and that it should not ignore or distort indisputable facts. In such a connexion there seems to me nothing more presumptuous than praise, except condemnation. I have endeavoured to represent Bodin's thought about sovereignty as substantially coherent. He himself has made it difficult to do this; and I think it must be admitted that it is ultimately impossible. I think that much of Bodin's confusion and all his important inconsistencies connect with a radical flaw in the foundations of his great construction. That flaw, I think, consists in his failure definitely to connect his theory of sovereignty with his conception of the end of the state and in his failure to adjust both to his own theory of climate. As a consequence he left many essential questions unanswered and some unasked. Some of them I have indicated already. He saw sovereignty as limited by a law of conscience and by the nature of the structure of society. Is recognition of all this involved in the act or the process that creates sovereignty? In what sense is sovereignty the power of a state as distinguished from that of a legal sovereign? Whence, after all, is the obligation to obey the sovereign derived? For all his pains Bodin has answered the question so obscurely and so indirectly that we are not sure he has answered. it at all. Vaguely we apprehend that sovereignty is somehow inherent in human association and that obligation to obey is derived from recognised ends. Bodin's theory of the state is a grand edifice in the very latest Gothic, built up on disjointed foundations. In consequence it tended from the first to disintegrate, crumble into ruin, and disappear. But, after all, to say this is to say little. Omitting the word 'grand,' may not the same be said of all similar structures ? J. W. ALLEN BIBLIOGRAPHY A. PRIMARY SOURCES BODIN, JEAN: Les six livres de la république. 1576. De republica libri sex. 1586. The Six Books of a Commonwealth, translated into English by Richard B. SECONDARY SOURCES BARTHÉLEMY, E. DE: Études sur Jean Bodin. 1876. BAUDRILLART, J.: Jean Bodin et son temps. 1853. CHAUVIRE, R.: Jean Bodin, auteur de la" République." 1914. FRANCK, A.: Réformateurs et publicistes de l'Europe. 1864. HANCKE, E.: Bodin: Studien über den Begriff der Souveränität. 1894. JANET, P.: Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale, vol. ii. 1887. PLANCHENHAULT, N.: Etudes sur Jean Bodin. 1858. III RICHARD HOOKER Na moment of patriotic optimism a Hebrew prophet of the seventh century B.C. indulged the bold vision of a time when "Israel should be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth.' A fancy hardly less ambitious than the dream of the Judæan patriot, and apparently hardly less difficult of realisation, was that of the English statesmen of three and a half centuries ago who aspired to make Canterbury a third with Geneva and with Rome. The Elizabethan Church Settlement, following upon the extremist examples of Edward VI and of Mary in turn, marked the determination of the Queen and her advisers resolutely to tread the via media, and to steer their course between the Scylla of Popery and the Charybdis of Calvinism. Thus the Church of England received the impress of its peculiar character, at once as the embodiment of a standard of doctrine and worship which should be acceptable to the majority of the nation, and as the expression of a type of Christianity combining some of the elements of both Protestantism and Catholicism. From the outset the venture was of doubtful promise. In an age of strong religious feeling, when the European stage was being set for a decisive struggle between the forces of the CounterReformation and of the Protestant Movement, a policy of cautious mediation was singularly difficult. The Elizabethan Settlement provoked much abusive comment from the zealots of both parties. "Rome I know, and Geneva I know, but who are ye?" was the theme of not a little bewildered interrogation and angry repudiation. It was the good fortune of the Church of England that from the midst of the controversy and of the controversialists there arose an apologist, in the person of Richard Hooker, whose defence of its position was based upon lines so broad and deep that his work was not only effective as a refutation of his opponents' contentions, but has won a recognised place as a classic of English theological literature. In The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Hooker cast his net wide. Repelled by the narrowness of the Puritan position which sought to secularise all that was not expressly commanded and prescribed in Holy Scripture, Hooker reviewed the whole sphere of human activity, insisting that the law of reason which governed the thoughts of men, and the laws of conduct which bound them into political societies, were equally divine in origin and binding in character with the especial laws of religion revealed in the Bible, which directed them as members also of a spiritual society. Behind this exposition of the laws of human societies lay the investigation of the function and province of law in the whole created universe. It is this breadth of vision and of thought which is the characteristic feature of Hooker's writings; this, too, which justifies his claim to be regarded as a notable political thinker. Inevitably, however, he was concerned first to defend the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and so he was only able to adumbrate his scheme of political philosophy. Since also it was the narrowness of the Puritan attitude which moved him to undertake the wider investigation, attention must first be turned to the controversy which occasioned his writing. Of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century it would be hazardous to attempt to say anything new, and tedious to repeat views which are already old. Yet something must be said by anyone who would aspire to expound Hooker. The call for reformation was neither new in the ears of the sixteenth century nor in any sense a peculiarity of that era. What was strikingly new was the actual rebellion of a large part of Europe against the papal obedience and the permanent separation of some of its most important nations. This rebellion had been presaged, as Dr Figgis was wont to insist, by the failure of the Conciliar Movement. The milder methods of a 1689 being unavailing, recourse must be had to the surgery of a 1789. In the sixteenth century the demand for reformation had been strengthened by the influence of the Renaissance. Of that influence all that can be affirmed here is the fact that the reforming movement received a new impetus and a fresh orientation when the enthusiasm which in Italy had led to the avid perusal of the literature of classical Greece and Rome was turned into a zeal in other countries for the study of the New Testament in its original language. Not only could students compare the incipient Church Order of the Pauline Epistles with the elaborate organisation of the papal hierarchy, but the weapon had been forged which broke down for ever that mediæval exegesis which had seen in Old Testament texts a prediction of the papal supremacy. Along such lines the Oxford Reformers desired to work to effect a reformation within the bosom of the Church. Other motives inspired other leaders and issued in different methods. In Germany Luther led a revolt against the mercenary and worldly spirit which had captured much of official Catholicism, and affirmed that the foundation and mainspring of true religion is the inward experience of justification by faith. His was an essentially religious protest which centred in the actual conversion of the individual. But the strength of such a position was also its weakness. Luther was not endowed with the gifts of the founder of a theological system nor of the creator of a new Church Order. He did not even build up a "kingdom of fairies," as Hobbes pleasantly calls the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Consequently Lutheranism, lacking a system of reasoned theology and a definite Church Order, was impotent before the Catholic revival, supported by the scholastic theology and the organisation of the Church, now strengthened by the new religious order of the Society of Jesus. But the movement which Luther had founded Calvin saved. In him and in the system which bears his name Protestantism found a defence against the Counter-Reformation. For Calvin had a penchant for systematic theology and a genius for Church organisation. To the Christian who followed his standard he gave a selfcontained and consistent system of theology and a practical interest in the constitution of a new Church polity. The differences thus outlined between Lutheranism and Calvinism mark the essential features of a change which was passing over the Protestant Movement. From the position of a movement for the reform of doctrine and worship it passed into the form of a rival Church over against the old Catholic system. Calvin not only worked out a system of dogmatic theology, but claimed that his new Church Order was commanded in Holy Scripture and was therefore the only lawful |