Fragments from Reynolds; Hooker's Change of Sentiment. iii

PREFACE.

so that his forbearance (which those only can judge of, who EDITOR'S
have acquainted themselves with the writings of his opponents)
must have been the result of strong principle, and unwearied
self-control. Again, Walton or his informants appear to have
considered him as almost childishly ignorant of human nature
and of the ordinary business of life: whereas his writings
throughout betray uncommon shrewdness and quickness of
observation, and a vein of the keenest humour runs through
them; the last quality we should look for, if we judged only
by reading the Life. In these respects it may seem probable
that if the biographer had been personally acquainted with
his subject, the picture would have been somewhat modified:
in no others is there any reason, either from his writings
or from contemporary evidence, to doubt the accuracy of his
report.

[2] It will be observed that in the Notes and Appendix to the
Life, some use has been made of the collections of Mr. Ful-
man, which are preserved in C. C. C. Library, to the number
of twenty-two volumes; of which an account may be seen in
Dr. Bliss's edition of the Athenæ Oxonienses, iv. 242: as also
an account of the collector, who had been the alumnus and
amanuensis of Hammond, and was the friend and literary ad-
viser of Antony Wood. He was also acquainted with Walton,
as appears from his Appendix to the Life of Hooker, p. 89.
note; and from an indorsement in Fulman's hand, on some
papers which will be found, vol. iii. p. 108, of this edition.
All therefore that he knew about Hooker he had communi-
cated to Walton, no doubt, before 1675: and therefore little
or no direct additional information was to be expected, or
occurs, in his
papers.

The chief use now made of them has been to extract a few passages relating to Reynolds, Hooker's tutor, and undoubtedly the leader of the Moderate Puritanical party in the University at that time. A specimen of his tone and principles may be seen in the Further Appendix to the Life, No. ii: which letter, with all that we read of Reynolds, tends to put in a strong light his pupil Hooker's entire independence of thought, and the manner in which he worked his way towards other views than those in which he had been trained. For it may be observed that his uncle, John Hooker or Vowel, was

EDITOR'S rather a keen partisan, as he had been at one time an associate, PREFACE. of Peter Martyr and others of the more uncompromising foreign

[3]

Reformers: as his historical fragments, inserted in Holinshed, may shew. Hooker's connection again with Bishop Jewel; with Dr. Cole, President of C. C. C., who had been forced on the society by the Queen's government 2; and with Cole's party in the College; were all things calculated, as far as they went, to give him a bias towards the extreme which was accounted most contrary to Romanism. And indeed the deep and sincere dread with which he regarded the errors and aggressions of Rome, is apparent in every part of his writings: and so much the more instructive will it prove, should we find him of his own accord embracing those catholic opinions and practices, which some in their zeal against popery may have too lightly parted with, but which Rome alone could not give, neither should we allow her indirectly to take them away. The other short pieces, subjoined to the Life in this edition, are accounted for by notes as they severally occur.

2. If Hooker's works were arranged in the order of their composition, (a course which is so far preferable to any other, as it gives the completest view of the progress of the writer's own mind, and any modifications which his opinions may have undergone,) the Sermons relating to the controversy with Travers, 1585-6, would naturally come first in order. For that controversy not only preceded the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in order of time, but actually led to the first idea and undertaking of the great work. However, in the present publication, the precedent of all former ones has been respected; but it will be for future editors to consider whether they may not advantageously invert this order.

The statement of Walton, that the dispute in the Temple led immediately to the design of Hooker's Treatise, is incidentally confirmed by a passage in the Sermon on pride, which appears from internal evidence to have been a subsequent part of the same course, to which the discourses censured by Travers belonged. The passage occurs in a portion of the Sermon now for the first time printed. He is speaking of the difference between moral or natural, and positive or mutable law: "which

2 Strype, Parker, i. 528. 3 See Life, p. 65, 66. 4 See vol. iii. p. 618.

Occasion and Progress of the Ecclesiastical Polity.

PREFACE.

"difference," he says, "being undiscerned, hath not a little EDITOR'S "obscured justice. It is no small perplexity which this one thing hath bred in the minds of many, who beholding the "laws which God himself hath given abrogated and disan"nulled by human authority, imagine that justice is hereby "conculcated; that men take upon them to be wiser than "God himself; that unto their devices His ordinances are "constrained to give place; which popular discourses, when "they are polished with such art and cunning as some men's "wits are well acquainted with, it is no hard matter with "such tunes to enchant most religiously affected souls. The "root of which error is a misconceit that all laws are positive "which men establish, and all laws which God delivereth im"mutable. No, it is not the author which maketh, but the "matter whereon they are made, that causeth laws to be thus "distinguished." Such as are acquainted with the argument of the first three books of Ecclesiastical Polity, will perceive at once in the paragraph just cited the very rudiment and germ of that argument: which, occurring as it does in a sermon which must have been preached within a few months of the discourse on Justification, shews how his mind was then employed, how ripe and forward his plans were, and how accurate Walton's information concerning them.

