richard hookers augustinian political theology

8/13/2019 Richard Hookers Augustinian Political Theology

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F G M P D:

T A C R H P T

T K

Introduction

Much of Richard Hookers (15541600) career was spent in theological and con-stitutional controversy concerning the provisions of the Elizabethan Settlement of1559.1From the very outset the question of the coherence of the Erastian presup-positions of the Settlement, specifically the unification of civil and ecclesiastical

jurisdiction in the Crown, with certain theological premises lay at the very heartof these disputes. In his capacity as Master of the Temple in the Inns of Court,Hooker preached a series of sermons in the mid-1580s on themes of Reformationsoteriology and ecclesiology. Their doctrinal orthodoxy was formally challengedby the disciplinarian Puritan Walter Travers in A Supplication made to the PrivieCounsell.2Hookers strong appeal to the authority of reason and natural law in reli-gious and ecclesiastical matters was sharply challenged by Travers as inconsistent

with the chief tenets of reformed doctrinal orthodoxy. Hookers formal Answere3to Traverss objections lays the groundwork of the philosophical and theological

1 For a recent and thorough account of Richard Hookers career, see Lee W. Gibbs, Lifeof Hooker, in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden and Boston: Brill,2008), 126.

2A supplication made to the Priuy Counsel by Mr Walter Trauers (Oxford: Joseph Barnes,

1612). See Egil Grislis, Introduction to Commentary on Tractates and Sermons iv, The Con-

troversy with Travers,in the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, 6 vols., gen. ed.W. Speed Hill (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,19771993) (hereafter FLE), vol. 5, ed. Laetitia Yeandle and Egil Grislis (1990), 64148.

3 The ansvvere of Mr. Richard Hooker to a supplication preferred by Mr Walter Travers to theHH. Lords of the Privie Counsell(Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612).


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system which he expounded in considerably greater detail in his treatise of the1590s, Of theLawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie.

The Lawes consists of a lengthy preface and eight books. 4The first four booksaddress (1) the nature of law in general, (2) the proper uses of the authorities of rea-son and revelation, (3) the application of the latter to the government of the church,and (4) objections to practices inconsistent with the continental reformed example.

The final four address the more particular issues of (5) public religious duties, (6)the power of jurisdiction, (7) the authority of bishops, and (8) the supreme authorityor sovereignty of the Prince in both church and commonwealth, and hence theirunity in the Christian state. Throughout the treatise Hookers express aim is toexplicate systematically the principles underlying the religious Settlement of 1559

in such a manner as to secure conscientious obedience and conformity through theall the instruments of persuasion:

my whole endeuour is to resolue the conscience, and to shew as neare as Ican what in this controuersie the hart is to thinke, if it will follow the lightof sound and sincere iudgement, without either clowd of preiudice or mistof passionate affection. Wherefore seeing that lawes and ordinances in par-ticular, whether such as we obserue, or such as your selues would haue estab-lished, when the minde doth sift and examine them, it must needes haue oftenrecourse to a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kindes, and

qualities of lawes in generall, whereof vnlesse it be throughly enformed, therewill appeare no certaintie to stay our perswasion vpon: I haue for that cause setdowne in the first place an introduction on both sides needfull to bee consid-ered: Declaring therein what law is, how different kindes of lawes there are,and what force they are of according vnto each kind.5

The treatise is framed as a response to Thomas Cartwright who had been JohnWhitgifts formidable adversary in the Admonition Controversy of the 1570s. Thepreface is in fact addressed formally to them that seeke (as they tearme it) the ref-ormation of lawes, and orders ecclesiasticall, in the Church of England,6that is, todisciplinarian-puritans who, like Cartwright and Travers, sought closer conformity

4 Books I-IV were published in 1593, book V in 1597, books VI and VIII posthumouslyin 1648, and the first complete edition of all eight books, including book VII for the first time,by John Gauden after the Restoration in 1662: The works of Mr. Richard Hooker . . . vindicatingthe Church of England, as truly christian, and duly reformed: in eight books of ecclesiastical polity: now

compleated, as with the sixth and eighth, so with the seventh, touching episcopacy, as the primitive,

catholick and apostolick government of the church, out of his own manuscripts, never before published:

with an account of his holy life, and happy death written by Dr. John Gauden . . . ; the entire editiondedicated to the Kings Most Excellent Majestie, Charls [sic] the II . . .(London: J. Best, for AndrewCrook, 1662); hereafter Lawes.

