16
whole Church and Hooker were by ultra-Protestants always so accounted.
Hooker then says (Eccl. Pol. i. 14.):
"We do not reject them (the Romish traditions) only because they are not in the Scripture, but because they are neither in Scripture, nor can otherwise sufficiently, by any reason, be proved to be of God. That which is of God, and may be evidently proved to be so, we deny not but it hath in his kind, although unwritten, the self-same force and authority with the written laws of God. It is by ours [1]acknowledged 'that the apostles did in every Church institute and ordain some rites and customs serving for the seemliness of Church regimen; which rites and customs they have not committed imto writing.' Those rites and customs being known to be apostolical, and having the nature of things changeable, were no less to be accounted of in the Church than other things of the like degree, that is to say, capable in like sort of alteration, although set down in the apostles' writings. For both being known to be apostolical, it is not the manner of delivering them unto the Church, but the Author from whom they proceed, which doth give them their force and credit."
Again, one of these writers, among the dangers of altering the Liturgy, notices the tendency of change itself to produce the love of changing, the appetite growing with what it feeds on. With this view, he instances objections, which men of opposite characters might take to the commencement of the service; as, one might think, "the introductory sentences not evangelical enough;" another, "the form of absolution not strong enough." Now the very object of the Tract, and the character of the illustrations, showed the writer to be (as he indeed is), content with things as they stand. The jest, however, required that you should represent the contrary as the opinion of the writers of the Tracts, and the Pope feeling for them when they lament concerning the absolution (p. 12),
"that it is a mere declaration, not an announcement of pardon to those who have confessed."
Yet granting that a writer had thought this "absolution" not strong enough, thb would not make out the writer a Papist, since the absolution in the Communion-service is, (as
- ↑ Whitaker adv. Bellarm. qu. 6. cap. 6.
