PREFACE. lxx Hooker, in Principle, a Maintainer of Succession: 66 EDITOR'S of church government are such as follows: "The power of "the keys was first settled in the Apostles before it was deli"vered unto the Church; and the Church received it from "the Apostles, not the Apostles from the Church:" p. 104. And, p. 106. "The authority of their first calling liveth yet "in their succession, and time and travel joined with God's graces bring pastors at this present to perfection; yet the "Apostles' charge to teach, baptize, and administer the "Lord's Supper, to bind and loose sins in heaven and in "earth, to impose hands for the ordaining of pastors and eld"ers: these parts of the apostolic function are not decayed, "and cannot be wanted in the Church of God. There must "either be no Church, or else these must remain; for with"out these no Church can continue." And, p. 107. "As the "things be needful in the Church, so the persons to whom "they were first committed cannot be doubted... The service "must endure as long as the promise; to the end of the "world... Christ is present with those who succeed his Apo"stles in the same function and ministry for ever." And, p. 244. "Things proper to Bishops, that might not be com"mon to them with presbyters, were singularity in succeed"ing, and superiority in ordaining." 247." The singularity "of one pastor in each place descended from the Apostles "and their scholars in all famous churches in the world by a "perpetual chair of succession, and doth to this day continue, "but where abomination or desolation, I mean knavery or "violence, interrupt it." From p. 108 to p. 112 is a course of direct reasoning to the same purpose. It were easy to multiply quotations: but enough perhaps has been advanced to justify the assertion, that while Hooker was engaged on his great work, a new school of writers on church subjects had begun to shew itself in England: men had been gradually unlearning some of those opinions, which intimacy with foreign Protestants had tended to foster, and had adopted a tone and way of thinking more like that of the early Church. The change in the political situation of the country gave them opportunity and encouragement to develope and inculcate their amended views. At such a time, the appearance in the field of a champion like Hooker on their side must have been worth every thing to the defenders 66 his Avowal of a Change of Opinion on that Subject. lxxi 66 PREFACE. of Apostolical order: and that he was then considered as EDITOR'S taking the field on their side is clear from the manner in which, as we have seen, he was attacked, and from the names with which his was associated, by the Puritans. In later times, a different construction has very generally been put on his writings, and he has commonly been cited by that class of writers who concede least to church authority, as expressly sanctioning their loose and irreverent notions. And yet he has distinctly laid down, and adopted as his own, both the principles and the conclusion of the stricter system of antiquity. The principles, where he asks so emphatically, “ What "angel in heaven could have said to man, as our Lord did "unto Peter, Feed my sheep; preach; baptize; do this in "remembrance of me; whose sins ye retain, they are re"tained, and their offences in heaven pardoned whose faults you shall on earth forgive? What think we? Are these ter"restrial sounds, or else are they voices uttered out of the "clouds above? The power of the ministry of God translateth "out of darkness into glory; it raiseth men from the earth, "and bringeth God himself down from heaven; by blessing "visible elements it maketh them invisible grace; it giveth "daily the Holy Ghost; it hath to dispose of that flesh "which was given for the life of the world, and that blood "which was poured out to redeem souls; when it poureth "malediction upon the heads of the wicked, they perish, when "it revoketh the same, they revive. O wretched blindness, "if we admire not so great power; more wretched if we "consider it aright, and notwithstanding imagine that any "but God can bestow it 50 !" Can we help wondering, that the author of these sentiments should be generally reckoned among those, who account the ministry a mere human ordinance? Again, it is certain from Hooker's own express statement, that the ministry of which he entertained these exalted ideas was from the beginning an episcopal ministry. "Let us not," he says, "fear to be herein bold and peremp"tory, that if any thing in the Church's government, surely "the first institution of Bishops was from heaven, was even "of God; the Holy Ghost was the author of it." Nay, he has marked his opinion yet more forcibly, by stating else 50 E. P. V. lxxvii. 1. PREFACE. lxxii Supposed Erastianism of some Parts of Hooker : EDITOR's where, that he had not thought thus always 51. "I myself did "sometimes judge it a great deal more probable than now I "do, merely that after the Apostles were deceased, churches "did agree amongst themselves for preservation of peace and "order, to make one presbyter in each city chief over the rest, "and to translate into him that power by force and virtue "whereof the Apostles...did preserve and uphold order in the "Church." This he calls "that other conjecture which so "many have thought good to follow," whereas, "the general "received persuasion held from the first beginning" was, "that the Apostles themselves left bishops invested with 66 power above other pastors." There is something very significant in the list of authorities, from whose opinion or conjecture of the equality of bishops and presbyters he here specifies his own dissent. They are first the Waldenses; then Marsilius the jurist of Padua, an extreme partizan of the imperial cause against Rome; then Wicliffe, Calvin, Bullinger, (as representing the Zuinglians,) Jewel, who had tolerated, and Fulke who had maintained, the presbyterian principle in their controversies