CHAPTER VIII

HOOKER'S TEACHING CONCERNING :· HOLY SCRIPTURE-THE HOLY EUCHARIST THE

CHRISTIAN
ABSOLUTION

MINISTRY-CONFESSION

AND

HOOKER'S Ecclesiastical Polity deals with a large number of subjects and problems of profound interest in the religious world. Amongst these are some of peculiar moment in their bearing on present day thought and discussion. A great deal of that which he wrote is as applicable to the controversies of the twentieth century, as it was to those of the sixteenth. It is one of the special features of Hooker's great treatise, that it treats with undying freshness of subjects of permanent interest-subjects concerning which there is much debate in our own day. The quotations given in this chapter concern some of the most important of these topics. In making these quotations the present writer has ventured to make certain annotations for the reader's guidance.

1

HOLY SCRIPTURE

"What the Church of God standeth bound to know or do, the same in part nature teacheth. And because nature can teach them but only in part, neither so fully as is requisite for man's salvation, nor so easily as to make the way plain and expedite enough that many may come to the knowledge of it, and so be saved; therefore in Scripture hath God both collected the most necessary things that the school of nature teacheth unto that end, and revealeth also whatsoever we neither could with safety be ignorant of, nor at all be instructed in but by supernatural revelation from him. So that Scripture containing all things that are in this kind any way needful for the Church, and the principal of the other sort, etc."-Bk. III. ch. iii. § 3.

"I trust that to mention what the Scripture of God leaveth unto the Church's discretion in some things, is not in any thing to impair the honour which the Church of God yieldeth to the sacred Scripture's perfection. Wherein seeing that no more is by us maintained, than only that Scripture must needs teach the Church whatsoever is in such sort necessary as hath been set down; and that it is no more

disgrace for Scripture to have left a number of other things free to be ordered at the discretion of the Church, than for nature to have left it unto the wit of man to devise his own attire, and not to look for it as the beasts of the field have theirs."-Bk. III. ch. iv. § 1.

"Because we maintain that in Scripture we are taught all things necessary unto salvation; hereupon very childishly it is by some demanded, what Scripture can teach us the sacred authority of the Scripture, upon the knowledge whereof our whole faith and salvation dependeth? As though there were any kind of science in the world which leadeth men into knowledge without presupposing a number of things already known. No science doth make known the first principles whereon it buildeth, but they are always either taken as plain and manifest in themselves, or as proved and granted already, some former knowledge having made them evident. Scripture teacheth all supernatural revealed truth, without the knowledge whereof salvation cannot be attained. The main principle whereupon our belief of all things therein contained dependeth, is, that the Scriptures are the oracles of God himself. This in itself we cannot say is evident. For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it

in heart, as they do when they hear that 'every whole is more than any part of that whole,' because this in itself is evident. The other we know that all do not acknowledge when they hear it. There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all believers. Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered unto the world by revelation, and it presumeth us taught otherwise that itself is divine and sacred.

"The question then being by what means we are taught this; some answer that to learn it we have no other way than only tradition; as namely that so we believe because both we from our predecessors and they from theirs have so received. But is this enough? That which all men's experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denied. And by experience we all know, that the first outward motive leading men so to esteem of the Scripture is the authority of God's Church. For when we know the whole Church of God hath that opinion of the Scripture, we judge it even at the first an impudent thing for any man bred and brought up in the Church to be of a contrary mind without cause. Afterwards, the more we bestow our labour in reading or hearing the mysteries thereof, the more we find

that the thing itself doth answer our received opinion concerning it. So that the former inducement prevailing somewhat with us before, doth now much more prevail, when the very thing hath ministered farther reason. If infidels or atheists chance any time to call it in question, this giveth us occasion to sift what reason there is, whereby the testimony of the Church concerning Scripture, and our own persuasion which Scripture itself hath confirmed, may be proved a truth infallible. In which case the ancient Fathers being often constrained to shew, what warrant they had so much to rely upon the Scriptures, endeavoured still to maintain the authority of the books of God by arguments such as unbelievers themselves must needs think reasonable, if they judged thereof as they should. . . . Wherefore if I believe the Gospel, yet is reason of singular use, for that it confirmeth me in this my belief the more."-Bk. III. ch. viii. §§ 13, 14.

Hooker's teaching concerning the office of reason and tradition in relation to Holy Scripture is of great importance; for the disputings of the Puritans of the sixteenth century, to which he replied in The Ecclesiastical Polity, are still continued by their descendants in our own day. Hooker shows how Holy Scripture,