An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity

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HOOKER AND THE ANGLICAN TRADITION AN HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDY OF HOOKER’S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY

JOHN S. MARSHALL Professor of Philosophy The University of the South

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK LONDON

FIRST PUBLISHED I963 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS SEWANEE, TENNESSEE

A. AND C. BLACK

4, 5

LIMITED

AND 6 SOHO SQUARE LONDON W. I

© 1963 JOHN SEDBERRY MARSHALL

The preparation of the manuscript of this book was aided by funds from the Faculty Research Grants of The University of the South Gratitude is due to the Rev. Powel M. Dawley of the General Theological Seminary for his learned counsel

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEIUCA

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PREFACE

It IS hard to overestimate the importance of Hooker. probably the greatest defender of the Prayer Book.

He was

The strength

of his defense is to be found in his use of the fhilosophia perennis^ and of the theology built upon it.

He so employs this traditional

thought that the Book of Common Prayer becomes meaningful and inherently significant.

We too are living in an age when

the philosophia perennis is again triumphant, and it is important that the greatest English-speaking exponent of this philosophy should be known and appreciated by us. Professor Sisson says: In the long and crowded roll of great English men of letters there is no figure of greater significance to the instructed mind than Hooker. ... His own life’s work [ The Ecclesi¬ astical Polity] is a monument of pure and splendid prose style and lucid philosophical thought, based on unsurpassed scholarship m the vast field of his theme. The book itself is a milestone in the history of a great English institution [the Anglican Church] and of religious thought."" Because he was seen by his own age as the defender of the Establishment, Churchmen did not recognize Hooker’s creative genius.

The Puritans knew the importance of his thought, and

the direction of his thinking, but they did not count him great. His friends thought of him as significant, but did not fully realize the importance of his achievement.

They could not discern what

a constructive synthesis of thought he had created, and how much his thinking would influence the future. In his own age. Hooker was considered the defender of the Elizabethan Establishment.

Puritanism was powerful, and it

threatened the general character of the Church and the way of life defended by the Church.

Granted, much of the older catholic

’Sisson, C. J., The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, p. ix.

PREFACE

vi

order has disappeared, but the Puritans wished to destroy what remained.

The episcopacy, the sacraments and the liturgical ser¬

vice were threatened, and in many parishes had been so weakened that they were in fact ineffectual.

There was chaos in the Church,

and this chaos was both produced by the Puritans and then used by them to carry out a reform movement which would ultimately destroy Anglicanism.

Hooker was to his contemporaries a de¬

fender of the order and discipline, the sacraments and the liturgy, of the Elizabethan Church.

That his defense indicated a direction

of possible development was not then seen.

Hooker’s philosophy

and theology had a positive character which was rooted in the history of the Church but was not the usual system of thought of the Elizabethan age. Reynolds of Corpus Christi and Whitgift remained loyal to Hooker, although he was developing a theology different from their own.

As the great champion of the Prayer Book they ac¬

cepted himj and for that reason they honored him and remained true to him.

But Hooker was not only defending the Prayer

Book and the monarchy, he was also developing a massive theological system, based on contemporary Roman thinkers of the highest constructive importance. Because Hooker used contemporary Thomists for his thought, we must not commit the error of making Hooker a mere mediaevalist in the sense that Bilson and Andrews were patristic. was Janus-faced.

He

His eyes were turned not only on the past but

on the present and the future.

His truest successor in political

thinking was Burke, and Burke believed in meeting the new political situations with the wisdom of the past, but he also be¬ lieved that a new situation should be interpreted in terms of its own needs and characteristics.

Parkin, in his recent book. The

Moral Basis of Burke^s Political Thought^ reveals Burke as the follower of Hooker rather than of Locke.

Burke’s notion is that

of the constant use of the past, but also the use of creative freedom

PREFACE

vii

to meet the fresh and novel demands of the present. trine Burke draws from Hooker.

This doc¬

Hooker was thus more judicious than were his followers. was wise where they were unwise.

He

It now is clear that his defense

of the Constitutional Monarchy is a case in point.

The more

primitive notion of the Divine Right of Kings adopted by the High-Churchmen almost destroyed Anglicanism.

Despite Old

Testament and Byzantine precedents, this was an unwise Anglican doctrine.

Undoubtedly, the Byzantine Church had accepted this

notion and developed the Roman law to conform to it.

For that

reason, the Stuarts defended it and the Anglican bishops did the same.

But Hooker was not a mere defender of the first centuries

of the Christian Church j he believed in the growing insight of wisdom.

Byzantine Roman law he did use, but he was not a

slave to it.

Wisdom is justified by all her children.

Hooker

did not deify the early Church j he was not a mere defender of the ancient past.

Hence, he accepted constitutional monarchy, as

did the greatest English lawyers from Bracton to Sir Edward Coke. Hooker did influence his generation. Church in the seventeenth century. tarians.

He did influence the

He did influence the Trac-

However, his disciples have not usually had the modera¬

tion which was so characteristic of him.

He had a greatness lack¬

ing in his theological and ecclesiastical followers.

He used a

richer philosophy than they didj he followed greater lawyers. He was great with the greatness of a Shakespeare, and requires large¬ ness of view and firmness of foundation in his followers. John 1963

S. Marshall

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