The Real Teaching of Richard Hooker

Dr Roger Beckwith opened his essay entitled ‘The Real Teaching of Richard Hooker’ by saying:

Hooker was a second-generation Reformer. He did not have the task of distinguishing Anglican theology from that of Roman Catholics or Anabaptists. This had been done by the first-generation Reformers Cranmer and his colleagues, and their conclusions had been embodied in the Anglican formularies, especially the Thirty-nine Articles, from the teaching of which Hooker never strayed. Hooker’s task was the more sensitive one of defending Anglican theology against other Protestants, who wanted to alter it. His great book ‘The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’ is this defence. He uses some new arguments, but what he is defending is the reformed status quo.

The other Protestants in question were the Elizabethan Puritans, and especially Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, with whom Hooker came into personal controversy. They too were sons of the Reformation, and honoured particularly the work of John Calvin. But they wanted to make his theology more comprehensive and more exclusive, so that it covered not just doctrine and morals but matters of church order, and gave Scripture not just the supreme authority but the sole authority on all these things, without leaving much place for tradition or reason.­

Hooker, by contrast, respected human reason and church tradition, though only in so far as they did not conflict with Scripture, which (unlike reason and tradition) he believed to be completely reliable, as being the inspired word of God. Reason and tradition may supplement Scripture, he argued, on matters where Scripture is silent, but must bow to Scripture when Scripture speaks.’

Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

Hooker has been criticised for the term ‘laws’ in this his major work though he chose, defined and used it most carefully. Not giving due consideration to Hooker’s definition and usage, careless critics have accused Hooker of taking an entirely legal approach to the Christian life. However, Hooker, unlike most of his critics, did not split the Covenant into two, teaching a temporary covenant of works and a permanent covenant of Grace. For him, law included grace, and grace law, as Christ was the Christian’s Law-Keeper within His fulfilment and keeping of the one eternal Covenant of Grace. It is the balance between law and grace that reflects the character of the Godhead where justice meets mercy. As long as Christ is, and He is always, law and grace form a unity in Him.

It is because of Roger Beckwith’s outstanding witness to the doctrines of the Reformation as expressed by Hooker that I engaged in a long study of Hooker’s works which are thoroughly Reformed and thoroughly Church of England in the way that this now broken-down Church needs to become again. I have not finished this study by a long chalk but have gained enough insight into his works to realise that Hooker stood out from his times as a worthy representative of the true, Reformed, Puritan faith untarnished by the foibles of the Mediaeval Church and the politico-religious contract of the Great Rebellion. I see Hooker as being a timeless guide to effective, practical and, above all, Scriptural, policies of faith and conduct. So though there has been much sectarian debate recently as to where the cradle and finishing school of true British Puritanism is to be found, this writer is convinced that both are to be found in Hooker’s Reformed heritage to a higher degree than in any later Puritan. Indeed, modern usage of the term ‘Puritan’ amongst Presbyterian and Dissenting bodies has taken a U-turn. In the time of William Prynne’s legal hold on the Presbyterians, he wrote a number of pamphlets with the theme ‘Protestants Contra Puritans’ in which he urged Presbyterians to take the Protestant part against the Old-School Puritans such as Davenant, Hall and Durie, all Church of England ministers. This will come as a surprise to many who limit the era of Puritanism to the short period of Commonwealth Republicanism in which true, Reformed Puritanism had nigh died out. During those times, Puritanism had to struggle with a state and Church system which was radically anti-Puritan in the old true sense and was to continue so until the 18th Century Awakening. Nowadays, the term Puritan has been so radicalised that it has almost lost any usable meaning. Indeed, church leaders such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones use the term ‘Puritans’ to express chiefly political revolutionaries as I have shown in other articles on this web-site.

