The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: Containing Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and Several Other ... Which is Prefixed The Life of the Author: V.1

Works of Richard Hooker #1

by Richard Hooker, Izaak Walton

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Genres: Theology

524 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1593

About the author

Richard Hooker (March 1554 – 3 November 1600) was an Anglican priest and an influential theologian. Hooker's emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition considerably influenced the development of Anglicanism. He was the co-founder (with Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker) of Anglican theological thought. Hooker's great Elizabethan guide to Church Government and Discipline is both a masterpiece of English prose and one of the bulwarks of the Established Church in England. Hooker projected eight books for the great work. The first four books of Ecclesiastical Polity appeared in 1593, Book V in 1597. Hooker died in 1600 at the age of forty-six and the remaining three books were completed, though not revised, before his death. The manuscripts fell into careless or unscrupulous hands and were not published until long afterwards (1648 to 1662), and then only in mutilated form. Samuel Pepys makes mention of Hooker's Polity three times in his Diary, first in 1661, "Mr. Chetwind fell commending of 'Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' as the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian, which puts me upon the buying of it, which I will do shortly." In 1667 Pepys bought the new edition that had been printed in 1666, the first to include the life of Hooker by Izaak Walton.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Copious, controversial, and insightful: Hooker was not only the consummate Anglican theologian, but deserves a wider reputation as one of the consummate Reformation theologians generally, and thus should enjoy a place right alongside Luther and Calvin. Don't be satisfied with the second-hand Hooker you get from trite shibboleths like "via media" or vague metaphors like the three-legged stool: this argument deserves to be appreciated in all its detail and nuance. Broadly, the point here is to explore the theme of law in general, and particularly what kind of law and government God wills his church to have. Specifically, Hooker was responding to those Puritans who wanted the Church of England to conform in every detail to the church polity that had been developed at Geneva (which would be familiar from looking at any Presbyterian church today). This system of lay elders, synods, and stripped-down liturgy was, Puritans averred, the only biblically lawful polity, prompting Hooker to respond with this first volley in his 1,200 page "nuh-uh."

While written to respond to Puritans, presently this volume is just as necessary as a corrective against the excesses of the so-called Catholic revival in the Anglican church, with its preoccupation with "apostolic succession" and episcopacy as a part of the esse of the church.