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In the course of our inquiry we shall probably find good reason for doubting whether such notions as these did belong to the very essence of Puritanism. Even among the Elizabethan Puritans it would have been difficult to extract a perfect consensus of opinion that "Scripture is the only rule of all things which may be done of man"; and certainly as regards the rule and order of the Church, their notion was far from being ‹ xhausted in the thesis, “The apostolic polity is the authoritative and normative polity for all time.” 1

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Is it so very certain that the Puritans did appeal to the authority of Scripture against reason? It seems to be taken for granted, that because the Puritans appealed to the authority of Scripture as against the authority of the Church of Rome and that claimed by the Anglican Church, therefore they did not appeal to reason.2 Surely,

"Puritanism and the Church of England ”—are familiar with his wild unsupported assertions that the Puritans staked their existence on the "assumption that there is a divinely-appointed Church order fixed once for all in the Bible, and that they have adopted it"; also that "the Puritan Churches found their very existence on the doctrines of predestination, imputed righteous, etc., but the historic Churches do not.”—St. Paul and Protestantism, popular edition, pp. 115, 85.

1 Jubilee Lectures. Introductory chapter on "Ecclesiastical Polity and the Religion of Christ,” li.

2 “Puritan theocracy, though strict, and sure to melt away when the sun of freedom had mounted higher in the heaven, was not reactionary or obscurantist. It had for its rule the Bible, but the Bible interpreted by reason. It owed paramount allegiance, not to authority, but to truth.”—The United States: An Outline of Political History, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., p. 10.

Chillingworth is regarded as a very liberal theologian, but it may be doubted whether many of the later Puritans would not have had serious doubts regarding a position like this: "Propose me anything out of this book, and require whether I believe it or not, and

with equal force, the same objection may be brought against their opponents, because they appealed to antiquity-to the authority of the Fathers and of councils. Even Hooker was not content to find in reason the sole

basis and justification of Church authority. "It may be justly objected," says Hallam, "to some passages [in the Ecclesiastical Polity] that they elevate ecclesiastical authority, even in matters of belief, with an exaggeration not easily reconciled to the Protestant right of private judgment, and even of dangerous consequence in those times, as when he inclines to give a decisive voice in theological controversies to general councils, not, indeed, on the principles of the Church of Rome, but on such as must end in the same conclusion, the high probability that the aggregate judgment of many grave and learned men should be well founded. It is well known that the Preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity was one of the two books to which James II. ascribed his return into the field of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course of reasoning, on the position it contains, this was effected."1

"It cannot be said that Hooker added anything to the answers that were made to the Puritans. He carried the question up to a higher region, where the atmosphere was purer. The Puritan was not without a sense of that order of which Hooker discoursed. He believed, however, that it was not furthered, but hindered, by the retention of the order and ceremonies that had been in the Church

seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this: God hath said so, and therefore it is true."

1 Hallam, vol. i. p. 296, note.

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of Rome. Why, it was asked, are we to conclude that what is retained is any more the expression of a divine order than that which has been rejected." 1 The Puritans could not see the force of the long disquisition about law as urged against them, nor can we. It may have been relevant to some of the reasoning 、mployed by Cartwright and Travers, but so far from turning the flank of the Puritan position, Hooker's great work has become an armoury from which Puritanism has drawn its most fit and effective weapons.2

Lord Bacon was one with Hooker in counselling unity in the Church, and deploring the unhappy controversies which were dividing the Church and nation; but to the acuteness of the philosopher, Bacon added the practical sagacity of the statesman. Hooker would have the Puritan comply with the laws and regulations of the Church; while Bacon would have these sufficiently elastic to accommodate his views and prejudices.3 "Therefore it is good we return to the ancient bands of unity in the Church of God, which was one faith, one baptism, and not one hierarchy, one discipline, and that we observe the league of Christians as it is penned by our Saviour Christ, which is in substance of doctrine this: All that is not with us is against us; but in things indifferent, and but of circumstance, this: He that is not against us is with us; . . . as it is excellently alluded

1 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, vol. i. p. 60.

2 In his admirable little handbook on Church and State, Mr. Taylor Innes (p. 175) acutely points out how Hooker's views of the original source of Church authority are parallel and in accordance with those of his Presbyterian and Puritan opponents.

3 The Puritan Revolution, 1603–1660, by S. R. Gardiner,

by the father that noted that Christ's garment was without seam, and yet the Church's garment was of divers colours, and thereupon set down for a rule, Let there be variety in the vesture, but not a rent." 1

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NOTE ON HOOKER'S THEORY OF CHURCH AND STATE

The Ecclesiastical Polity contains Hooker's peculiar theory of Church and State, the false and mischievous position that the Church and commonwealth are but different denominations of the same society. "A Church and a commonwealth, we grant, are things in nature the one distinguished from the other. A Church' is one way, and a commonwealth another way, defined." "We hold that, seeing there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England; therefore, as in a figure triangle, the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the self-same line is both a base and also a side,—a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom, and underlie the same, so albeit propositions and actions of one do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of the Church, to be given to a multitude, yet one and the self-same multitude may in such sort be both."Book viii. chap. i. section 2.

It is obvious at a glance that such identity as this never existed in point of fact, and the comment which history writes upon the attempts which, at different times and in various ways, have been made to bring it about is instructive and tragical. Such union of Church and State is a chimera; the fact that religion and politics belong to two totally distinct and dissimilar spheres it entirely ignores. His deftly constructed theory should have dissolved under the touchstone of his own words: "A commonwealth we name it simply in regard of some regiment or policy under which men live ; a Church, for the truth of that religion which they profess."-Book viii. chap. i. section 5.

"To profess a religion is a personal act; must be voluntarily and

1 Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England.

consciously done to be done at all." But this was precisely what could not happen, or be allowed to happen, in Hooker's theory of the Church. To him "one society is both the Church and commonwealth,” and, as a necessary result, "our Church hath dependence from the chief in our commonwealth." But this was to transform the profession of religion into a matter of loyalty, and to identify Nonconformity with rebellion. Responsibility to t. King supplanted responsibility to God, godliness became a species f political obedience, and the Church was emptied of its transcendental and ethical ideals that it might be organised into a system which was all the more civil that it was so intensely sacerdotal." 1

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1 Dr. Fairbairn on Ecclesiastical Polity and the Religion of Christ. Introductory chapter to Jubilee Lectures. See whole of Dr. Fairbairn's criticism on Hooker's "splendid idea of a Church," and the comparison between this and the ideal of Independency and the religion of Christ.

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