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Richard Hooker
- Close sectionOf the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
- A PREFACE. To them that seek (as they term it) the reformation of Laws, and orders Ecclesiastical, in the Church of ENGLAND.
- What things are handled in the Books following.
- Close sectionTHE FIRST BOOK
- The matter contained in this first Book.
- The cause of writing this general discourse.
- Of that law which God from before the beginning has set for himself to do all things by.
- The law which natural agents have given them to observe
- The law which Angels do work by.
- The law whereby man is in his actions directed to the imitation of God.
- Men's first beginning to grow to the knowledge of that law which they are to observe.
- Of man's will which is the thing that laws of action are made to guide.
- Of the natural way of finding out laws by reason to guide the will to that which is good.
- The benefit of keeping that law which reason teaches.
- How reason does lead men to the making of human laws whereby politic societies are governed
- Wherefore God has by scripture further made known such supernatural laws as do serve for men's direction.
- The cause why so many natural or rational laws are set down in holy scripture.
- The benefit of having divine laws written.
- The sufficiency of scripture to the end for which it was instituted.
- Of laws positive contained in scripture
- A conclusion showing how all this belongs to the cause in question.
- Close sectionTHE SECOND BOOK
- The matter contained in this second Book.
- The first pretended proof of the first position out of scripture. Proverbs 2:9.
- The second proof out of Scripture. 1 Corinthians 10:31.
- The third scripture proof. 1 Timothy 4:5.
- The fourth Scripture proof. Romans 14:23.
- The first assertion endeavoured to be proved by the use of taking arguments negatively from the authority of Scripture
- The first assertion endeavoured to be confirmed by the scripture's custom of disputing from divine authority negatively.
- Their opinion concerning the force of arguments taken from human authority for the ordering of men's actions or persuasions.
- A declaration what the truth is in this matter.
- Close sectionTHE THIRD BOOK
- The matter contained in this third Book.
- What the Church is
- Whether it be necessary that some particular form of Church-polity be set down in scripture
- That matters of discipline are different from matters of faith and salvation
- That we do not take from scripture anything which may be thereto given with soundness of truth.
- Their meaning who first did plead against the polity of the Church of England
- The same assertion we cannot hold without doing wrong to all Churches.
- A shift to maintain that Nothing ought to be established in the Church which is not commanded in the word of God. Namely that commandments are of two sorts
- Another answer in defence of the former assertion whereby the meaning thereof is opened in this sort
- How laws for the regiment of the Church may be made by the advice of men following therein the light of reason
- That neither God's being the author of laws nor his committing them to scripture nor the continuance of the end for which they were instituted is any reason sufficient to prove that they are unchangeable.
- Whether Christ have forbidden all change of those laws which are set down in scripture.
- Close sectionTHE FOURTH BOOK
- The matter contained in this fourth Book.
- How great use ceremonies have in the Church.
- The first thing they blame in the kind of our ceremonies is that we have not in them ancient Apostolic simplicity
- Our orders and ceremonies blamed in that so many of them are the same which the Church of Rome uses.
- That whereas they who blame us in this behalf
- That our allowing the customs of our fathers to be followed is no proof that we may not allow some customs which the Church of Rome has
- That the course which the wisdom of God does teach makes not against our conformity with the Church of Rome in such things.
- That the example of the eldest Churches is not herein against us.
- That it is not our best policy for the establishment of sound religion to have in these things no agreement with the church of Rome being unsound.
- That we are not to abolish our Ceremonies, either because Papists upbraid us as having taken from them
- The grief which they say godly brethren conceive in regard of such Ceremonies as we have common with the Church of Rome.
- Their exception against such Ceremonies as we have received from the Church of Rome, that Church having taken them from the Jews.
- Their exception against such Ceremonies as have been abused by the church of Rome
- Our ceremonies excepted against for that some Churches reformed before ours have cast out those things which we notwithstanding their example to the contrary do retain still.
- A declaration of the proceedings of the Church of England for establishment of things as they are.
- An advertisement to the Reader.
- To the Most Reverend Father in God my very good Lord, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury his Grace, Primate and Metropolitan of all England.
