Business as usual? The immediate reception of Hooker's Ecclesiastical polity

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Volumn 52, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 456-486

  Lake, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449110122     PISSN: 00220469     EISSN: 14697637     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0022046901008673     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. P. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker, London 1988. ch. iv and passim
2. Mine was not primarily a book about Hooker but one about the course and ideological ramifications of the Elizabethan debate about church government; for Skinnerian contextualism see J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and context: Quentin Skinner and his critics, Cambridge 1988, 29-118 and passim
3. D. Novarr, The making of Walton's lives, Ithaca 1958
4. R. Eccleshall, 'Richard Hooker and the peculiarities of the English: the reception of the Ecclesiastical polity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', History of Political Thought ii (1981), 63-117
5. Conal Condren, 'The creation of Richard Hooker's public authority: rhetoric, reputation and reassessment', Journal of Religious History xxi (1997), 35-59. This point was made with renewed force in a lecture by Jessica Martin to the Church of England Record Society in July 2000
6. The text of the Christian letter, together with Hooker's manuscript notes on and replies to it, is printed in vol. iv of the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, Cambridge Mass. 1977-90. The case for Willet's authorship is at pp. xix-xxv. All subsequent references both to the Christian letter and to the Polity are to the Folger edition
7. For Barrett and Baro see P. Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church, Cambridge 1982, ch. ix
8. A. Willet, Synopsis papismi, London 1600, sig. B3r
9. Lake, Moderate Puritans, ch. ix
10. Willet, Ecclesia triumphans, preface to the reader, 35, 90-1
11. and An antilogie or counterplea, 'The preface to the Christian reader'
12. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans, ch. iv
13. Perhaps the major exception is Hooker's use of reason, the law of nature and ecclesiastical custom to lend an aura of sanctity, a positive religious charge, to the scenic apparatus of the English Church. The wholly doctrinal thrust of the Christian letter, together with the authors' studious avoidance of the issues of ceremony and polity, almost certainly explain this omission. Since the Christian letter does not deal with this material, neither does William Covell in his Just and temperate defence of the five books of ecclesiastical policy written by M. Richard Hooker, London 1603 (RSTC 5881). Covell does, however, give a decidedly Hookerian defence of the worship and ceremonies of the English Church both in his tract against John Burgess, A brief answer unto certain reasons by way of an apology delivered to the bishop of Lincoln, London 1606 (RSTC 5880), and in the section 'Of ceremonies' in his A modest and reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England, London 1604 (RSTC 5882). I hope to deal with this subject at length elsewhere
14. Covell, A modest and reasonable examination, and A brief answer
15. Francis Walsingham, A search made into the matters of religion, St Omer 1609, 39-51 (I owe this reference to the kindness of Michael Questier)
16. E. Arber, A transcript of the registers of the Company of Stationers of London, London 1876, iii. 89v
17. George Carleton, Tithes examined and proved to be due to the clergy by a divine right, London 1606 (RSTC 4644), 'preface to the reader'
18. For direct reference to the raised hopes for reform and dangerously heightened levels of 'zeal' occasioned by the new reign, to which his books were addressed, see Covell's A modest and reasonable examination, 2-3, 208-9
19. Christian letter, 69
20. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 9, 3, 137
21. For one very notable such exception see W. J. D. Cargill Thompson, 'The philosopher of the "politic society": Richard Hooker as a political thinker', in Speed Hill (ed.), Studies in Richard Hooker: essays preliminary to an edition of his works, Cleveland-London 1972, 3-76
22. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 76-7
23. Anthony Milton, Catholic and reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant thought, 1600-1640, Cambridge 1995, 163
24. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 75, 67, 66
25. On this see Milton, Catholic and reformed, 240-51
26. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 113-14, the latter part of the passage, which I have italicised, comes from V.LVI.1 (FLE ii.234.29-31)
27. Covell, Just and temperate response, 114-15 [my italics], quoting and slightly altering V.LXVII.1 (FLE ii.330-1.29-16)
28. Covell, Just and temperate response, 97, 113
29. A. Hunt, 'The lord's supper in early modern England', Past and Present lxi (Nov. 1998), 39-83
30. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 97, 115 [my italics]. The first passage is an unacknowledged quote from V.LVII.5 (FLE ii.247.16-18)
31. Covell, Just and temperate response, 108-9 [my italics], quoting V.LX.3 (FLE ii.255-6.14-09)
32. Covell, Just and temperate response, 139, 142
33. For this position see Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590-1640, Oxford 1987, ch. v
34. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 63, 98
35. The most convincing attempt to extract a coherent account of Hooker's theology of grace from the remaining evidence is now Nigel Voak, 'Reason, will and grace in the works of Richard Hooker', unpubl. DPhil. diss. Oxford 1999
36. On the publishing history of Hooker's great work see C. J. Sisson, The judicious marriage of Mr Hooker, Cambridge 1940, ch. ii
37. Covell, Just and temperate defence, 12, 84
38. Condren, 'The creation of Richard Hooker's public authority', esp. pp. 38-43
39. BL, MS Lansdowne 776, fos 14v-15r
40. See also M. Questier and S. Healey "What's in a name?" A papist's perception of Puritanism and conformity in the early seventeenth century', in A. Marrotti (ed.), Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in early modern texts, Basingstoke 1999, 137-53. I owe these references to the kindness of Michael Questier
41. W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker's doctrine of the royal supremacy, Leiden 1990, and 'Richard Hooker's theory of natural law in the context of reformed theology', Sixteenth Century Journal XXX (1999), 681-703
42. Bryan Spinks, Two faces of Elizabethan Anglican theology: sacraments and salvation in the thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker, Lanham, Maryland 1999
43. P. Collinson, 'Hooker and the Elizabethan establishment', in A. S. McGrade (ed.), Richard Hooker and the construction of Christian community, Arizona 1997
44. For Baro see Spinks, Two faces, 128
45. for Arminius see Richard Muller, God, creation and providence in the thought of Jacobus Arminius, Grand Rapids, Mich. 1991
46. Because of Hooker's central significance for Anglicans, all this is of considerable import for scholars anxious to excavate the Church of England's frequently elided or occluded 'Reformed' past. Hooker, in short, can be recuperated as a 'Reformed' thinker, a founding father for a newly Reformed or Evangelical Anglicanism. For two recent examples of this use of Hooker see Spinks, Two faces, or N. Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the authority of Scripture, tradition and reason: reformed theologian of the Church of England?, Carlisle 1997
47. For the use of these polarities see, for instance, Kirby, Richard Hooker's doctrine of the royal supremacy
48. or Atkinson, Richard Hooker and the authority of Scripture, tradition and reason
49. This was the overarching, framing argument of Lake, Anglicans and Puritans. It is rendered more explicit by P. Lake and M. Dowling (eds), Protestantism and the national Church in sixteenth-century England, London 1987: see especially the articles by Davies, Facey and Lake
50. On the relations between Puritanism and the mainstream see P. Collinson, 'Towards a broader understanding of the early dissenting tradition', and 'Lectures by combination', both republished in his Godly people, London 1983, 527-62, 467-98
51. The case is summed up, indeed arguably slightly overstated, in his The religion of Protestants, Oxford 1983
52. See also Lake, Moderate Puritans, and 'Defining Puritanism - again?', in F. Bremer (ed.), Puritanism: transatlantic perspectives in seventeenth century Anglo-American faith, Boston 1993, 3-29