5 Lawes,Pref.7.1, 2; FLE,1:34.2035.2.6 Lawes,Pref. Title; FLE,1:1.1.


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The Augustinian Coherence of Richard Hookers Political Theology

to the pattern of the best reformed churches on the continent, especially Cal-vins Geneva. The preface sets the tone of the work and announces Hookers main

apologetic intent. There is a significant difference between Hookers rhetoricalapproach and that of previous contributions to Elizabethan polemics. He abandonsthe usual recourse to ridicule and personal abuse which was so characteristic ofthe vast majority of tracts contributed by both sides of the controversy, and speaksirenically to the fundamental theological assumptions with the professed aim ofsecuring conscientious acceptance of the Settlement. To this end he sets out to per-suade by an appeal to mutually acceptable theological assumptions and authorities:wee offer the lawes whereby wee liue vnto the generall triall and iudgement of the

whole world.7Hookers starting-point is to accept unconditionally the disciplinar-

ian premise that the doctrinal tenets and the pastoral aspirations of the Reforma-tion had to be fulfilled in the polity of the Church of England. The rhetoricalslant is intended to serve the main apologetic aim of the treatise, namely to justifythe Elizabethan Settlement as consistent with the principles of reformed doctrinalorthodoxy. Thus the grand cosmic scheme of laws set out in Book I is intended toplace the particulars of the controversy within a foundational context:

because the point about which wee strive is the qualitie of our Lawes, ourfirst entrance hereinto cannot better be made, then with consideration of thenature of lawe in generall and of that lawe which giueth life vnto all the rest

which are commendable iust and good, namely the lawe whereby the Eternallhimselfe doth worke. Proceeding from hence to the lawe, first of nature, thenof scripture, we shall haue the easier accesse vnto those things which comeafter to be debated, concerning the particular cause and question which weehaue in hand.8

The rhetorical aim is to persuade opponents of the Settlement to conscientiousconformity by demonstrating the coherence of the particular decisions of theSettlement the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, hierarchy, episcopacy, royal

supremacy, and thus ultimately Ecclesiastical Dominion or sovereignty itself,with certain general meditations on the metaphysics or first principles concerningthe nature of law.

The question of coherence

One of the most important and enduring questions to engage critical study of thewritings of this Elizabethan theologian, philosopher, and polemicist concerns thecoherence of his thought. For several decades scholars have disagreed sharply on

7 Lawes,I.1.3; FLE,1:58.56.8 Lawes,I.1.3; FLE,1:58.1119.


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how to interpret the relation between Hookers broad metaphysical groundwork(or generall meditations as he himself calls them) set out in the opening books

(IIV) of Lawes andthe more specific practical, political, and constitutional pre-scriptions (or particular decisions) described in the later books (VVIII).9In par-ticular, Hookers metaphysical exposition in Book I of the nature of law and theprinciple of its generic division has been closely evaluated with reference to hisdeterminedly Erastian defense in Book VIII of the constitution established underthe terms of the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, and the logical coherence betweenthese two decisive components of his treatise was found to be severely wanting. Inshort, Hookers theory of law and his theory of sovereignty came to be viewed asfundamentally at odds with each other.10

