Thursday, September 13, 2012

10: Richard Hooker (1554-1600), focussing theology on Scripture, Tradition and Reason

Richard Hooker ... gave Anglican theology the foundations of Scripture, Tradition and Reason and developed the concept of the Via Media

Patrick Comerford

Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was such an influential Anglican theologian that his emphases on scripture, tradition and reason have had a lasting influence on the development of Anglicanism. He never wrote a systematic theology or a catechism. Yet, for Richard Schmidt and others, Hooker’s position in Anglicanism parallels that of Martin Luther in Lutheranism, John Calvin in Presbyterianism and Thomas Aquinas in Roman Catholicism.

Hooker stands alongside Thomas Cranmer, who wrote and compiled The Book of Common Prayer and Matthew Parker, who was primarily responsible for The Thirty-Nine Articles, as one of the founders of Anglican theological thought, and he is considered by many as the “true father” or founding intellect and spirit of Anglicanism.

His great work is the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593), in which he argued that it is through our participation in the life of Christ that we experience forgiveness and salvation, that Christ is really present not only in the Eucharist, but in those who receive the Eucharist, and that the Church is more than an invisible company of the elect, but a visible institution composed of those with the living Christ in their midst who are meant to sanctify the world.

Philip Bruce Secor, who has written extensively on Hooker, says he is “arguably the closest counterpart in the English Reformation to Luther and Calvin.” Although Hooker lived and worked through the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the late Archbishop Henry McAdoo, in The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology, counts him among the Caroline Divines, the influential group of theologians who shaped post-Reformation Anglicanism in the 17th century.

The details of Hooker’s life are gleaned mainly from his biography by Izaak Walton. Hooker was born sometime around Easter Day in March 1554 in the village of Heavitree, now a suburb of Exeter in Devonshire.

His uncle, John Hooker, spent several years in Ireland as the legal adviser to Sir Philip Carew, and was MP for Athenry, Co Galway. Later, he was the chamberlain of Exeter, and wrote biographies of the Bishops of Exeter, including Myles Coverdale.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford ... Hooker was an undergraduate and later a fellow

He attended Exeter Grammar School (Exeter Latin School) until 1569, when his uncle John Hooker helped him to secure a place at Corpus Christ College, Oxford, through the patronage of another Devon-born theologian, John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury.

Hooker speaks of Jewel as the “worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for some hundreds of years.” Indeed, Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity owes much to Jewel’s thinking.

Hooker graduated BA (Bachelor of Arts) at Oxford in 1574. He proceeded MA (Master of Arts) in 1577, and became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, that year. He acted as tutor at Oxford, and in 1579 was appointed University Reader in Hebrew and lectured in logic.

On 14 August 1579, Hooker was ordained priest by Edwin Sandys, then Bishop of London, and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Sandys appointed Hooker tutor to his son Edwin, and Hooker also taught George Cranmer, the great nephew of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

After a contested election for the presidency of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1580, Hooker was deprived of his college fellowship, for “contentiousness.” He had campaigned for the defeated candidate, John Rainolds (1549-1607), against William Cole. Rainolds was Hooker’s former tutor and lifelong friend who would become a leader of Puritan party and a participant in the Hampton Court Conference in 1604.He finally became President of Corpus Christi in December 1598.

The site of Saint Paul’s Cross, on the north-east side of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London ... Richard Hooker was appointed preacher in 1581 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meanwhile, in 1581, Hooker was appointed to preach at Saint Paul’s Cross, beside Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London. His mentor, John Jewell, had been the select preacher at Saint Paul’s Cross in 1559. Preaching at Saint Paul’s Cross, Hooker became a public figure, more so because his sermon offended the Puritans by diverging from their theories of predestination.

Ten years before Hooker arrived in London, the Puritans had produced an Admonition to Parliament, together with A view of Popish Abuses and initiated a long debate that would last beyond the end of the 16th century.

John Whitgift, soon to become Archbishop of Canterbury, produced a reply and Thomas Cartwright wrote a reaction to that reply. Hooker was drawn into this controversy through the influences of Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer.

