writings indicate that he possessed a cheerful and healthy
disposition, and that he was capable of discovering enjoyment
in everyday pleasures, and of appreciating human life and character
in a wide variety of aspects. He seems to have had a special
delight in outward nature—as he expressed it, he loved “to see
God’s blessing spring out of his mother earth”; and he spent
much of his spare time in visiting his parishioners, his deference
towards them, if excessive, being yet mingled with a grave
dignity which rendered unwarrantable liberties impossible. As
a preacher, though singularly devoid of the qualities which win
the applause of the multitude, he always excited the interest
of the more intelligent, the breadth and finely balanced wisdom
of his thoughts and the fascination of his composition greatly
modifying the impression produced by his weak voice and
ineffective manner. Partly, doubtless, on account of his dim-sightedness,
he never removed his eye from his manuscript,
and, according to Fuller, “he may be said to have made good
music with his fiddle and stick alone, having neither pronunciation
nor gesture to grace his matter.”
To accede without explanation to the claim put forth for the Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker, that it marks an epoch in English prose literature and English thought, would both be to do some injustice to writers previous to him, and, if not to overestimate his influence, to misinterpret its character. By no means can his excursions in English prose be regarded as chiefly those of a pioneer; and not only is his intellectual position inferior to that of Shakespeare, Spenser and Bacon,[1] who alone can be properly reckoned as the master spirits of the age, but in reality what effect he may have had upon the thought of his contemporaries was soon disregarded and swept out of sight in the hand-to-hand struggle with Puritanism, and his influence, so far from being immediate and confined to one particular era, has since the reaction against Puritanism been slowly and imperceptibly permeating and colouring English thought. His work is, however, the earliest in English prose with enough of the preserving salt of excellence to adapt it to the mental palate of modern readers. Attempts more elaborate than those of the old chroniclers had been made two centuries previously to employ English prose both for narrative and for discussion; and, a few years before him, Roger Ascham, Sir Thomas More, Latimer, Sir Philip Sidney, the compilers of the prayer book, and various translators of the Bible, had in widely different departments of literature brought to light many samples of the rich wealth of expression that was latent in the language; but Hooker’s is the first independent work in English prose of notable power and genius, and the vigour and grasp of its thought are not more remarkable than the felicity of its literary style. Its more usual and obvious excellences are clearness of expression, notwithstanding occasionally complicated methods; great aptness and conciseness in the formation of individual clauses, and such a fine sense of proportion and rhythm in their arrangement as almost conceals the difficulties of syntax by which he was hampered; finished simplicity, notwithstanding a stateliness too uniform and unbroken; a nice discrimination in the choice of words and phrases, so as both to portray the exact shade of his meaning, and to express each of his thoughts with that degree of emphasis appropriate to its place in his composition. In regard to qualities more relating to the matter than the manner we may note the subtle and partly hidden humour; the strong enthusiasm underlying that seemingly calm and passionless exposition of principles which continually led him away from the minutiae of temporary disputes, and has earned for him the somewhat misleading epithet of “judicious;” the solidity of learning, not ostentatiously displayed, but indicated in the character and variety of his illustrations and his comprehensive mastery of all that relates to his subject; the breadth of his conceptions, and the sweep and ease of his movements in the highest regions of thought; the fine poetical descriptions occasionally introduced, in which his eloquence attains a grave, rich and massive harmony that compares not unfavourably with the finest prose of Milton. His manner is, of course, defective in the flexibility and variety characteristic of the best models of English prose literature after the language had been enriched and perfected by long use, and his sentences, constructed too much according to Latin usages, are often tautological and too protracted into long concatenations of clauses; but if, when regarded superficially, his style presents in some respects a stiff and antiquated aspect, it yet possesses an original and innate charm that has retained its freshness after the lapse of nearly three centuries.