As early as the 1930s, a sequence of studies devoted to exploring medievalinfluences on Hookers political theory sparked the first concerted attack on thelogical coherence of these two bookends (so to speak) of his discourse. AlessandroPasserin d Entrvess monograph Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e alla storiadel diritto naturale arguably the firstextended critical study of Hookers politi-cal thought challenged the long-received Whig reading by demonstrating theElizabethans considerable debt to scholastic models, and to Aquinas in particu-lar, in the formulation of his account of natural law.11Not long afterwards, in aBritish Academy lecture on Marsilius of Padua, C.W. Previt-Orton remarked on

Hookers evident reliance upon the political theology of the Defensor Pacis in his

9 Lawes, I.1.2; FLE,1:57.2533. I haue endeuoured throughout the body of this wholediscourse, that euery former part might giue strength vnto all that followe, and euery later bringsome light vnto al l before. So that if the iudgements of men doe but holde themselues in suspenceas touching these first more generall meditations, till in order they haue perused the rest thatensue: what may seeme darke at the first will afterwardes be founde more plaine, euen as the later

particular decisionswill appeare I doubt not more strong, when the other haue beene read before

(emphasis added).10 For an insightful summary of the early stages of this dispute see A.S. McGrade, The

Coherence of Hookers Polity: The Books on Power, Journal of the History of Ideas24 (1963):16382. See also W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, The Philosopher of the Politic Society: Richard

Hooker as a Political Thinker, in Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of

his Works, ed. W. Speed Hill (Cleveland and London: Press of Case Western Reserve University,1972), 3-76; republished in W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation: Luther toHooker, ed. C.W. Dugmore (London: Athlone Press, 1980), 13191.

11 Riccardo Hooker: contributo alla teoria e alla storia del diritto naturale, Memorie dell Istituto

Giuridico 2.22 (Turin: Istituto Giuridico della R. Universit, 1932), 72 ff. See also dEntrves,

The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, RichardHooker(New York: Humanities Press, 1959), 88142, and idem, Hooker e Locke: Un contributoalla storia del contratto sociale, in Studi filosofico-giuridici, dedicati a Giorgio Del Vecchio nel XXVanno di insegnamento (1904-1929),2 vols. (Modena: Societ tipografica modenense, 1930-1931),2:228-50.


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In each of these readings of Hooker the intrinsic logical coherence of Hookerspolitical thought is challenged from one perspective or another. Most have con-

fined the scope of their investigations to the overtly political portions of Hookerstreatise (usually Books I and VIII), while most, but not all, have set aside all butthe most basic theological considerations. For Kearney, Hooker sets out in Book I

with the Thomist assumption that law is intrinsically rational and winds up in BookVIII asserting that law is merely the positive assertion of the sovereigns will thusachieving a logically incoherent transition from scholastic rationalism to a proto-Hobbesian variety of hyper-voluntarism. Cargill Thompson, on the other hand,

views Hooker more contextually, and sees him as driven from the outset by thepragmatic requirements of defeating the Disciplinarian puritan challenge. For

purely polemical reasons, therefore, he was disposed to sacrifice philosophical con-sistency to the polemical requirements of defending the Elizabethan Settlement:Throughout the Lawes, Hooker was continually arguing to a brief, and he cannoteasily be acquitted of the charge of subordinating his political ideas to the immedi-ate needs of the controversy.17Other interpreters branched out into exploration ofmore broadly theoretical angles on the question of the coherence of the Lawes. Ina variation of Kearneys and Munzs thesis Gunnar Hillerdal, for example, inter-prets the design of Hookers generic division of the various kinds of law in Book Ias reflective of a Thomistic understanding of a balanced correlation between the

orders of nature and grace, but views the justification of the institutions of theElizabethan Settlement in the later books the royal supremacy, in particular asfalling into a Nominalistic dichotomy of these two orders of reality. Hillerdalnonetheless succeeded in showing that the question of the coherence of Hookersthought extends beyond the confines of his specific accounts of natural law andthe constitution of 1559 and requires attention to his more general theological andmetaphysical assumptions. Nonetheless, like others before him, Hillerdal assumestoo readily Hookers commitment to Thomism.