He was also introduced to John Churchman, a distinguished London merchant who became Master of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. It was at this time, according to his biographer, Izaak Walton, that Hooker made the “fatal mistake” of marrying his landlady’s daughter, Jean Churchman. As Walton puts it: “There is a wheel within a wheel; a secret sacred wheel of Providence (most visible in marriages), guided by His hand that allows not the race to the swift nor bread to the wise, nor good wives to good men: and He that can bring good out of evil (for mortals are blind to this reason) only knows why this blessing was denied to patient Job, to meek Moses, and to our as meek and patient Mr Hooker.”

However, Walton is described by Christopher Morris as an “unreliable gossip” who “generally moulded his subjects to fit a ready-made pattern,” and both he and John Booty give the date of the marriage as 1588. Hooker seems to have with the Churchman family periodically until 1595 and, according to Booty, he “seems to have been well-treated and considerably assisted by John Churchman and his wife.”

The Temple Church, off Fleet Street, London ... Hooker was appointed the Master in 1585

Hooker became the Rector of the Parish Saint Mary the Virgin, Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire, in 1584. But he probably never lived in the parish, and in the following year, on the recommendation of Archbishop Sandys, he was appointed Master of the Temple Church at the Inns of Court in London by Queen Elizabeth, possibly as a compromise candidate to those proposed by William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and Archbishop Whitgift.

At the Temple Church, Hooker came into immediate public conflict with Walter Travers (1548-1635), a strenuous Puritan who was the Reader or Lecturer at the Temple Church, and who had been ordained Presbyterian in Antwerp but had never received Anglican orders.

The dispute orders in part because of Hooker’s sermon at Saint Paul’s Cross four years earlier, but mainly because Hooker argued that salvation was possible for some Roman Catholics.

Hooker preached on Sunday mornings, and Travers preached on Sunday afternoons, the Reader using the pulpit to attack the Master for his views on assurance and his attitude towards Roman Catholics. A popular cliché said: “What Mr Hooker delivered in the forenoon, Mr Travers confuted in the afternoon.” Or, as Izaak Walton and John Keble render it: “The forenoon sermon spoke Canterbury, and the afternoon, Geneva.”

The controversy ended abruptly when it was brought before the Privy Council. Travers was silenced and dismissed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in March 1586 and the Privy Council strongly supported the decision. Later, under Burghley’s influence, Travers succeeded Adam Loftus as the second Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, from 1594 to 1598.

Meanwhile, Hooker began to write his major work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a critique of the Puritans and their attacks on the Church of England in general and the Book of Common Prayer in particular.

In 1591, Hooker left the Temple and was presented to the living of Saint Andrew’s Boscombe in Wiltshire to support him while he wrote. He seems to have lived mainly in London but spent time in Salisbury where he was the Prebendary of Netheravon, Precentor and Subdean of Salisbury Cathedral, and regularly used the Cathedral Library. The preface and first four books of his major work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, were printed by John Windet and published in 1593 with a subsidy from Edwin Sandys. Apparently, the last four books, although ready for publication, were held back for further revision by the author.

In 1595, Hooker became Rector of the parish of Saint Mary the Virgin in Bishopsbourne, four miles south-east of Canterbury, in Kent, and priest of the neighbouring parish of Saint John the Baptist, Barham.

Hooker was happy to be a country parson, and devoted his last years to caring for his parishioners, to prayer, and to further study and writing. In 1597, he published his fifth book of The Laws, which is longer than the first four books taken together.

He died on 2 or 3 November 1600 at his Rectory in Bishopsbourne. He was buried under the chancel floor in the church, although the exact place is not marked. He was survived by his wife and four daughters.

His will includes the following provision: “Item, I give and bequeath three pounds of lawful English money towards the building and making of a newer and sufficient pulpit in the parish of Bishopsbourne.” The pulpit still stands in Bishopsbourne parish church; a statue of Hooker near the pulpit is believed to have been in the old rectory. A memorial tablet in the church was erected by William Cowper in 1632.

A statue of Richard Hooker outside Exeter Cathedral was carved from white “pentilicon” marble by Alfred Drury (1856-1944) at a cost of 1,000 guineas, paid for by Mr R Hooker of Weston Super Mare, a descendent of Hooker’s uncle. The statue was unveiled on 25 October 1907. The statue, in the centre of the ancient cathedral common burial ground, depicts the “Judicious Hooker” seated with his book. A stained glass window in Exeter Cathedral also depicts Hooker.