Mediaeval Reformers such as Bradwardine, Grossetesse and Wycliffe had their Puritanism stifled by the Roman Catholic system around them and Cromwell’s Puritans had to labour under the outlawing of the Reformed Church of England and a politicising and thought-policing of religion. In the peace of Elizabeth’s reign, Hooker had almost a free hand in developing his thoughts and policies within the Established Church of his day, though he had strong anti-Reformed and rational-minded critics who looked for a new religion based on human reason, political tyranny and a new kind of Mosaic Law, seen through eyes less forgiving than Moses and Christ. Thus Hooker’s Practical Divinity based on the spiritual accomplishments of the Reformation was rejected by the budding Presbyterians of his day in favour of a Discipline and Order enforced directly by Parliament and not by the Church. Indeed, the Church as a body of believers was not respected by these upstarts who invented a new oligarchical clergy of monarchical elders to deal with God on behalf of His Church which was thus robbed of its own maturity and spiritual responsibilities. Indeed, the Presbyterians alleged in the Westminster Assembly debates that when Jesus spoke of the ‘two or three’ who gather in Jesus name, he does not mean the Church but the Presbytery who speaks for the Church.

Scripture not a book of statutory disciplinary laws and regimented conduct

In my studies, I quickly realised that Hooker was insisting on a direct understanding of Scripture inspired by its very words and was an avid critic of those would-be Protestants who built their faith on what they believed they found by what can only be called extra-Biblical revelation, reading between the lines of Holy Writ. Thus he had hard work encountering the theories of such as Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers who had picked up a new kind of political theology on the Continent, especially from the new Heidelberg School which was composed of former Lutherans and Calvinists who now believed that Luther and Calvin had been too lax on discipline, order and church structures. The early days of this intolerant movement is witnessed by the correspondence of Bullinger and Calvin with Bartholomew Traheron in which Traheron scolds Bullinger for not being as strict as Calvin and then, after turning from Bullinger to Calvin, scolds Calvin for not being as strict as he had hoped.

Those who have followed the school of thought these extremists founded, which had little to do with either the British or the Continental Reformation, have not bothered to open their history books to discover from whence these new ideas come but, as they tickle their own fancy for man-made religion, they are happy to follow in the wake of such Counter-Reformation rebels who replaced the Bible by Cartwright’s and Travers’ ‘Directory of Church Government’ issued in 1644 by the rebel government.

Cartwright and Travers withstood Reformed thinking

Thus, unlike the modern view that Cartwright and Travers followed Calvin, I maintain that they rejected the main emphasis of both Luther and Calvin concerning the justified life of faith through grace and based their theology on the Hyper-Lutheran and Hyper-Calvinism of Lutheran and Reformed rebels who complained to Bullinger and the Church of England Puritans that the Reformation hitherto had not been strict enough in discipline and church order. These rebels, once back in England, also believed that the establishing of a true Biblical Church was the duty of Parliament and not Church convocations and that Parliament ought to overrule Convocation’s support of the Book of Common Prayer and substitute by a Parliamentary ordered ‘Book of Discipline,’ written by Travers, which taught that the Church should be ruled by an oligarchy of presbyters acting as the gathered Church and in lieu of it. They even viewed their church order as a dogmatic requirement for the truly faithful. Thus books of rules were put forward as an alternative to books of worship and doctrinal edification. We cannot complain about modern Islamic Sharia rulings unless we get to grips with our own Dissenting history. The intolerance of Travers in comparison to the tolerance of Hooker is illustrated by Hooker’s Mastership of the Temple Church under which ministry Travers served in a subordinate role for a while. Hooker did not enforce his beloved Reformed Thirty-Nine Articles onto Travers who answered the generosity of his superior in rank by advocating extreme intolerance and the removal of Hooker from his office. Travers was for a democratic committee of ministers, providing they followed his quite tyrannical rule. He gave as his ideal Geneva but we must remember that Calvin did not introduce Presbyterianism to Geneva in any way but took over the old system of the Savoy bishops, who ruled both secularly and ecclesiastically calling himself President. The only trouble he had was that the Geneva Councils never took him seriously. When he died, the Councils suggested that Beza should aim to follow Bullinger and Bucer before thinking in Calvin’s terms. Beza emphasised that his own form of Church government under a ruling Moderator was no pattern for all Churches but had grown out of the historical and political situation of the times. Thus neither English politics nor the English Church took Presbyterianism seriously until Cromwell lowered political and ecclesiastical standards and gave the Presbyterians power, only to repent of this five years later and go to the other extreme and have them banned from power through Pride’s Purge. The Presbyterians took the quite unfinished Westminster Standards with them and made this document of compromise their official standard whilst trusting in their Directories for every-day practice.

