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ground." 1 Bishop Andrewes declared of Hooker, that "his workes and his worth be such as behind him he hath not (that I knowe) left anie neere him."2 Collier, the historian, speaks of Richard Hooker as "a person of great learning and judgment, a man of a gentle unpretending temper," and adds, "the regularity of his life, the benevolence of his temper, his unaffected modesty, his being free from the least tincture of pride, was no less commendable than the strength of his genius." Dr. Paget, who, as we shall see later, is singularly competent to judge of Hooker's personal character, places side by side with "his massive thought and knowledge," "the power of his patience and holiness: "4 whilst, in another place, the same writer calls attention to two traits of Hooker's character which stand out with brightness—his "persevering diligence in his own proper work, and his pure unworldliness," and goes on to add, "but even more impressive than his splendid dutifulness is the simplicity with which he keeps himself unspotted alike from the conflicts and from the honours of the world."5 Of Hooker's 1 Hooker's Works, Vol. I. p. 122.

2 Ibid. p. 91, note.

3 Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, Lond. 1714. Vol. II. Bk. vii. pp. 633, 663.

4 The Spirit of Discipline, p. 311.

Paget, Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker, pp. 6, 7.

a

reverent chivalry' towards the truths for which he contended so splendidly in his great disputation with Travers and Cartwright, we shall hear later in this volume.

Under the hand of Richard Hooker, Anglican theology underwent a gradual but decisive change, shaking off the trammels of Calvinism with which it had become entangled in its passage from the time of the Reformation in the middle of the sixteenth century. The influence of Hooker's writings was immediate and widely spread, and what was of far greater moment in the history of the English Church, he had a large share in training up for the benefit of the next generation such great men as William Laud, Henry Hammond, and Robert Sanderson,1"and," as Mr. Keble says, "a multitude more such divines: to which succession and series, humanly speaking, we owe it, that the! Anglican Church continues at such a distance from that of Geneva, and so near to primitive. truth and apostolical order." 2 Any one to whom such appreciation can be given by so conscientious a student and writer as the author of The Christian Year, must indeed be for ever famous throughout the length and breadth of the Anglican communion.

1 Archbishop of Canterbury, Chaplain to K. Charles I., and Bishop of Lincoln, respectively.

2 Hooker's Works, Editor's Preface, § 57.

We have, in fact, in Richard Hooker a conspicuous example of the extraordinary and lasting influence for good which one man may exert on future generations. Few indeed are the clergy of the present day of whose preparation for Holy Orders the study of some portion of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker has not formed a prominent part; and, as a consequence, whose teaching of others is more or less, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by what they have assimilated from their study of that English classic. Of the writings of Hooker, their inception, style, contents, opportunity, and influence, we shall read later in this volume; and before so doing it will be well to consider what little is to be learnt of his personal history. To this task we will now address ourselves.

The two chief early biographers of Richard Hooker are Bishop Gauden, and the celebrated Isaac Walton. John Gauden (1605-1662), an ambitious and self-seeking person, successively bishop of Exeter and Worcester, who claimed the authorship of Eikon Basilike, the Pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, generally attributed

by royalist writers to King Charles I. himself,1 wrote in the last year of his life The Life of Mr. Richard Hooker, which was prefixed to his edition of The Ecclesiastical Polity, and dedicated to King Charles II. This Life was written very hurriedly, and it contained many serious inaccuracies.2 It will therefore be unnecessary to allude to it further, since it passed out of notice on the appearance of Isaac Walton's Life of Mr. Richard Hooker. Before leaving Bishop Gauden, it is not without interest to observe that in the year 1681 was published The Whole Duty of a Communicant, being Rules and Directions for a Worthy Receiving the Most Holy Sacrament of The Lord's Supper, to which his name was attached. This little book appeared with the imprimatur of Henry Maurice, domestic chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft, dated May 31, 1686,3 and reached a seventh edition in the year 1698. In the course of the instructions given therein, belief in the Sacramental

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1 Gauden's claim was apparently admitted at the Restoration of K. Charles II. See Dictionary of National Biography, sub "Gauden"; also J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, Lond. 1903, Vol. III. p. 1207 "the Eikon Basilike,

a work really due to the ingenuity of Dr. Gauden."

2 Dr. Paget speaks of Gauden's pretentious and slovenly volume."-Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise ⚫ p. 259.

3 "Imprimatur, Hen. Maurice, Reverendissimo in Chr. Pat. et Dom. Domino Gulielmo Archiep. Cant. e Sacris Domesticis. May the 31st, 1686."

We have, in fact, in Richard Hooker a conspicuous example of the extraordinary and lasting influence for good which one man may exert on future generations. Few indeed are the clergy of the present day of whose preparation for Holy Orders the study of some portion of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker has not formei a prominent part; and, as a consequence, whose teaching of others is more or less, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by what they have assimilated from their study of that English classic. Of the writings of Hooker, their inception, style, contents, opportunity, and influence, we shall read later in this volume; and before so doing it will be well to consider what little is to be learnt of his personal history. To this task we will now address ourselves.

The two chief early biographers of Richard Hooker are Bishop Gauden, and the celebrated Isaac Walton. John Gauden (1605-1662), an ambitious and self-seeking person, successively bishop of Exeter and Worcester, who claimed the authorship of Eikon Basilike, the Pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings, generally attributed

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