The direct interest in the Ecclesiastical Polity is now philosophical and political rather than theological, for what theological importance it possessed was rather in regard to the spirit and method in which theology should be discussed than in regard to the decision of strictly theological points. Hooker bases his reasoning on principles which he discovered in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, but the intellectual atmosphere of his age was different from that which surrounded them; he was acted upon by new and more various impulses enabling him to imbibe more thoroughly the spirit of Greek thought which was the source of their inspiration, and thus to reach a higher and freer region than scholasticism, and in a sense to inaugurate modern philosophy in England. It may be admitted that his principles are only partially and in some degree capriciously wrought out—that if he is not under the dominion of intellectual tendencies leading to opposite results there are occasional blanks and gaps in his argument where he seems sometimes to be groping after a meaning which he cannot fully grasp; but he is often charged with obscurity simply because readers of various theological schools, beholding in his principles what seem the outline and justification of their own ideas, are disappointed when they find that these outlines instead of acquiring as they narrowly examine them the full and definite form of their anticipations, widen out into a region beyond their notions and sympathies, and therefore from their point of view enveloped in mist and shade. It is the exposition of philosophical principles in the first and second books of the Polity, and not the application of these principles in the remaining books that gives the work its standard place in English literature. It was intended to be an answer to the attacks of the Presbyterians on the Episcopalian polity and customs, but no attempt is made directly to oust Presbyterianism from the place it then held in the Church of England. The work must rather be regarded as a remonstrance against the narrow ground chosen by the Presbyterians for their basis of attack, Hooker’s exact position being that “a necessity of polity and regiment may be held in all churches without holding any form to be necessary.”
The general purpose of his reasoning is to vindicate Episcopacy from objections that had been urged against it, but he attains a result which has other and wider consequences than this. The fundamental principle on which he bases his reasoning is the unity and all-embracing character of law—law “whose seat,” he beautifully says, “is the bosom of God, whose voice the harmony of the world.” Law—as operative in nature, as regulating each man’s individual character and actions, as seen in the formations of societies and governments—is equally a manifestation and development of the divine order according to which God Himself acts, is the expression in various forms of the divine reason. He makes a distinction between natural and positive laws, the one being eternal and immutable, the other varying according to external necessity and expediency; and he includes all the forms of government under laws that are positive and therefore alterable according to circumstances. Their application is to be determined by reason, reason enlightened and strengthened by every variety of knowledge, discipline and experience. The leading feature in his system is the high place assigned to reason, for, though affirming that certain truths necessary to salvation could be made known only by special divine revelation, he yet elevates reason into the criterion by which these truths are to be judged, and the standard to determine what in revelation is temporal and what eternal. “It is not the word of God itself,” he says, “which doth or possibly can assure us that we do well to think it His word.” At the same time he saves himself from the dangers of abstract and rash theorizing by a deep and absolute regard for facts, the diligent and accurate study of which he makes of the first importance to the proper use of reason. “The general and perpetual voice of men is,” he says, “as the sentence of God Himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, nature herself must needs have taught; and, God being the author of nature, her voice is but His instrument.” Applying his principles to man individually, the foundation of morality is, according to Hooker, immutable, and rests “on that law which God from the beginning hath set Himself to do all things by”; this law is to be discovered by reason; and the perfection which reason teaches us to strive after is stated, with characteristic breadth of conception and regard to the facts of human nature, to be “a triple perfection: first a sensual, consisting in those things which very life itself requireth, either as necessary supplements, or as beauties or ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, consisting in those things which none underneath man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly, a spiritual or divine, consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural means here, but cannot here attain unto them.” Applying his principles to man as a member of a community, he assigns practically the same origin and sanctions to ecclesiastical as to civil government. His theory of government forms the basis of the Treatise on Civil Government by Locke, although Locke developed the theory in a way that Hooker would not have sanctioned. The force and justification of government Hooker derives from public approbation, either given directly by the parties immediately concerned, or indirectly through inheritance from their ancestors. “Sith men,” he says, “naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent we could in such sort be at no man’s commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after, by the like universal agreement.” His theory as he stated it is in various of its aspects and applications liable to objection; but taken as a whole it is the first philosophical statement of the principles which, though disregarded in the succeeding age, have since regulated political progress in England
- ↑ If Bacon was the author of The Christian Paradoxes, his philosophical standpoint in reference to religion was not only less advanced than that of Hooker, but in a sense directly opposed to it.