Much ado about nothing

Though Travers wished to serve within the Church of England structure and had nothing against been appointed by the Archbishop, he refused to be ordained into the Church of England and travelled to Antwerp to be ordained in a Dutch church as an elder where such an ordination was for work within that church only. What principles moved him to this odd act, we shall perhaps never know. Thereafter, he returned to England and demanded that his ordination should be accepted there, thus annulling his ordination in the eyes of the Antwerp church. Whitgift pointed out that in England, ordination was for a ministry within the Church of England just as an Antwerp ordination was for a ministry in that church. He also explained to Travers that for this reason a Church of England ordination was deemed invalid in Antwerp just as an Antwerp ordination gave the ordained no authority to serve in the English Church. Thus, though Travers was welcome in the Church of England fold, he refrained from ordination on the grounds that he was already an elder in a Dutch church and he stuck to the principle that his original ordination ought to be valid in the Church of England. This was Travers’ lop-sided, one-way view of ecumenism. Even in Geneva, apparently a city so esteemed by Travers, candidates for the Genevan ministry who had an ordination from a foreign church were required to be re-ordained. Nevertheless, toleration in the Church of England was greater than that in the Continental churches, including the Netherlands as Laud was to point out in his efforts to have a general recognition of orders between the Church of England, the Presbyterians and the Lutherans and Travers was allowed to minister in the Temple Church. After 1631 such a policy was taken up by the French. Modern Presbyterians have always criticised Laud for his intolerance, forgetting that Laud accepted Continental ordained ministers though English refugees in the Netherlands had to form refugee churches as the Dutch churches would not accept them as members. A case in point is Presbyterian Robert Durie who was exiled to the Netherlands around this time but was refused a church and had to form one of British merchants and refugees. The secular authorities scolded the Dutch churches for their narrow-mindedness and promised to pay Durie’s salary, a promise they kept. However, it is the opinion of this author after studying Continental church ruling from a historical perspective that the English Dissenters were the most stubborn in arguing against re-ordination, though they would not accept an Episcopalian ordination as a valid ordination. In other words, they re-ordained, too.

A false picture of Presbyterianism

Here is my major quarrel with Olive M. Griffiths’ otherwise well-documented work on the Rakes’ Progress of Presbyterianism from ‘rigidity and conservatism’ to Unitarianism and Liberalism in her Religion and Learning: A Study in English Presbyterian Thought from the Bartholomew Ejections (1662) to the Foundation of the Unitarian Movement. The authoress argues that Presbyterianism entered on its unorthodox and rationalist intolerant path first after its followers refused to join the restored Church of England in 1662. This is historically not true as the Presbyterians in 1662 had never known orthodoxy and anti-rationalism and their arguments for rejecting the Church of England in 1662 were exactly the same as the unorthodox and radical arguments Cartwright broadcast almost a hundred years before. So, too, Griffiths is inaccurate concerning her view of the British Bartholomew Night persecutions. It was on the anniversary of that deadly night that the Presbyterians had the Church of England outlawed and severely persecuted in 1643 and thus it was only right that her restoration to her English home after years of exile and persecution should be celebrated on that day. So, too, Griffiths does not mention that Charles II pronounced an Edict of Toleration which was refused by a Parliament which still insisted on using Cromwellian laws to restrict true religion. Nevertheless, it was in this post-1662 Parliament that the Presbyterians put their trust and from which they planned further rebellion with the New Scottish Presbyterians to the fore who were much more intolerant than the pre-Melville Scottish Church. The Banner of Truth have brought out during these past days a book advocating Presbyterians to leave the Church of Scotland because it follows liberal and worldly principles. It was the re-forming of the Church of Scotland by the Presbyterians with such principles at its base that brought Scotland’s Church to its knees. The Presbyterians should stay in that institution which they have formed as it sadly is and not move out to harm other churches. Now they have swarmed from one hive to attack a multitude of others and their general foul brood is now spread further afield. The foulness contacted by Cartwright and Travers has now spread throughout the English-speaking world. How we need Reformed people to again stand up and be counted and rise for action!