Books 6-8 of The Laws were published posthumously, Books 6 and 8 in 1648, and Book 7 in 1662, which partly explains why Hooker is counted by many among the Caroline Divines.

Richard Hooker’s statue at Exeter Cathedral ... ‘the most influential theologian in the Anglican reformation’

Hooker’s influence:

Hooker was perhaps the most influential theologian in the aftermath of the Anglican Reformation, and his emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition have had a lasting influence on the development of Anglican theology. His Laws is still regarded as a monumental work of Anglican theology and has influenced the development of theology, political theory, and English prose.

Hooker’s Laws, alongside Jewel’s Apology and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, is a major and original contribution to English ecclesiastical literature of the 16th century, and the first great ecclesiastical work written in English. It is written in a temperate spirit and with vigour of thought, and is free of the many, heavy quotations that are characteristic of most theological works at the time.

Although Hooker is unsparing in his censure of what he believes are the errors of Rome, his contemporary, Pope Clement VIII, said of The Laws: “It has in it such seeds of eternity that it will abide until the last fire shall consume all learning.”

King James I is quoted by Hooker’s biographer, Izaak Walton, as saying: “I observe there is in Mr Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.”

Hooker’s emphasis on Scripture, reason, and tradition considerably also influenced the development of legal theory and the work of political philosophers, including John Locke, who quotes Hooker numerous times in the Second Treatise of Civil Government
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His literary influences are reflected in the works of many writers, including John Donne, George Herbert and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Hooker as theologian:

Richard Hooker has the reputation as being the founder of the Anglican theology of comprehensiveness and tolerance. His attitude to scripture was deeply nuanced by reason. He made reason the criterion of reading scripture – not the criterion of scripture, but of reading scripture, for Hooker held scripture in first place. He held reason necessary for the understanding and the application of scripture in all the areas in which scripture might be applied.

Their first difference arose over the question of predestination. Some years before this controversy, Hooker had maintained in God two wills, the one antecedent, the other consequent, so the first will of God is that all should be saved, the second that “only those who did live answerable to that degree of grace which [God] had offered, or afforded.”

This contradicted the Calvinist views held by Travers that the will of God is single and unitary, and thus that God directly damns some prior to any behaviour of their own. Thus Hooker asserts the possibility, if not the fact, of the salvation of all.

In the Calvinist eyes of Travers, Hooker also compromised himself by asserting that Roman Catholics could be saved as Roman Catholics, because that Church, although imperfect and erring in various ways, still held to Christ and the greater part of the foundations of Christianity, and so its faithful were excused by honest ignorance of the truth.

Travers replies that none who believe in justification by works can be saved, because they are in ignorance of the truth of scriptural teaching, namely, that all are saved by faith alone. Thus for Travers, any drop of falsity tends to exclude, while for Hooker truth, partial and mistaken but well-meant, tends to include.

Hooker’s aim was to emphasise the unity of Christianity before its divisions by pointing out first the things in which all Christians agreed: “I took it for the best and most perspicuous way of teaching, to declare first, how far we do agree, and then to show our disagreements.”

Finally, Travers attacked Hooker on his manner of accepting Scripture. Travers took exception to Hooker saying the assurance of what we believe by word is not so great as that we believe by sense. Hooker replies by asking why it is then, that if assurance by word is greater, God so frequently shows his promises to us in our sensible experience.

Hooker’s ultimate principle he calls reason, by which he means thought, not as propositional thinking, but as the whole process of experience, and reflection on experience, that issues in knowledge and wisdom, and supremely, the knowledge of God.

Further, for Hooker, the realm of experience is ordinary life. Of this ordinary experience, scripture is a part. As all comes from God, so scripture does. As we learn from all our experience, and learn that the world is so ordered that it works in this way and not in that, so we learn of God from Scripture. This supplies the knowledge of God which we cannot gain from the nature we discern in the world around us.