Accordingly, the summer of 1586 may be fixed on as the time of his commencing the work: and after six years and more, i. e. on the 9th of March, 1592-3, the four first books were licensed to "John Windet, dwelling at the signe of the "Crosse Keyes near Powle's Wharffe." Most of the work was therefore composed in London, amidst the annoyance of controversy, and the interruption of constant preaching to such an audience as the Temple then furnished. For it was only in July 1591, that he obtained what he had so long wished for, a quiet home in the country, viz. at Boscomb near Salisbury.

Four days after the entry at Stationers' Hall, the MS. was sent to Lord Burghley: and it is not unlikely that the delay which ensued in the printing was occasioned by him. For

5 Windet was one of the publishers commonly employed by persons of Hooker's way of thinking: we find

him about this time publishing a work
of Dr. Bridges, and the tract called
"Querimonia Ecclesiæ."

EDITOR'S

vi

Aids to Hooker in completing his Treatise.

the first edition bears date 1594. There is a MS. note of PREFACE. Hooker's on a pamphlet called "the Christian Letter," &c. (hereafter to be spoken of) which would lead to the supposition that Burghley as well as Whitgift had seen and approved the unpublished work. The writers or writer of the Letter, having brought sundry doctrinal exceptions to the books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, had appealed to the author, as to what he thought in his conscience would be the sentence of bishops and divines, were his work, and two others just then published7, to be authoritatively examined by such and such persons, and compared with the formularies of the Church. To this challenge part of Hooker's reply is, "The books you mention have been perused. They were seen "and judged of before they came abroad to the open view of "the world. They were not published as yours is. As "learned as any this nation hath saw them and red them "before they came to your hands. And for any thing that I "could ever yet learn, the learneder they are that have given "sentence concerning the same, the farder they have differed "from this your virulent, uncharitable, and unconscionable "sentence."

[4]

Besides Whitgift and Burghley, we know that Hooker availed himself of the judgment of his two friends, Cranmer and Sandys, (if they were within reach ;) and there is much reason to suppose that Dr. Reynolds also was consulted?. With Saravia he was unacquainted, until he went into the neighbourhood of Canterbury 10.

As for assistance in the way of books, there is every mark of his having been abundantly supplied during the preparation of his work. In several cases he quotes foreign productions, which from the dates of their publication could have been only just out of the press in time to be so cited. Every thing probably was sent to Whitgift: and his stores, it may be supposed, were placed at Hooker's command.

He observes a remarkable accuracy in citation, especially of the passages which he means to refute. Sometimes indeed

6 Page 44.

7 "Querimonia Ecclesiæ ;" and "Bancroft's Dangerous Positions."

8 See Life, App. p. 104; and vol. iii.

notes on B. vi.

9 B. vi. App. in vol. iii. 109, 112. 10 Life, p. 74.

Account of the original Edition.

vii

PREFACE.

he abridges, where Cartwright is unnecessarily verbose (a EDITOR'S fault against which that writer was not much on his guard): but there is not (as the Editor believes after minute examination) a single instance of unfair citation. That the reader may judge of this for himself, the rule of the present edition has been, scrupulously to point out all particulars in which the passages produced to be refuted, or otherwise in the way of argument, at all vary from their originals. We learn from a note of Sandys", on the sixth Book, that Hooker's "dis"course had credit of sincerity in the former books especially

by means of setting down Mr. Cartwright's and W. T[ra"vers]'s words in the margent wheresoever they were im"pugned." As an instance of his care we may observe, that the copy of the Christian Letter, on which his notes are made, has nearly all the errata, which are marked at the end, corrected in the body of the pamphlet by his own hand. [5] The Editio Princeps12 itself is a small folio, very closely, but clearly, and in general most accurately, printed. The present edition professes to be a reprint of it, except in some matters of punctuation, and in many of orthography. As to the former: amidst great general exactness (to which also the little remaining MS. bears witness) there occur sometimes whole pages in which almost all the smaller stops are omitted in a manner which could scarcely be intentional: and there the liberty has been taken of arranging them in the way which seems most agreeable to the author's general system of punctuation. Care however has been taken not unwarrantably to determine by this process the meaning of clauses, which might fairly be left ambiguous. However, both in this question and still more in that of spelling, the