The view of the then Church of England on church policy

Hooker believed sincerely that true religion was expressed clearly by the inspired Word of God in writing and where questions were raised concerning matters not directly arising from Scripture, Scriptural principles must be applied to judge its subsidiary relevance. This was quite in keeping with the doctrines of the Reformation as expressed in Article XX of the Church of England:

“The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.”

Reason no basis for faith

Cartwright and Travers did hold that all questions of belief and church order must be explicitly ruled by Scripture, but, as indicated above, their view of Scriptural interpretation was deduced from extra-Scriptural sources, often placing their view of church order and discipline as the basis on which saving faith is built. Hooker accepted the use of reason but not where it was used as a basis of faith. In other words, Cartwright and Travers applied reason as an extension of the Spirit’s Word, leaving them with an extended view of what was required of God’s Church, thus accepting dogma as faith itself. This is why wise John Whitgift argued in his correspondence with Cartwright that the latter taught Roman Catholicism under a new name. This correspondence has been preserved in the Parker Society collection and is essential reading for those who are interested in the quarrel over Reformed principles and church order which continually impoverishes true Biblical thinking through those who feel they are holier than their brethren. If enthusiastic fans who still praise Cartwright’s short and temporary rebellion against the Church of England would read his writings closer, they would see that especially on justification and the doctrine of the Church, Cartwright and Travers were merely free-thinkers who did not extend their thinking to Scriptural depths.

Indeed, when we take into account the fact that both Cartwright and Travers taught that the Word of God was only valid as such when interpreted by a priest and that the public reading of Scripture should be forbidden; and that the substance of the sacraments depends on their celebration by a minister; and that the rule of governments must be placed under the institutionalised Church, then we are obviously back in the realms of Rome.

Law cannot be separated from Grace and remain Biblical

Another difference between gospel-minded Hooker and the budding Presbyterian Dissenters was that he used pan-Biblical principles to determine his entire conduct and church life without separating law from grace but seeing both united in the gospel that teaches the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. Hooker’s opponents limited their conduct to an entirely legal appreciation of the Scriptures based on using them as a book of case-law. What the New Testament did not explicitly and verbatim teach, they argued, could not be used as a New Testament guide. There was no such thing as interpreting the spirit of the New Testament but the New Testament should be understood by Old Testament prescribed usages, re-interpreted by them, again, similarly to how many Muslims regard their Sharia laws. Indeed, the debate between true Puritan Whitgift and would-be Puritan Cartwright was whether or not the Mosaic Law was the one code of life for Christians. Whitgift argued that the Law of Moses could never justify law-breakers but only Christ’s keeping of it for us. Holiness was being in Christ, not being in Adam or Moses. For his opponents, ‘Law’ without ‘Grace’ was thus applicable to cases where Hooker saw the necessity of Grace abounding within Law. Instead of using the New Testament, like Bullinger, as a commentary on the Old, they used the Old Testament to explain how the New Testament should be enforced.

Episcopacy as seen by Cartwright and Travers in their ‘Discipline and Order’

Nowhere was the difference in Scriptural understanding made more apparent than in Cartwright’s and Travers’ view of the episcopacy as opposed to that of Hooker, though both parties claimed Scriptural authority for their understanding. This writer will thus strive as objectively as possible to outline the teaching on the episcopacy as stated by Cartwright and Travers in opposition to Hooker and the Reformed Church of England and the Book of Common Prayer. However, he wishes to make clear that he believes Cartwright and Travers were erroneous in their Biblical theology concerning the episcopacy and Hooker was not only the greater Biblical exegete in the matter of the bishop’s office but the greater reformer of the episcopacy against false views of it and its misuse. Roger Beckwith explains in his ‘The Real Teaching of Richard Hooker’, how that Cartwright and Travers opened the doors with their faulty view of the Episcopacy to denominational chaos in the churches. He shows how:

‘Cartwright and Travers were both determined Presbyterians . . . . and they wanted the Church of England to turn Presbyterian. Cartwright strongly attacked the constitution of the Church of England, and Travers declined to accept Anglican ordination or to subscribe to the 39 Articles. But it was not long before other Puritans arose who agreed that examples in Scripture are equivalent to commands, but argued that the examples we see there are not of Presbyterianism but of Congregationalism. The great Puritan of the next century, John Owen, was not a Presbyterian but a Congregationalist. So to turn examples into commands had unforeseen dangers.’