Our purpose is to take up once again this question of the coherence of Hookers

thought with a view to proposing a resolution to the apparent conflict of his gen-eral meditations on the nature of law and his defense of the particular decisionsembodied in the Erastian constitution of the Elizabethan Settlement. Central toour proposal is the requirement that our investigation proceed as much as pos-sible within the methodological boundaries established by Hookers own preferredmode of theological discourse. Indeed, a cautious ref lection upon the alien mentalitof this Renaissance thinker provides the key to making headway in this task. Tobegin to make sense of the coherence of Hookers theories of law and sovereigntyrequires paying the closest possible attention to his deepest theological presupposi-tions. While there are certainly tantalizing glimpses of an enlightened rationalism

17 Cargil l Thompson, The Philosopher of the Politic Society, 140.


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created order, while the creation itself, both visible-material and invisible-spiritual,proceeds from and is wholly dependent upon this original, un-derived, hidden and

transcendent first principle as its first and primary cause.For Hooker, an appeal to logostheology entails considerably more than a purely

metaphysical claim concerning the nature of the first principle. As his argumentin Book I unfolds, it becomes clear that Hooker is thoroughly invested in thepractical, political, and constitutional consequences of this nomo-theology, of theclaim that God is law. Indeed the edifice of his apologetic rests upon this point ofdeparture:

The statelinesse of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them

delighteth the eye; but that foundation which beareth up the one, that rootwhich ministreth unto the other nourishment and life, is in the bosome of theearth concealed: and if there be at any time occasion to search into it, suchlabour is then more necessary then pleasant both to them which undertake it,and for the lookers on. In like maner the use and benefite of good lawes, allthat live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the groundesand first originall causes from whence they have sprong be unknowne, as tothe greatest part of men they are.22

The burden of his argument is thus to demonstrate that the entire constitutional

arrangement of the Elizabethan Settlement the stately house of the establishedchurch and the goodly tree of the flourishing commonwealth united under therule of one sovereign has its ultimate ground and justification in a hidden, tran-scendent first principle, a first originall of all external manifestations of order. ForHooker the institutions of the Elizabethan religious settlement rest upon this foun-dational proposition of metaphysical ontology, viz. that God is Law. This accountof his apologetic purpose constitutes, moreover, Hookers own explicit claim tocoherence of argument he intends this theory of law to provide the necessary

justif ication for his later defense of the institutions of the Settlement, and more

specif ically for his account of the theory of sovereignty.Hookers adaptation of this classical logostheology to the concrete political andconstitutional issues of his particular time and place is unique when judged besideother contemporary contributions to Elizabethan religious polemics.23Indeed, hisprodigiously sustained effort to explore the underlying theological and metaphysicalconnections connecting the theories of law and sovereignty his intimate knittingtogether of high theology and politics is the arguably the defining characteristicof Hookers thought, such that the designation political theology is probably the

22 Lawes,I.1.2; FLE,1:57.616.23 See Rudolph Almasy, Polemics and Apologetics, in Companion to Richard Hooker, 12150.


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most accurate designation of his venture.24Such an approach to political theoryis thoroughly in keeping with Hookers repeated affirmation of the Neoplatonic

logic of participation whereby all things are understood to exist within their f irstoriginall cause and, conversely, the cause to dwell within all derivative beings.25AsC.S. Lewis once commented in this connection, Hookers universe is drenched

with Deity.26 Nomo-theology, then, is the substantive proposition of Book I ofthe Lawes. Hooker summarizes his general aim towards the end of Book I:

the drift and purpose of all is this, even to show in what maner as every goodand perfect gift, so this very gift of good and perfect Lawesis derived from thefather of lightes; to teach men a reason why iust and reasonable lawes are of so

great force, of so great vse in the world; and to enforme their minds with somemethode of reducing the lawes whereof there is present controuersie vnto theirfirst originall causes, that so it may be in euery particular ordinance thereby thebetter discerned, whether the same be reasonable iust and righteous or no.27