- Close sectionTHE FIFTH BOOK
- Matter contained in this fifth Book.
- True Religion is the root of all true virtues and the stay of all well ordered commonwealths.
- The most extreme opposite to true Religion is affected Atheism.
- Of Superstition and the root thereof, either misguided zeal, or ignorant fear of divine glory.
- Of the redress of Superstition in God's Church, and concerning the question of this book.
- Four general propositions demanding that which may reasonably be granted concerning matters of outward form in the exercise of true religion. And fifthly of a rule not safe nor reasonable in these cases.
- The first proposition touching judgement what things are convenient in the outward public ordering of Church affairs.
- The second proposition.
- The third proposition.
- The fourth proposition.
- The rule of men's private spirits not safe in these cases to be followed.
- Places for the public service of God.
- The solemnity of erecting Churches condemned by Barrow, p. 130; the hallowing and dedicating of them scorned. p. 141.
- Of the names whereby we distinguish our Churches.
- Of the fashion of our Churches.
- The sumptuousness of Churches.
- What holiness and virtue we ascribe to the Church more than other places.
- Their pretence that would have Churches utterly razed.
- Of public teaching or preaching, and the first kind thereof, catechizing.
- Of preaching by reading publicly the books of holy Scripture; and concerning supposed untruths in those translations of Scripture which we allow to be read; as also of the choice which we make in reading.
- Of preaching by the public reading of other profitable instructions; and concerning books apocryphal.
- Of preaching by Sermons, and whether Sermons be the only ordinary way of teaching whereby men are brought to the saving knowledge of God's truth.
- What they attribute to Sermons only, and what we to reading also.
- Of Prayer.
- Of Public Prayer.
- Of the form of common prayer.
- Of them which like not to have any set form of common prayer.
- Of them who allowing a set form of prayer yet allow not ours.
- The form of our liturgy too near the Papists', too far different from that of other reformed Churches, as they pretend.
- Attire belonging to the service of God.
- Of Gesture in praying, and of different places chosen to that purpose.
- Easiness of praying after our form.
- The length of our Service.
- Instead of such prayers as the primitive Churches have used, and those that be reformed now use, We have (they say) divers shortcuts or shreddings, rather wishes than prayers.
- Lessons intermingled with our prayers.
- The number of our prayers for earthly things and our often rehearsing of the Lord's prayer.
- The people's saying after the minister.
- Our manner of reading the psalms otherwise than the rest of the scripture.
- Of music with psalms.
- Of singing or saying psalms and other parts of common prayer wherein the people and the minister answer one another by course.
- Of Magnificat, Benedictus, and Nunc dimittis.
- Of the Litany.
- Of Athanasius' Creed and Gloria patri.
- Our want of particular thanksgiving.
- In some things the matter of our prayer as they affirm, unsound.
- When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
- Touching prayer for deliverance from sudden death.
- Prayer that those things which we for our unworthiness dare not ask, God for the worthiness of his son would vouchsafe to grant.
- Prayer to be evermore delivered from all adversity.
- Prayer that all men may find mercy, and of the will of God that all men might be saved.
- Of the name, the author, and the force of Sacraments, which force consists in this, that God has ordained them as means to make us partakers of him in Christ, and of life through Christ.
- That God is in Christ by the personal incarnation of the Son who is very God.
- The misinterpretations which heresy has made of the manner how God and man are united in one Christ.
- That by the union of the one with the other nature in Christ there grows neither gain nor loss of essential properties to either.
- What Christ has obtained according to the flesh, by the union of his flesh with deity.
- Of the personal presence of Christ everywhere, and in what sense it may be granted he is everywhere present according to the flesh.
- The union or mutual participation which is between Christ and the Church of Christ in this present world.
- The necessity of Sacraments to the participation of Christ.
- The substance of baptism; the rites or solemnities thereto belonging; and that the substance thereof being kept, other things in baptism may give place to necessity.
- The ground in Scripture whereupon a necessity of outward baptism has been built.
- What kind of necessity in outward baptism has been gathered by the words of our saviour Christ, and what the true necessity thereof indeed is.