Here Beckwith is demonstrating how the quarrel with such as Hooker has led to the chaos of denominationalism spawned by the anti-Reformation Revolution pioneered by such as Cartwright and Travers and further initiated by Cromwell where each sect felt it had something ‘new’ in church discipline which is so profound and necessary that it is reason enough for separating from their brethren and going into ‘holy isolation’.

Combatting the rot within

Realising that the organised Church was its own worst enemy, Hooker strove to warn his brethren against the rot within rather than any rot outside such as in the Roman Catholic Church or the growing secular state. Though he did show how such elements were a danger to true religion, his main concern was reforming the members within the Reformed Church of England whether they were clergy or laity. His understanding was that there were more commonwealths destroyed by corruption and mismanagement within than from dangers without. Here, Hooker most certainly placed the major blame on the clergy rather than the people in the pews or those poor who had to stand in the aisles. Especially the bishops who were supposed to hold the flock together were accused by Hooker of being unfaithful hirelings rather than shepherds and he made a special study of the reasons behind this. The findings he made were more a surprise for the budding Dissenters, who found the buck passed to them, than for true members of the Reformed Church of England. As the budding Presbyterians were also campaigning for clerical reform, it might have seemed wise for a common course of action to be implemented between them. However, Hooker saw in Presbyterianism a move rather towards the scandals that he opposed rather than against them, saying of their dogmatic statements regarding Scripture, ‘It always in a manner falleth out, that what things by virtue thereof ye urge upon us as altogether necessary, are found to be thence collected only by poor and marvellous slight conjectures.’[5.Hooker’s Laws, Preface, VI:1, p. 109.] In the previous pages, he had criticised the Presbyterians for coming up with ideas never, ever, voiced in the history of Christianity and then making them matters of faith and claiming that those who do not hold them are not Christians.

The main trouble of the times

The real trouble in the Church, irrespective of an orthodox or unorthodox attitude to Scripture, was that the clergy were rarely appointed by their churches but five-sixths were appointed by patrons, many of whom used their rank and money to govern their churches as a show of political strength against Queen and Church. Equally, the Queen, and those noblemen who stood near her, misused their patronages to increase their own revenues. Hooker thus saw the cancer in the Church as being caused not so much by doctrinal misuse as by the secular wealthy and the lesser and greater nobility up to the Queen herself who used their powers to sheer the Church’s sheep. The tithes and taxes of these churches were seen as a financial gain for these patrons who employed ministers on the lowest possible wages so as not to mar their profits. Robert Faulkner tells us that not one parish in fifteen was left with enough money to pay a parson a normal salary so the bulk of the churches had to do with no parson or take on a part-time parson who earned his living in secular employment. This was often as farmer, scribe or librarian for the local gentry who made sure that the parson would not become too affluent and paid him meagre wages. Though this secular arm was the ruin of the spiritual status of the Church, it was Dissenters from the ruling of the Church by Convocation who took advantage of secular patronages held by critics of the Church and the Monarchy. This is a development quite hidden or absent from Dissenting histories today. Hooker’s findings went even further and showed that Dissenting bishops, placed in power by their secular patrons were, on the whole, of the monarchical bishop kind and they were ruining the Church. This can be likened to the development in Presbyterian Scotland where, with the help of secular patronages, Monarchical Elders were placed over churches and claimed authority even over the temporal powers as exemplified by Andrew Melville’s Neo-Presbyterianism. A few years ago an article appeared in the Evangelical Times, taking a Dissenting position but which condemned Church of England patronages and trusteeships. I explained in a Letter to the Editor that Dissenting churches were often run by private people with money and their ministers and trustees were appointed by patrons. I did not explain, which I perhaps should have done, that I had pastored a church financed by a private patron who began to tell me what to preach and what not to preach until the church unanimously voted against his interference. The Dissenting editor refused to accept the criticism that Dissenting patrons often abused their ‘rights’, though he was made aware of many examples, and would not print the letter. One Dissenting blog-site to which I regularly turn features abundant ‘Church of England bashing’ though the denominations represented by the ‘bashers’ are quite as guilty. But what is wrong in one church cannot be right in another.