Hooker defines law in general as that which doth assigne unto each thing thekinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint theforme and measure of working . . . so that no certaine end could ever be attained,unlesse the actions whereby it is attained were regular, that is to say, made sute-able for and correspondent unto their end, by some canon, rule or lawe.28 This

definition places him in a scholastic teleological tradition derived ultimately fromthe metaphysics of Aristotle and mediated by Thomas Aquinas. The definition isalmost verbatim a quotation of Aquinass definition of the essence of law. 29More-over, scholars such as dEntrves, Munz, Marshall, and others have been quite

24 I make this argument in the introduction to W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hookers Doc-trine of the Royal Supremacy(Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1990), 14.

25 On Hookers idea of participation, see Charles W. Irish, Participation in God Him-

selfe: Law, the Mediation of Christ, and Sacramental Participation in the Thought of RichardHooker, in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation [hereafter RHER], ed. W. J. TorranceKirby (London and Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 16584; John E. Booty, The Spirituality of Par-ticipation in Richard Hooker, Sewanee Theological Review 38 (1994): 920; and Edmund Newey,

The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Whichcote,Ralph Cudworth and Jeremy Taylor,Modern Theology 18 (2002): 126.

26 C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama(Oxford: Clar-endon Press, 1954), 462.

27 Lawes,I.16.1; FLE,1:135.1113. The allusion is to James 1:17.28 Lawes,I.2.1; FLE,1:58.2629.29

STIa II, q. 90, art. 1: Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act oris restrained from acting: for lex is derived from ligare [to bind], because it binds one to act. Nowthe rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts, as isevident from what has been stated above (1, 1, ad 3); since it belongs to the reason to direct to theend, which is the first principle in al l matters of action, according to the Philosopher (Physics ii).


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correct in their observation of the structural similarities between Hookers accountof law and Thomas Aquinass in his short treatise on law in the second part of the

Summa Theologica.30Hooker asserts that everything works according to law, including God him-

self: the being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working: for that perfection whichGod is, geveth perfection to that he doth.31Just as the traditional logostheologyaccounts for the genesis of the world by means of an emanation or processiofrom anoriginative principle of divine unity, so also Hooker derives a diverse hierarchy oflaws from the eternal law as their highest wellspring and fountaine. In this respecthe also adheres to Aquinass position.32Hookers emphasis upon the divine unity ismarked: our God is one, or rather verie Onenesse, and meere unitie, having noth-

ing but it selfe in it selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of manythings besides.33It is precisely, however, in his insistence upon the divine unity andsimplicity that we can begin to discern a glimmer of Hookers departure from the

Thomistic paradigm. On a certain level, it is as if Hooker had conf lated Aquinasstreatise on law in the secunda parswith the argument of the articles on the divinesimplicity in the third question of theprima pars.34

All derivative species of law participate in the divine, undifferentiated unityof what Hooker calls that lawe which as it is laid vp in the bosome of God,35andemanate from it dispositively, that is, by way of a gradual hierarchical procession

from higher to lower species. In this respect, Hookers nomo-theology adheres tothe Neoplatonic logic of the so-called lex divinitatiswhereby the originative prin-ciple of law remains simple and self-identical while, at the same time, it proceeds(emanates) beyond and below itself dispositively in its generation of manifold,derivative species of law.36Unlike Aquinass definition of eternal law in the secundaparsof the Summa, however, Hooker distinguishes between a first and a second

30 STIa II, qq. 9096. These similarities have often been noted by Hookers interpreters.

See, e.g., John Sedberry Marshal l, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: An Historical and TheologicalStudy of Hookers Ecclesiastical Polity(London: A.C. Black, 1963), and Munz, The Place of Hooker.

