to call the law of nature, meaning thereby the law which human nature knoweth itself in reason universally bound unto, which also for that cause may most fitly be termed the Law of Reason; this Law," says Hooker, "comprehendeth all those things which men by the light of their natural understanding evidently know, or at leastwise may know, to be beseeming or unbeseeming, virtuous or vicious, good or evil for them to do." All misdeed may be said to be against the Law of Reason, but we mean by it here only the law governing duties which all men by force of natural wit might do, or might understand to be such duties as concern all men. "Do as thou wouldest be done unto," says Saint Augustine, "is a sentence which all nations under heaven are agreed upon. Refer this sentence to the love of God, and it extinguisheth all heinous crimes; refer it to the love of thy Neighbour, and all grievous wrongs it banisheth out of the world." Saint Augustine held, therefore, that by the Law of Reason certain principles were universally agreed upon, and that out of them the greatest moral duties we owe towards God or man may without any great difficulty be concluded.

Why, then, can there be such failure in the knowledge of even principal moral duties, that breach of them is not considered sin? In part this may come of evil custom spreading from the ignorance and wickedness of a few, but partly it comes through want of the grace of God. "For whatsoever we have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter, concerning the force of man's natural understanding, this we always desire withal to be understood: that there is no kind of faculty or power in man or any other creature, which can rightly perform the functions allotted to it, without perpetual aid and concurrence of that supreme cause of all things."

Great good comes to man from observance of the Law of Reason: "for we see the whole world and each part thereof so compacted, that as long as each Upon these two principles of Duty to God and thing performeth only that work which is natural Man, found out by the understanding faculty of the unto it, it thereby preserveth both other things and mind, all Law depends; and the natural measure also itself. Thus righteousness, which is the willing whereby to judge our doings is therefore "the sen- observance of this law, has a Reward attached to it, tence of Reason determining and setting down what and sin, which is the wilful transgression of it, a is good to be done." Which sentence is either man- Punishment. Rewards and punishments always datory, showing what must be done; or else permis- presuppose something willingly done, well or ill.

« AnteriorContinuar »