with the Romanists. By Hooker's distinctly specifying all these authorities, every one of whom stands, as it were, for a class or school, and putting on record his dissent from them, all and each, it should seem as if he were anxious to disengage himself openly from servile adherence to any school or section of Protestants, and to claim a right of conforming his judgment to that of the primitive or catholic Church, with whomsoever amongst moderns he might be brought into agreement or disagreement. The passages above cited are such as cannot well be explained away: and if (as many will be ready to assert) they are expressly or virtually contradicted by other passages of the same author, the utmost effect of such contradiction must be to neutralize him in this controversy, and make him unfit to be quoted on either side. But is it so certain, that his reasonings and assertions elsewhere are at variance with these unequivocal declarations? Appeal would probably be made, first of all, to the line which he has adopted in his second and third books whereof the second is taken up with sifting that main principle of the Puritans, that nothing should be done 51 E. P. VII. xi. 8. real Amount of his Concessions in that Way. lxxiii PREFACE. without command of Scripture; the third, in refuting the ex- EDITOR'S pectation, grounded on that principle, that in Scripture there must of necessity be found some certain form of ecclesiastical polity, the laws whereof admit not any kind of alteration. But it may be replied, that all his reasonings in that part of the treatise relate to the a priori question, whether, antecedently to our knowledge of the fact, it were necessary that Scripture (as a perfect rule of faith) should of purpose prescribe any one particular form of church government. The other question, of history and interpretation, how far such a form is virtually prescribed in the New Testament, he touches there only in passing, not however without very significant hints which way his opinion leaned 52. "Those things,” says he, “which are of principal weight in the very particular form of "church polity (although not that form which they imagine, "but that which we against them uphold) are in the Scrip"tures contained." And again, "If we did seek to maintain "that which most advantageth our own cause, the very best "way for us, and the strongest against them, were to hold "even as they do, that there must needs be found in Scrip"ture some particular form of church polity which God hath "instituted, and which for that very cause belongeth to all churches, to all times. But with any such partial eye to "respect ourselves, and by cunning to make those things seem the truest which are the fittest to serve our purpose, is a thing which we neither like nor mean to follow. Where"fore that which we take to be generally true concerning "the mutability of laws, the same we have plainly delivered." This passage is perhaps one of the strongest which the adversaries of ancient church order could adduce in support of their interpretation of Hooker. But what does it amount to? Surely to this, and no more: that he waives in behalf of the episcopal succession the mode of reasoning from antecedent necessity, on which the Puritans relied so confidently in behalf of their pastors, elders and deacons. Here, as in all other cases, he recommends the safe and reverential course of inquiring what the New Testament, as interpreted by natural reason and church history, contains, rather than determining beforehand what in reason it ought to contain. 66 66 66 52 E. P. III. x. 8. PREFACE. lxxiv Hooker's Concessions related to Points of Detail: EDITOR'S But even in this place he not obscurely implies, and in other parts of the same dissertation he expressly affirms, that the result of such reverential inquiry into the meaning of God's later revelation would be in favour of the episcopal claims 53. "Forasmuch as where the clergy are any great multitude, "order doth necessarily require that by degrees they be dis"tinguished; we hold there have ever been and ever ought "to be in such case at leastwise two sorts of ecclesiastical "persons, the one subordinate unto the other; as to the Apo"stles in the beginning, and to the Bishops always since, we "find plainly, both in Scripture and in all ecclesiastical re"cords, other ministers of the word and sacraments have "been...So as the form of polity by them set down for per"petuity is....faulty in omitting some things which in Scrip"ture are of that nature; as namely the difference that ought "to be of pastors, when they grow to any great multitude.” His manner of speaking of the foreign protestants tallies exactly with this view 5. "For mine own part, although I see that certain reformed churches, the Scottish especially and "the French, have not that which best agreeth with the sacred "Scripture, I mean the government that is by bishops,...this "their defect. and imperfection I had rather lament in such "case than exagitate, considering that men oftentimes, with66 out any fault of their own, may be driven to want that kind "of polity or regiment which is best." There is nothing here to indicate indifference in Hooker with regard to the apostolical succession; there is much to shew how unwilling he was harshly to condemn irregularities committed under the supposed pressure of extreme necessity. 66 On the whole, it should seem that where he speaks so largely of the mutability of church laws, government, and discipline, he was not so much thinking of what may be called the constitution and platform of the Church herself, as of the detail of her legislation and ceremonies: although it has become somewhat hard for a modern reader to enter into this construction of his argument, because the notion which he had to combat, of every the minutest part of discipline being of necessity contained in Scripture, has now comparatively become obsolete; whereas the episcopalian controversy |