But for Hooker the process of understanding is not different whatever it is that is being discerned. “So our own words also when we extol the complete sufficiency of the whole entire body of the scripture, must in like sort be understood with this caution, that the benefit of nature’s light be not thought excluded as unnecessary, because the necessity of a diviner light is magnified.” (Laws, 1.14.4)

This is an implicit critique of the use of scripture by Travers and the Puritans as the ultimate rule and guide. They used scripture as a set of propositional laws, unrelated to the ordinary life of humans of their time, as eternal laws and absolute, unconnected to person and circumstance. They used them to conform person and circumstance to their mould rather than both conforming to and at the same time transforming person and circumstance. Hooker’s complaint, though the words would be profoundly anachronistic, is that the Puritans’ construction of scripture is unhistorical.

So, in discussing the Puritans’ construction of ecclesial institutions on scriptural models, Hooker points out that the words of scripture were written to address specific occasions and situations in the life of the church, and not as absolute rules.

“The several books of scripture having had each some several occasion and particular purpose which caused them to be written, the contents thereof are according to the exigency of that special end whereunto they are intended.” (Laws I.14.3)

His whole critique of the Puritan use of scripture is summed up in Laws IV.11.7: “Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.”

Finally, in the Travers-Hooker controversy, there is an irenic tone that underlies the polemic. The two men remained on good terms personally, and both made it clear that there was no personal animosity. Indeed, Travers’s brother John was married to Hooker’s sister.

Hooker in fact seems to have found all controversy hateful, and his writings are marked by a tone tolerance and inclusiveness.

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

Hooker’s best known work and masterpiece is Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Its philosophical base is Aristotelian, with a strong emphasis on natural law eternally planted by God in creation. On this foundation, all positive laws of Church and State are developed from Scriptural revelation, ancient tradition, reason, and experience.

The first four books were published in 1594, Book 5 was published in 1597, and the final three volumes were published posthumously.

The last three books have an interesting history, which was outlined by John Keble. Hooker’s widow was accused of having burned the manuscript. However, the rough drafts were preserved. Book 6 and Book 8 were published in 1648, and Book 7 in 1662. Book 7 and Book 8 contain the substance of what Hooker wrote, but Keble doubted whether Book 6 is genuine. It is now generally accepted that they are Hooker’s work and part of the full collection.

Hooker’s Laws is much more than a negative rebuttal of Puritan claims. The late Archbishop Henry McAdoo sees it as “a continuous and coherent whole presenting a philosophy and theology congenial to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the traditional aspects of the Elizabethan Settlement ... Anglicanism ...has become a coherent theology.”

Hooker argued for a middle way or via media between the positions held by Roman Catholics and by Puritans. He argued that reason and tradition were important when interpreting the Scriptures, and that it was important to recognise that the Bible was written in a particular historical context, in response to specific situations: “Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.”

Hooker’s principal subject is the proper governance of the Church, and he seeks to work out the best methods for organising the Church.

Structurally, the work is a carefully structured reply to the general principles of Puritanism as found in The Admonition and Cartwright’s subsequent writings, more specifically challenging:

● Scripture alone is the rule of all things which may be done;
● Scripture prescribes an unalterable form of Church government;
● The English Church is corrupted by ‘Popish’ orders, rites, &c;
● The law is corrupt in not allowing lay elders;
● ‘There ought not to be in the Church Bishops.’

Quoting CS Lewis in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Stephen Neill underlines its literary contibution in the following terms: Hitherto, in England, “the art of controversy ... had involved only tactics; Hooker added strategy. Long before the close fighting in Book III begins, the puritan position has been rendered desperate by the great flanking movements in Books I and II ... Thus the refutation of the enemy comes in the end to seem a very small thing, a by-product.”

It is a massive work of immense learning, drawing on Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, scholastic theologians and philosophers, and the Classics. Its principal subject is the proper governance, or “polity,” of the Church, and Hooker seeks to work out which methods of organising the Church are best.

Also at stake was the position of Queen Elizabeth I as the Supreme Governor of the Church. If doctrine were not to be settled by authorities, and if Luther’s argument for the priesthood of all believers were to be followed to its extreme with government by the elect, then the role of the monarch as governor of the Church was unacceptable. On the other hand, if the monarch was appointed by God as the governor of the church, then it was similarly unacceptable for local churches or parishes to go their own way.

