Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/300

 not to be found in the Scriptures a definite form of church polity, the laws of which may not be altered. In Book iv. he vindicates, in the light of his philosophic conclusions, the government of the English church in opposition to that of Rome and the reformed churches. In Book v. he expounds and justifies in detail the ceremonies and ritual of the established church. Books vii. and viii. deal respectively with the advantages of episcopacy over presbyterianism, and with the relations that ought to subsist between the church and throne. Keble insists that Hooker credited episcopacy with a divine origin, but it is doubtful if Hooker, whose cautious moderation in treating the subject is very notable, intends to claim much more for episcopacy than that it is the most convenient form of church government, and is justified in practice by history. The interpolations and alterations which the manuscripts of the seventh book have undergone at the hands of partisans, make it dangerous to infer very much from occasional expressions which tally ill with the general tone of argument.

Exceptional dignity of style and wealth of illustration from classical and mediæval writers characterise the five completed books. The seventh and eighth books, although merely compiled from Hooker's notes, betray much of Hooker's literary workmanship. The great treatise first proved the capacity of English prose for treating severe topics with a force and beauty which the great classical models rarely excelled. Hooker's style is based on Latin models, and is often cumbrous and stiff, but it never lacks solidity nor dignity. He was a thorough logician in the arrangement of his sentences, always gives the emphatic word the emphatic place, even at the cost of intricacies of construction, and was keenly sensitive to the harmonious sequence of words. ‘His stile,’ says Fuller, ‘was long and pithy, driving on a whole flock of clauses before he comes to the close of a sentence;’ but although he demands his reader's full attention, he is not unduly prolix, and extorts by his own intellectual cogency his reader's acquiescence in his conclusions. In his own day the grandeur of his literary style excited the sneers of his enemies, who charged him with sacrificing religious fervour to culture and philosophy. Swift (in the Tatler, No. 230) asserts that Hooker, like Parsons the jesuit, had written so naturally that his English had survived all changes of fashion. In Hallam's phrase, ‘Hooker not only opened the mine, but explored the depths of our native eloquence.’ From a literary point of view Hooker must be ranked with Bacon.

Hooker's work was appreciated by his contemporaries. Churchmen at once adopted its arguments. Walton says that a learned English Romanist—either Cardinal Allen or Dr. Stapleton—read the first book to Pope Clement XII, who declared ‘there is no learning that this man hath not searched into; nothing too hard for his understanding,’ and desired that it should be translated into Latin. James I expressed extravagant admiration for the treatise, and Charles I recommended it to his children ‘as an excellent means to satisfie private scruples and settle the publique peace of the church and kingdom.’ James II illogically pretended that perusal of it converted him to Roman catholicism. Anglican divines, from Hammond to Keble and Dean Church, have written much in Hooker's praise.

Puritan opponents attempted to counteract the effects of Hooker's book in his own lifetime in ‘A Christian Letter to certaine English Protestants, unfained favourers of the present state of Religion, authorised and professed in England; unto that reverend and learned man, R. Hoo, requiring resolution in certain matters of doctrine which seeme to overthrow the foundation of Christian Religion and of the Church among us, expreslie contained in his five books of “Ecclesiastical Policie,”’ 1599. This is clearly the work of some experienced puritan controversialist. Dr. Wordsworth suggests that it was by Andrew Willett. The writer's friends pretended that the attack so wounded Hooker ‘that it was not the least cause to procure his death.’ But William Covel [q. v.], who issued a reply—‘A Just and Temperate Defence’—in 1603, asserted that ‘he contemned it in his wisdom,’ although had he lived he would have answered it. Notes by Hooker on grace, the sacraments, predestination, &c., which were intended to form a reply to the ‘Christian Letter,’ have been printed by Keble from manuscripts preserved in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Dublin.

Besides the ‘Ecclesiastical Polity,’ the following works of Hooker have been published (they were prepared by Henry Jackson under Dr. Spencer's direction): 1. ‘Answer to the Supplication that Mr. Travers made to the Council,’ Oxford, 1612, 4to. 2. ‘A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works show the Foundation of Faith is overthrown, on Habak. i. 4,’ Oxford, 1612, 4to. 3. ‘A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride, on Habak. ii. 4,’ Oxford, 1612, 4to. 4. ‘A Remedy against Sorrow and Fear, delivered in a Funeral Sermon, on John xiv. 27,’ Oxford, 1612, 4to. 5. ‘A Learned and Comfortable Sermon of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the