HOOKER 



771 



Buckinghamshire, whither he had retired. T!M-\ 

 found liim tending tin- Hheep, his Horace in In- 

 hiiinl, and mil long after they reached tin- hon-e 

 i;ii-li;tnl \v OH called from their OOmpMiy to rock the 

 cradle. Soon after thin Hooker was transferred, 

 at the recommendation of Archbishop Sandys, and 

 through tin- influence of Whitgift, to th.- Master- 

 -hi|> of tin- Temple, against a strong effort made to 

 promote the aftern<M>n reader TraverB, a prominent 

 Puritan leader. The union of the colleagues, as 

 mi^iit have been expected, was not a happy one. 

 I ravers was the more popular preacher, if the 

 K--.S profound thinker, ana Fuller tells us that 

 ' the congregation in the Temple ebbed in the 

 I on -noon and flowed in the afternoon.' The ser- 

 mons of Travers soon became attacks upon what 

 In- considered the latitudinarianism and errors of 

 Hooker, and, indeed, as Fuller says pointedly else- 

 where, ' the pulpit spake pure Canterbury in the 

 morning, and Geneva in the afternoon,' a state of 

 matters that Whitgift soon put an end to by silenc- 

 ing Travers. The fiery Puritan appealed to the 

 Council with a series of set charges against Hooker's 

 doctrine, and Hooker answered him with masterly 

 conclusiveness and temperance. But having been 

 drawn into this personal controversy against his 

 inclination, he felt it to be his duty to set forth the 

 larger question of the real fundamental basis of all 

 church government, and to this end desired Whit- 

 gift to remove him to some quiet living, ' where I 

 might behold God's blessing spring out of my mother 

 earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions.' 

 Accordingly, in 1591 he accepted the living of Bos- 

 combe, six miles from Salisbury, becoming also 

 sub-dean and prebendary of Sarum ; and here he 

 finished four of the proposed eight books of the 

 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which were, however, 

 not published till 1594 in a small closely-printed 

 folio. The year after he removed to the living of 

 Bishopsborne, three miles from Canterbury, where 

 he remained till his death, unconscious of his grow- 

 ing fame, a parish priest of unexampled humility 

 and devotedness. His fifth book appeared in 1597, 

 but the author did not live to complete his work, 

 dying about the end of the year 1600, of a cold 

 caught in a passage by water oetwixt London and 

 Gravesend. Almost his last words were upon the 

 ' blessed obedience and order of the angels, without 

 which peace could not be in heaven, and, oh that 

 it might be so on earth ! ' He was buried in his own 

 church, and left his widow and four daughters be- 

 hind him. Sir William Cowper, great-grandfather 

 of the first Earl Cowper, built him a monument in 

 Borne church, and in a poetical epitaph of his own 

 composition applies to Hooker the famous term 

 judicious, which will never be dissociated from his 

 name. 



At the time of his death the last three books 

 were believed to be nearly complete, but if so, they 

 were soon lost, the blame of which was laid, appar- 

 ently with some justice, upon Hooker's widow and 

 her Puritan relatives, who were supposed to abhor 

 the theology contained in them. Some months 

 after his death the rough drafts of the completed 

 books that remained were reluctantly given up to 

 the archbishop, and by him entrusted to Hooker's 

 friend, Dr Spenser, to prepare for publication. The 

 latter reprinted the first five books in 1604, but his 

 further labours were interrupted, and after his 

 appointment to be president of Corpus (1607), he 

 entrusted the papers for transcription to a young 

 scholar named Henry Jackson, who issued some of 

 the Sermons (1612-14). But Spenser died in 1614, 

 bequeathing the papers ' as a precious legacy ' to 

 Dr King, Bishop of London. Soon after his death 

 in 1621 they were claimed by Abbot for Lambeth 

 Library, where they remained till Land's commit- 

 tal for high-treason, when the library was handed 



over tint to the cuatody of I'rynne, next of Hugh 

 IVters. Thereafter the fate of the original p 

 is unknown. In 1648, aft Wood tell- IIH, but more 

 likely in Iti'il, the sixth and eighth IxxikH were 

 published at London, described a* 'according to the 

 most autlientimie copies,' and, indeed, we have good 

 grounds for believing that thin text in substantially 

 genuine, ln-ing to a certain extent guaranteed to 

 us by Bishop Andrewes and Archbishop U**her. 

 But, unfortunately, an Keble points out, in it* pres- 

 ent form the sixth lw>ok is an entire deviation from 

 its subject, which should have been, according to 

 the plan of the whole treatise, a discussion of the 

 claim of lay elders to a share in church got eminent, 

 whereas about nineteen-twcnticths of the whole i.~ 

 taken up with a series of dissertations on Primitive 

 and Romish penance, in their several part*, con- 

 fession, satisfaction, absolution. Now Hooker's dis- 

 cussion of lay elders would be just the part of his 

 work most displeasing to the Puritans of his time, 

 and the presumption is perfectly reasonable that 

 this part of the original work was destroyed. At 

 the same time, as Keble points out, the sixth book 

 bears every mark of being Hooker's work, though 

 it is not in its place as a part of the Ecclesiastical 

 Polity. The seventh and eighth books, however, 

 bear every mark of being substantially genuine ; 

 the former appeared first in 1662, in the new edition 

 of Hooker issued by Gauden, the soi-disant author 

 of the Eikon BasiliLe, and not entirely a reassuring 

 editor. The famous Life by Walton was written 

 for a second edition, issued in 1666, in order to 

 correct the inaccuracies in the life provided by 

 Gauden. Walton's account of the saintly ami 

 simple-minded theologian is one of the finest pic- 

 tures in the whole range of English biograpny, 

 but it should be remembered that in this case 

 he was not sketching from life, and Keble pointed 

 out that the super-simplicity and excessive meek- 

 ness and temperance attributed to him harmonise 

 but indifferently with the masterly intellect, the 

 incisive irony, and keen humour that were in 

 Hooker. All earlier editions of Hooker's works 

 were superseded by that of Keble, published by 

 the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1836, containing 

 also Walton's Life and an exhaustive preface from 

 his own pen. Of this work the 7th edition, revised 

 by Dean Church and Canon Paget, was issued in 

 three volumes in 1888. Of the first book alone 

 there is an edition, with an admirable introduction 

 and notes, by Dean Church ( 1868). 



Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is the 

 earliest great philosophical work written in the 

 English tongue, and is a noble monument of massive 



Rrose no less than of profound thought and masterly 

 )gic. The style is neither artificial nor involved, 

 but as well ordered and well sustained throughout 

 as the thinking itself, while it is capable of a grave 

 and modulated rhythm that rises at times into the 

 region of serene vet impassioned eloquence. As a 

 thinker he is Judicious in the highest sense of the 

 word, and his work forms a broad and enduring 

 foundation adequate for the church of a great 

 nation. Its fundamental idea is that of the unity 

 and all-embracing nature of law, considered as the 

 manifestation and development of the divine order 

 of the universe. The paramount law which domin- 

 ates the universe is itself but the outward cxpn-s 

 sion of the government of God, and is ever identical 

 with calm and temperate reason. Reason is the 

 criterion by which even revelation is to lie distin- 

 guished as to what is eternal and immutable and 

 what is variable according to the necessities of 

 expediency. There is a broad distinction between 

 natural and supernatural law, but both supplement 

 and complete each other, both have their place 

 in the interpretation of the ways of God to man. 

 Authority must ever be allowed great weight in the 



