take them away, let them cease to be required, and they are not things of small importance which that surcease were likely to draw after them. Let the Lord Mayor of London, or any other unto whose office honour belongeth, be deprived but of that title which of itself is a matter of nothing; and suppose we that it would be a small maim unto the credit, force and countenance of his office?" 1 Governors of all kinds were but human beings, fallible and errant, and particularly open to the slander and misrepresentation of those who were ignorant of the difficulties of statesmanship, and therefore every means should be contrived to maintain the dignity and repute of their position. "The good government either of the Church or the Commonwealth dependeth scarcely on any one external thing so much as on the public marks and tokens, whereby the estimation that governors are in is made manifest to the eyes of men.' "2 Although Hooker was firmly convinced of the necessity of public consent to the making of laws, he was no champion of an unbridled democracy. In no place does the essential caution of his judgment find expression more clearly than in his reluctance to alter laws and traditions handed down from the past, so long as they serve any good purpose. "The wisdom which is learned by tract of time, findeth the laws that have been in former ages established, needful in later to be abrogated. .. But true withal is it, that alteration though it be from worse to better hath in it inconveniencies and these weighty.. Further, if it be a law which the custom and continual practice of many ages or years hath confirmed in the minds of men, to alter it must needs be troublesome and scandalous. What have we to induce men unto the willing obedience and observation of laws but the weight of so many men's judgments as have with deliberate advice assented thereunto, the weight of that long experience which the world hath thereof with consent and good liking? So that to change any such law must needs with the common sort impair and weaken the force of those grounds whereby all laws are made effectual." 3 Some laws must be abrogated when they have become harmful to the welfare of the State. But a passion for change is altogether to be discouraged. "As for arbitrary alterations. . . if the benefit of that which is newly devised 1 VII, xvii, 4. 3 IV, xiv, I. 2 VII, xix, 1. be but small, sith the custom of easiness to alter and change is so evil, no doubt but to bear a tolerable sore is better than to venture on so dangerous a remedy." 1 Even in the case of necessary alteration it is more advisable to leave evil laws "to be abolished by disusage through tract of time" than to risk disorder by the disturbance of change. Hooker placed great emphasis upon stability of government as the surest means of preserving public tranquillity, and his love of tradition and continuity disposed him to an almost excessive distrust of innovation and change. Before the completion of the great task which he had set himself, there had been a change in the circumstances of Hooker's life and in the controversy which had evoked his writing. The Temple was a restless and unquiet place, even after the departure of Travers, and there can be little doubt that the Master felt the hindrance of contention and hostility to the execution of his design. After six years he was presented by Whitgift to the living of Boscombe, near to Salisbury, in accordance with his petition to the Archbishop to be allowed to retire to some country rectory where " I may study and pray for God's blessing upon my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions. At Boscombe Hooker finished the first four books of the Ecclesiastical Polity and published them in 1594. In the following year the Queen presented him to the rectory of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury; and there he finished the fifth book and published it in 1597. The few remaining years of his life were devoted to the completion of the task, and he succeeded in finishing the last three books, though the effort not improbably cost him his life, for he died on November 2, 1600. After his death the final draft of the last three books could not be found among his papers, but only some rough copies. These were examined by the author's friend, Dr Spencer of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and with his reconstruction of this part of the work we have to rest content. Meanwhile, the influence of the published books had 1 IV, xiv, 2. changed the character of the Puritan controversy. A generous recognition of Hooker's work is contained in the most recent biography of Cartwright, to which reference has been made before. "This classic defence of the Church of England," writes Dr Scott Pearson of the Ecclesiastical Polity," is a product by reaction of Cartwrightian Puritanism. In the calm air of the detached philosopher the tenets of T. C. are analysed, their implications set forth, and the universal principles of Church government expounded. Hooker discusses the broad question of divine revelation and exposes the narrow view of Scripture held by the Puritans. . . . Hooker's work is a great and lasting achievement. He certainly discloses the deficiencies of the Puritan conception of revelation and introduces a strong humanist element into theological thought. . . . The Puritans recognised the weight of their latest opponent. Their only reply, A Christian Letter (1599), is an insipid production that reveals the consciousness of defeat." 1 If it be true that Hooker "hastened his own death by hastening to give life to his books," it is certain that his work is a worthy memorial of him. A few points of his philosophy have been touched upon in these pages, too few to do justice to the richness of his thought, yet perhaps enough to suggest the justice of his claim to be regarded as a political thinker as well as a great divine. None can read his Ecclesiastical Polity without realising the versatility of his genius. Yet the most powerful impression produced upon one reader is that of the reverence for the historic past which characterised Hooker. He lived in an age of great change, and amid a company of reformers zealous for more radical changes than had yet been attempted in England. In face of the exaggerated enthusiasm for the innovations of Calvin and the desire of his disciples to make an end of old traditions, Hooker turned back deliberately to seek the old paths and to walk in them. His return to the scholastic philosophy was not a mere controversial ruse de guerre; rather it was the expression of his deep conviction of the value of historical tradition and of the continuity of corporate life. The wisdom of Hooker is the principle of true 1 Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism, pp. 371–372. conservatism, and he realised the abiding significance of this principle as an essential constituent of human nature. "For no man having drunk of old wine, straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better.'" NORMAN SYKES BIBLIOGRAPHY HOOKER: Works, arranged by Keble, revised by Church and Paget. 3 vols. F. PAGET: Introduction to Book V of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." Oxford, R. W. CHURCH: Introduction and Text of Book I of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical A. F. SCOTT PEARSON: Thomas Cartwright and Elizabethan Puritanism. AM U IV FRANCISCO SUAREZ I NTIL at any rate quite recently it has been held as beyond the possibility of challenge that physical nature was the peculiar domain of practically constant and immutable law. It is indeed possible that if we could see human history from a sufficient distance we might conclude that it too was the expression of an uniform order. But, living within history as we do, we are aware of a twofold attitude toward law which seems to embrace and to exhaust all the possibilities and resources of our human energy. For us men life is first an impatience of or revolt against law, and afterward the recognition of its indispensableness and the gradual recovery of it as a guide. In the case of the individual these two attitudes, or rather moments of energy, are represented by youth and middle age. And as the members of each human generation, as we ordinarily reckon that period, survive for the most part throughout its successor, these movements are always contemporary and are able therefore normally to supplement and correct each other. But in contrast with the generations composed of individuals born round about the same point in time history has its more protracted moments of youth and middle age which are purely successive. The six centuries, for instance, which followed upon the disruption of the Roman Empire formed a period during which it might have seemed as though the Western peoples would never grow tired of sowing their wild oats. That period of anarchy gave way at last, however, to the Middle Age, which deserves its title not only because it formed the chronological bridge between primitive Western barbarism and our modern world, but also because it was really middle-aged. It was middle-aged especially in that it envisaged all human society as a vast hierarchy of law and spent |