The Laws is remembered not only for its stature as a monumental work of Anglican thought, but also for its influence in the development of theology, political theory, and English prose, being one of the first major works of theology written in English.

Hooker worked from Aquinas, but adapted scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner. He argued that Church organisation, like political organisation, is one of the “things indifferent” to God. He wrote that minor doctrinal issues were not issues that damned or saved the soul, but rather frameworks surrounding the moral and religious life of the believer.

He argued there were good monarchies and bad ones, good democracies and bad ones, and good Church hierarchies and bad ones: what mattered was the piety of the people.

At the same time, Hooker argued that authority was commanded by the Bible and by the traditions of the Early Church, but authority was something that had to be based on piety and reason rather than automatic investiture. This was because authority had to be obeyed even if it were wrong and needed to be remedied by right reason and the Holy Spirit. Notably, Hooker affirmed that the power and propriety of bishops need not be in every case absolute.

Book 1, which includes a nine-chapter Preface, is a discussion of the nature of Law.

Book 2 and Book 3 include debate with the Puritans over the interpretation of scripture and the place of reason in interpretation.

Book 4 is a defence of Anglican liturgical practices that have been taken over from Rome, stating that they belong as catholic and universal elements of the true Church.

Book 5 was published when Hooker was at Bishopsbourne and, according to the late Archbishop McAdoo, long remained on the curriculum for Anglican ordinands. This, by far the longest of the books, can be read as a theological commentary on The Book of Common Prayer, defending its legality. It includes detailed discussions on baptism, chanting and ministerial attire – all contentious issues at the time. It has been said that this volume brought Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to life, and it probably had the greatest influence on Anglican life of any books at the time.

The three remaining volumes were published posthumously, from almost complete manuscripts found in Hooker’s study in Bishopsbourne Rectory after his death.

Book 6 has a discussion of lay leadership and the role of ordained ministry, and also deals with justification and the practice of penitence.

Book 7, which was the last to be published, is a defence of episcopacy and the episcopal polity of the Church in its ideal form.

Book 8 concerns the Royal Supremacy, and the place of the Crown in the Church. Manuscript notes on Book 8 discovered some years ago in Trinity College Dublin shed new light on Book 8, and John Booty says it is now believed that Hooker, with his strong convictions concerning law, was no avid proponent of the divine right of kings.

Trinity College Dublin .... manuscript notes found some years ago in Trinity College Dublin have shed new light on Book 8 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Hooker’s other works:

Apart from his Laws, Hooker’s lesser works, which are few in number, fall into three groups:

● Writings related to the Temple Controversy with Walter Travers and before the Privy Council, including three sermons;
● Writings connected with the last writing of the last books of the Laws;
● Miscellaneous sermons, of which four are complete and fragments remain of three.
● The theologically important work, A Learned Discourse of Justification, first published in 1612.

A Learned Discourse of Justification

Hooker’s best short work is his sermon, A Learned Discourse of Justification is a sermon from 1585. Although it was not published until 1612, it was one of the sermons that triggered Travers’s attack and appeal to the Privy Council.

In an earlier sermon, Hooker had expressed the hope of seeing in Heaven many who had been Roman Catholics on earth. Travers took him to task for this, saying that since Roman Catholics did not believe the doctrine of Justification by Faith, they could not be justified.

Hooker replied at length in this sermon. He sets forth the Doctrine of Justification by Faith, and agrees with his opponent that the official theology of Rome is defective on this point. He then defends his assertion that those who do not rightly understand the means that God has provided for salvation may nonetheless be saved by it. He says: “God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright.”

Travers accused Hooker of preaching doctrine favourable to the Roman Catholic Church, when in fact he had just described their differences emphasising that Rome attributed to works “a power of satisfying God for sin.”

For Hooker, works were a necessary expression of thanksgiving for unmerited justification by a merciful God. Hooker defended his belief in the doctrine of justification by faith, but argued that even those who did not understand or accept this could be saved by God.

Hooker in his own words:

God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright. – A Learned Discourse of Justification.

There shall 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. – Laws, Preface, 2.10.

Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power. – Laws, 1.16.8.

That to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery. – Laws, 1.