Custom and necessity must be taken into consideration

Hooker realised that there was no one and only organisational rule of the Church laid down in Scripture but that hierarchy and organisation were a utility measure according to local custom and necessity. There was a broad three-tier system for order’s sake where one had the episcopal supervision of a plurality of elders and deacons to make sure that no strife resulted through individual clergy taking leadership into their own hands. Whitgift pointed out that the harmony between government and Church which existed in Elizabeth’s days did not exist in New Testament times and in times of acute persecution. This had been the position of Hooker’s teacher John Jewel in his Apology for the Church of England. There was thus no teaching of Apostolic Succession or the Divine right of any clerical hierarchy here as in Rome and Dissent but sheer usefulness. A Church without such order was chaotic and ungovernable. So, too, though the Church was not to be governed by the political powers, it should take on a peace-loving form of organisation which does not immediately clash with the powers that be. Happily at the time, Elizabeth’s Councillors, according to Hooker’s uncle, John Hooker, were free of the clergy of whatever rank. John Hooker withdrew the clergy by degrees from yielding political power in the realm and did not even see them as a fourth political power behind Kings, Barons and Commons. He certainly did not see the clergy as standing above rulers as per Rome and the budding Presbyterians. One exception made by Elizabeth after having being over 25 years in power was Puritan clergyman John Whitgift. This church leader campaigned for the milder but more thoroughly Reformed doctrines of Henry Bullinger as standards for the Church of England, chiefly through John Jewel who called Bullinger ‘the sole pillar of the Church of England’. Unlike Zwingli and Calvin, Bullinger took no part in politics though out of respect for his wisdom, the Council allowed him to take part in political debates whenever he felt that church matters were involved. Calvin was never given this freedom because of his political outspokenness and backing of revolutionaries (he wished to place Geneva under the Roman Catholic French kings) and he told Bullinger that if he said it was morning, the Councils (Geneva had several) would say it was night, and if he said it was night, they would say it was day. Our Hooker’s political policy was as pragmatic as could be. To him, it was humanly impossible to reach perfection so one must accept the next best policy with all its weaknesses. This went for clergy as much as non-clergy. However, he still longed for the time to come back when worthy ministers of God exercised spiritual and moral responsibility in the land, saying:

‘It is a long time since any great one hath felt, or almost any one much feared the edge of that ecclesiastical severity, which sometime held lords and dukes in a more religious awe than now the meanest are able to be kept.’

Indeed, Hooker saw the only hope for a practical check on the secular powers of his time through the bishops who had the spiritual oversight over all in their dioceses whether commoners or kings.

Bibliography

Here are a few books to keep you going until Part Two comes along:

Marsh John, Memorials of the City Temple, London 1877. Balance this off with my essay on this site named ‘The Temple Church Controversy’. Also ‘Thoughts on Church Government’ and ‘The Development of Opposition to the Reformed Church of England’. Also my letter to the EC on Alan Clifford’s attack on Dr. Beckwith concerning Hooker.

Griffiths, Olive, Religion and Learning: A study in English Presbyterian Thought, Cambridge, 1935

Sykes, Norman, Old Priest and New Presbyter, Cambridge. 1956.

Davies, E.T.,The Political Ideas of Richard Hooker, SPCK, London, 1946.

Faulkner, Robert, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England, University of California Press, 1981.

Anonymous, English Puritan Divines in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth: Cartwright and his Contempories, Nelson, Paternoster Press 1848. No wonder this work of 288 pages is anonymous. The host of historical howlers and myth-building in it is, however, compensated by a narration akin to that of Wordsworth, Scot and Carlyle. It is best to regard it as a Romantic cloak and dagger story rather than a history.

Carr, J.A., The Life and Times of Archbishop Usher, London, 1895

Do not forget to use the Parker Society Index and look up the many entries on Hooker, Cartwright, Travers and Whitgift.