31 LawesI.2.2; FLE1:59.632 STIa II, q. 91, art. 1: the very Idea of the government of things in Godthe Ruler of

the universe, has the natureof a law. And since the Divine Reasons conception of things is notsubject to time but is eternal, according to Proverbs 8:23, therefore it is that this kind of lawmust be called eternal.

33 Lawes,I.2.2; FLE,1:59.1419.34 STIa, q. 3. De simplicitate Dei. See esp. Art. 7, respondeo.35 Lawes,I.3.1; FLE,1:63.15.36

On the hierarchical concept of the lex divinitatis see W.J. Hankey, Augustinian Imme-diacy and Dionysian Mediation in John Colet, Edmund Spenser, Richard Hooker and Cardinalde Brulle, in Augustinus in der Neuzeit: Colloque de la Herzog-August-Bibliothek de Wolfenbttel1417 Octobre 1996, ed. Dominique Courcelles (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 12560. See also W.J.Torrance Kirby, Grace and Hierarchy: Richard Hookers Two Platonisms, in RHER, 2540.


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eternal law on the ground that God is a law bothto himself (in se) in his inacces-sible divine simplicity, andto all creatures besides (ad extra), and thus invokes the

ineffably transcendent divinity ofIa pars, q. 3, as the original Eternal Law.37Whilehis discussion of the first eternal law adheres closely to traditional formulations oflogos theology (such as found in the opening questions of the first part of Aqui-nass Summa), Hookers invention of the category second ternal lawe introducessomething quite distinctive, unusual, and unexpected from the standpoint of thetradition of Christian legal theory.38

All things, Hooker maintains, including Gods own self, do worke after asort according to lawe.39Whereas all creatures work according to a lawe, whereofsome superiour, unto whome they are subject, is author, nonetheless only the

workes and operations of God have him both for their worker, and for the lawewhereby they are wrought. The being of God is a kinde of lawe to his working.40As the first principle of law, God alone is a completely self-regulated agent causasui, and consequentlygubernator sui and being the f irst, it can have no other thenit selfe to be the author of that law which it willingly worketh by. God therefore is alaw both to himselfe, and to all other things besides.41All derivative species of law,therefore, have their origin in this f irst eternal law; however, for Hooker their deri-

vation from the f irst eternal law is notin the first instance through a gradual, hier-archically mediated dispositio, but rather they are understood by him to be gath-

ered together withinthe second eternal law. In this fashion Hooker simultaneouslyguards the transcendent simplicity and unity of the divine source of law God inhis verie Onenesse, the first eternal law and, by positing the second eternal law,he asserts the radical immanence of God in all the manifold participating formsbound together within it. The crucial consequence of this gathering together of the

various species of law within a second eternal law is to diminish the overall signifi-cance of the hierarchical dispositio as the primary mode of mediation between thedivine source of law and the finite, created order of laws. In place of the Thomistlogic of a gradual, hierarchical disposition of the species of law, Hookers positing

of the second eternal law sets up an Augustinian hypostatic relation between theCreator/Eternal Law and creature/manifold determinate species of law.Viewed from the aspect of the bosome of God, the second eternal law is actu-

ally one and the same as the first eternal law, and in this unity the importance of theprinciple of gradual disposition is obviated. Viewed, however, from below that isfrom the creaturely aspect of the manifold derivative forms of law within it which

37 See Lawes,I.3.1; FLE,1:63.664.3. STIa, q. 3, art. 8 Whether God enters into com-

position with other things.38

See Lee Gibbss discussion of the two eternallaws in his Introduction to Book I, FLE6(1), 92 ff.