We live, as it were, the life of God. – Laws, 1.11.2.

So our own words also when we extol the complete sufficiency of the whole entire body of the scripture, must in like sort be understood with this caution, that the benefit of nature’s light be not thought excluded as unnecessary, because the necessity of a diviner light is magnified. – Laws, 1.14.4.

We must acknowledge even heretics themselves to be, though a maimed part, yet a part of the visible church. If an infidel should pursue to death an heretic professing Christianity, only for Christian profession’s sake, could we deny him the honour of martyrdom? – Laws, 3.1.11.

The ceremonies which we have taken from such as were before us, or not things which belong to this or that sect, but they are the ancient rites and customs of the Church of Christ, whereof ourselves being a part, we have the selfsame interest in them which our fathers before us had, from whom the same are descended unto us. – Laws, 4.9.1.

Every good and holy desire though it lack the form, hath notwithstanding in itself the substance, and with him the force of a prayer, who regardeth the very moanings groans and sighs of the heart of man. – Laws, 5.48.2.

Richard Hooker describes a sacrament as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” and says: “It pleaseth Almighty God to communicate by sensible means those blessings which are incomprehensible.” – Laws, 5.57.3.

The Grace which we have by the Holy Eucharist ... [is] the real participation of Christ and of life in his body and blood by means of this sacrament. – Laws, 5.67.2.

Take therefore that wherein all agree, and then consider by itself what cause why the rest in question should not rather be left as superfluous than urged as necessary ... the sacrament being of itself but a corruptible and earthly creature must needs be thought an unlikely instrument to work so admirable affects in man, we are therefore to rest ourselves altogether upon the strength of his glorious power who is able and will bring to pass that the bread and cup which he giveth us shall be truly the thing he promiseth. – Laws, 5.67.7.

The very letter of the word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very Cross, that by them we draw out, as touching efficacy, force, and virtue, even the blood of his gored side, in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for ever quenched; they are things wonderful which he feeleth, great which he seeth and unheard of which he uttereth, whose soul is possessed of this Paschal Lamb and made joyful in the strength of this new wine, this bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes behold, this cup hallowed with solemn benediction availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and body in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal our infirmities and purge our sins as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving; with touching it sanctifieth, it enlighteneth with belief, it truly conformeth us unto the image of Jesus Christ; what these elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, his promise in witness hereof sufficeth, his word he knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this, O my God thou art true, O my Soul thou art happy! – Laws, 5.67.12.

Prayer:

In the Church of England, Richard Hooker is celebrated with a Lesser Festival on 3 November; the same day is also a Lesser Feast in his honour in the Episcopal Church’s Calendar of Saints.

O God of truth and peace, who raised up your servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Select bibliography:

Richard Hooker, A Learned Discourse of Justification (1612).
Richard Hooker, The Works of … Mr. Richard Hooker: With an Account of his Life and Death by Izaak Walton (3 vols), edited by John Keble (Oxford, 1836) and revised by RW Church and F. Paget (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

John Booty, ‘Hooker, Richard,’ pp 140-145 in AE McGrath (ed), The SPCK Handbook of Anglican Theologians (London: SPCK, 1998).
Michael Brydon, The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
MD Chapman, Anglican Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012).
RK Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (Berkeley: California University Press, 1981).
WJT Kirby, “Richard Hooker’s Discourse on Natural Law in the Context of the Magisterial Reformation, Animus 3 (1998).
HR McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (London : Adam & Charles Black 1965).
HR McAdoo, ‘Richard Hooker,’ pp 105-125, in Geoffrey Rowell (ed), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Oxford: Ikon, for Keble College, 1992).
AC McGrade (ed), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian community (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997).
Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952).
William Marshall, Scripture, Tradition and Reason (Dublin: Columba, 2010).
Stephen Neill, Anglicanism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 3rd ed, 1965). Arthur Pollard (ed), Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity: Selections (Manchester: Carcanet, 1990).
RH Schmidt, Glorious Companions: Five centuries of Anglican Spirituality (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002).
PB Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (London: Continuum, 1999).
Izaak Walton, The Life of Rich. Hooker, The Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London: Richard Marriott, 1665).

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