Page:Culture and Anarchy, Third edition, 1882, Matthew Arnold.djvu/36

xxxii then he talks history; and his language has behind it, in my opinion, facts which make the latitudinarianism of our Broad Churchmen quite illusory.

Certainly, culture will never make us think it an essential of religion whether we have in our Church discipline 'a popular authority of elders,' as Hooker calls it, or whether we have Episcopal jurisdiction. Certainly, Hooker himself did not think it an essential; for in the dedication of his Ecclesiastical Polity, speaking of these questions of church-discipline which gave occasion to his great work, he says they are 'in truth, for the greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner.' Hooker's great work against the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of England was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who read it), not because Episcopalianism is essential, but because its impugners maintained that Presbyterianism is essential, and that Episcopalianism is sinfuL Neither the one nor the other is either essential or sinful, and much may be said on behalf of both. But what is important to be remarked is, that both were in the Church of England at the Reformation, and that Presbyterianism was only extruded gradually. We have mentioned Hooker, and