39 Lawes,I.2.2; FLE,1:58.3359.1.40 Lawes,I.2.2; FLE,1:59.125.41 Lawes,I.2.3; FLE,1:60.1618.


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participatein the eternal law the second eternal law is distinct from the simpleand unutterable divine unity.42The second eternal law comprises the various laws

kept by all his creatures, according to the severall conditions wherewith he hathindued them.43 In its descended aspect, the second eternal law permits a re-emergence of the principle of hierarchical dispositio. In this respect, the relationbetween the first and second eternal laws is analogous to that between the first andsecond Primal Hypostases of Neoplatonic metaphysics, viz. the One and its firstderivative Mind, nousor logos.44The second eternal law has a variety of namesdepending on the different orders of creatures subject to a single divine govern-ment. For Hooker, the two principal derivativegeneraof the second eternal law are1) the natural law and 2) the revealed law of the scriptures, usually identified by

Hooker following Aquinass nomenclature as the divine law and consistingof the old law of Moses and new law of the Gospel. 45Thus comprised withinthe second eternal law Hookers system of the laws expresses Aquinass ChristianNeoplatonic twofold motion of creative procession from (exitus) and redemptivereturn back to (reditus) the original unity of the eternal law. Each of these twoprimary species the natural law and the divine law is further participated in bymultiple derivative and dependent forms of law. By means of a continuing proces-sion or dispositive emanation, the natural law comprises an unfolding series ofsubordinate and hierarchically arranged species of law. Unlike Aquinas, Hooker

extends his account of the natural law to include the irrational natural and neces-sary agents which keepe the lawe of their kind unwittingly, distinguished fromthe governance of the rational.46The law governing the rational creatures is dis-tinguished further into a law clestial ordering the angels, spirits immaterialland intellectuall,47and a law of reason, most often identified as the natural lawsimply, the law which orders self-conscious and rational humankind. For Hookerall of these sub-species of the natural law represent a further processioad extraordispositioof the second eternal law.

The other principal aspect of the second eternal law, i.e. the law of Gods spe-

cial revelation of himself in the Scriptures, presupposes a disruption of the order

42 Lawes,I.2.2; FLE,1:59.1219: Dangerous it were for the feeble braine of man to wade

farre into the doings of the most High; whome although to knowe bee life, and ioy to make men-tion of his name; yet our soundest knowledge is, to know that wee know him not as indeede hee is,neither can know him; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence when we confessewithout confession, that his glory is inexplicable, his greatnesse aboue our capacitie and reach. Heeis aboue, and wee vpon earth; therefore it behoueth our wordes to bee warie and fewe.

43 Lawes,I.3.1; FLE,1:63.910.44

Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. and trans. Stephen McKenna (Burdett, NY: Larson Publica-tions, 1992), III.8.7 (279).

45 STIaII q. 90, art. 4.46 Lawes,I.3.25; FLE,1:64.369.20.47 Lawes,I.4.13; FLE,1:69.2172.24.


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regulated by the natural law and introduced into that order by the Fall and by origi-nal sin. This divinely revealed law provides the means of the restoration or return

of the creation to its original condition of unity under the eternal law; the secondeternal law thus works through the revelation of Scripture to ensure that nothing inthe created order falls outside the regulation of Gods ordering purpose. Hookersdistinction between these two summa generaof the second eternal law viz. natu-ral law and divine law corresponds, as has already been shown, to the cosmiclogic of procession and return of Neoplatonic metaphysics, but for Hooker it alsoreflects the epistemological distinction of the twofold knowledge of God (duplexcognitio Dei), namely by the light of supernatural revelation and by the natural lightof reason so critically important to Protestant theology.48

On the side of natural law there are further derivative and composite spe-cies of law chief among them human positive law and the law of nations, forexample which depend upon a conscious, pragmatic reflection upon the generalprinciples contained in the natural law and their application to particular, concretecircumstances. These additional derivative species of law are viewed by Hooker asa consequence of human sin and, like the divine law, they constitute part of thedivinely-ordained means of correction to the disorder introduced by the Fall as

Augustine would say, coercive human law is a remedium peccati.49Throughout allthis the human creature as the imago deiis portrayed by Hooker as the focal point

of the divine operation of procession from and return to the original fount of orderestablished in divine simplicity of the first eternal law.The structure of this generic division of law in Book I of the Ecclesiasticall