- What things in baptism have been dispensed with by the fathers respecting necessity.
- Whether baptism by women be true baptism, good and effectual to them that receive it.
- Interrogatories in baptism touching faith and the purpose of a Christian life.
- Interrogatories proposed to infants in baptism and answered as in their names by godfathers.
- Of the Cross in baptism.
- Of confirmation after Baptism.
- Of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.
- Of faults noted in the form of administering the holy communion.
- Of festival days and the natural causes of their convenient institution.
- The manner of celebrating festival days.
- Exceptions against our keeping of other festival days besides the Sabbath.
- Of days appointed as well for ordinary as for extraordinary fasts in the Church of God.
- The celebration of matrimony.
- Churching of women.
- Of the rites of Burial.
- Of the nature of that ministry which serves for performance of divine duties in the Church of God, and how happiness not eternal only but also temporal does depend upon it.
- Of power given to men to execute that heavenly office; of the gift of the holy Ghost in ordination; and whether conveniently the power of order may be sought or sued for.
- Of degrees whereby the power of order is distinguished and concerning the attire of ministers.
- Of oblations, foundations, endowments, tithes, all intended for perpetuity of religion, which purpose being chiefly fulfilled by the clergy's certain and sufficient maintenance must needs by alienation of Church livings be made frustrate.
- Of ordinations lawful without title, and without any popular election precedent, but in no case without regard of due information what their quality is that enter into holy orders.
- Of the learning that should be in ministers, their residence, and the number of their livings.
- Close sectionTHE SIXTH BOOK
- The question between us, whether all Congregations or Parishes ought to have lay Elders invested with power of Jurisdiction in Spiritual causes.
- The Nature of Spiritual Jurisdiction.
- Of penitence, the chiefest end propounded by spiritual jurisdiction.
- Of the discipline of repentance instituted by Christ;
- Of Satisfaction.
- Of Absolution of penitents.
- Close sectionTHE SEVENTH BOOK
- The Matter contained in this Seventh Book.
- The state of Bishops although sometime oppugned
- What a Bishop is, what his name does import, and what does belong to his Office as he is a Bishop.
- In Bishops two things traduced
- From whence it has grown that the Church is governed by Bishops.
- The time and cause of instituting everywhere Bishops with restraint.
- What manner of power Bishops from the first beginning have had.
- After what sort Bishops together with Presbyters have used to govern the Churches which were under them.
- How far the power of Bishops has reached from the beginning in respect of territory or local compass.
- In what respects Episcopal regiment has been gainsaid of old by Aerius.
- In what respect Episcopal Regiment is gainsaid by the Authors of pretended Reformation at this day.
- Their Arguments in disgrace of Regiment by Bishops, as being a mere invention of man, and not found in Scripture, Answered.
- The Arguments to prove there was no necessity of instituting Bishops in the Church.
- The fore-alleged Arguments answered.
- In Bishops two things traduced
- Concerning the civil power and authority which our Bishops have.
- In Bishops two things traduced
- The second main thing wherein the state of Bishops suffers obloquy, is their honour.
- What good does publicly grow from the Prelacy.
- What kinds of honour be due to Bishops.
- Honour in title, place, ornament, attendance and privilege.
- Honour by endowment with Lands and Livings.
- That of Ecclesiastical goods, and consequently of the Lands and Livings which Bishops enjoy, the property belongs to God alone.
- That Ecclesiastical persons are receivers of God's rents
- That for their unworthiness
- Close sectionTHE EIGHTH BOOK
- The Matter contained in this Eighth Book.
- An admonition concerning men's judgements about the question of regal power.
- What their power of Dominion is.
- By what right, after what sort, in what measure, with what convenience, and according to what example Christian Kings may have it. In a word, their manner of holding Dominion.
- Of their title of Headship which we give to the kings of England in relation to the church.
- Of their prerogative to call general assemblies about the affairs of the church.
- Of their power in making ecclesiastical laws.
- Of their power in making ecclesiastical governors.
- Of their power in judgement ecclesiastical.
- Of their exemption from judicial kinds of punishment by the clergy.
Arthur Stephen McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Vol. 1: Preface, Books I to IV
Contents
- Close section Front Matter
- Close sectionOf the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
- A PREFACE. To them that seek (as they term it) the reformation of Laws, and orders Ecclesiastical, in the Church of ENGLAND.
- What things are handled in the Books following.
- Close sectionTHE FIRST BOOK
- The matter contained in this first Book.
- The cause of writing this general discourse.
- Of that law which God from before the beginning has set for himself to do all things by.
- The law which natural agents have given them to observe
- The law which Angels do work by.
- The law whereby man is in his actions directed to the imitation of God.
- Men's first beginning to grow to the knowledge of that law which they are to observe.
- Of man's will which is the thing that laws of action are made to guide.
- Of the natural way of finding out laws by reason to guide the will to that which is good.
- The benefit of keeping that law which reason teaches.
- How reason does lead men to the making of human laws whereby politic societies are governed
- Wherefore God has by scripture further made known such supernatural laws as do serve for men's direction.
- The cause why so many natural or rational laws are set down in holy scripture.
- The benefit of having divine laws written.
- The sufficiency of scripture to the end for which it was instituted.
- Of laws positive contained in scripture
- A conclusion showing how all this belongs to the cause in question.
- Close sectionTHE SECOND BOOK
- The matter contained in this second Book.
- The first pretended proof of the first position out of scripture. Proverbs 2:9.
- The second proof out of Scripture. 1 Corinthians 10:31.
- The third scripture proof. 1 Timothy 4:5.
- The fourth Scripture proof. Romans 14:23.
- The first assertion endeavoured to be proved by the use of taking arguments negatively from the authority of Scripture
- The first assertion endeavoured to be confirmed by the scripture's custom of disputing from divine authority negatively.
- Their opinion concerning the force of arguments taken from human authority for the ordering of men's actions or persuasions.
- A declaration what the truth is in this matter.
- Close sectionTHE THIRD BOOK
- The matter contained in this third Book.
- What the Church is
- Whether it be necessary that some particular form of Church-polity be set down in scripture
- That matters of discipline are different from matters of faith and salvation
- That we do not take from scripture anything which may be thereto given with soundness of truth.
- Their meaning who first did plead against the polity of the Church of England
- The same assertion we cannot hold without doing wrong to all Churches.
- A shift to maintain that Nothing ought to be established in the Church which is not commanded in the word of God. Namely that commandments are of two sorts
- Another answer in defence of the former assertion whereby the meaning thereof is opened in this sort
- How laws for the regiment of the Church may be made by the advice of men following therein the light of reason
- That neither God's being the author of laws nor his committing them to scripture nor the continuance of the end for which they were instituted is any reason sufficient to prove that they are unchangeable.
- Whether Christ have forbidden all change of those laws which are set down in scripture.
- Close sectionTHE FOURTH BOOK
- The matter contained in this fourth Book.
- How great use ceremonies have in the Church.
- The first thing they blame in the kind of our ceremonies is that we have not in them ancient Apostolic simplicity
- Our orders and ceremonies blamed in that so many of them are the same which the Church of Rome uses.
- That whereas they who blame us in this behalf
- That our allowing the customs of our fathers to be followed is no proof that we may not allow some customs which the Church of Rome has
- That the course which the wisdom of God does teach makes not against our conformity with the Church of Rome in such things.
- That the example of the eldest Churches is not herein against us.
- That it is not our best policy for the establishment of sound religion to have in these things no agreement with the church of Rome being unsound.
- That we are not to abolish our Ceremonies, either because Papists upbraid us as having taken from them
- The grief which they say godly brethren conceive in regard of such Ceremonies as we have common with the Church of Rome.
- Their exception against such Ceremonies as we have received from the Church of Rome, that Church having taken them from the Jews.
- Their exception against such Ceremonies as have been abused by the church of Rome
- Our ceremonies excepted against for that some Churches reformed before ours have cast out those things which we notwithstanding their example to the contrary do retain still.
- A declaration of the proceedings of the Church of England for establishment of things as they are.
- An advertisement to the Reader.