Politieshows that Hooker had undoubtedly read Aquinas on law50very closely, asnumerous scholars have noted.51Hookers crucial distinction between the first andsecond eternal laws marks, nonetheless, a significant departure from the meta-physical framework (for lack of a better phrase) of the Thomist model. The effectof drawing a distinction between two aspects of the eternal law may at first glanceappear not all that momentous. The effect, however, is simultaneously to widen

and to decrease the distance between the creator-lawgiver and the created cosmos.The gathering together of all the derivative species of law within the second eter-nal law a distinction missing from Aquinass own generic division of law in theSumma Theologica undermines the primacy of a gradual, dispositive, hierarchical

48 See Calvin,Inst. I.2.1. See W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hookers Theory of NaturalLaw in the Context of Reformation Theology, Sixteenth Century Journal30 (1999): 681703.

49 For coercive law as a remedium peccati, see Augustine, de civitate Dei, Bk. XIX.50 ST, Ia IIae, qq. 90108.51

Lee Gibbs, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer,Anglican Theological Review 84 (2002): 94360; Patterson, Hookers Apprentice; Robert K.Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England(Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press, 1981); Munz, The Place of Hooker, 4957; Passerin d Entrves,Medieval Contribution,esp. 88142; Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition.


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mediation between creator and creature intrinsic to the Thomist model, and empha-sizes rather the hypostatic distinction andidentity of participation of these mani-

fold species of law in their common source. With a marked Augustinian emphasis,the second eternal law in effect renders the participation of the manifold formsof law in their source, i.e. the Eternal Law, simultaneously both more transcen-dent and more immanent, ruling out a gradual and hierarchical dispositive media-tion between the creaturely-derivative and the creator-source. Hookers distinc-tion between the f irst and second eternal laws thus entails a heightened distinctionbetween the hidden original source of law and the manifold derivative species oflaw in a manner more characteristic of the late medieval Nominalists and Augus-tinians. The distinction between first and second eternal laws serves to hyposta-

size in Augustinian fashion the relation between the divine source and thederivative manifestations of law rather than to present them as Aquinas does inhis questions on law in the Ia II of the Summa Theologica as gradually mediatedby means of a hierarchical dispositio. Hookers distinctive treatment of the eternallaw exhibits the marked Augustinian tendency of his thought, a general theologicalbent which he shares with other magisterial Reformers, Calvin included.52In short,this distinction between the first and second eternal laws underscores the criticallysignificant (and largely ignored) adaptation by Hooker of the scholastic logic ofhierarchical mediation, the so-called lex divinitatis attributed by Aquinas and

Boniface VIII to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to his Reformed Protestant,and consequently thoroughly Augustinian, theological assumptions concerning therelation between creator and creature and between the orders of Nature and Grace.

What has largely been missed in the discussion of Hookers debt to Aquinas is thatthe logic of hierarchical dispositio in Aquinass theological method is present in theargument of the Lawes, but nonetheless containedby Hooker within a broad Augus-tinian theological frame:

Now that law which as it is laid up in the bosome of God, they call ternall,receyveth according unto the different kinds of things which are subject unto

it different and sundry kinds of names. That part of it which ordereth naturalagents, we call usually natureslaw; that which Angels doe clearely behold, and

without any swarving observe is a law clestialland heavenly: the law of rea-sonthat which bindeth creatures reasonable in this world, and with which byreason they may most plainly perceive themselves bound; that which bindeththem, and is not knowen but by speciall revelation from God, Divine law;humanelawe that which out of the law either of reason or of God, men proba-blie gathering to be expedient, they make it a law. All things therfore, whichare as they ought to be, are conformed unto this second law eternall, and even

52 See Kirby, Richard Hookers Theory of Natural Law, 681 ff.


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those things which to this eternall law are not conformable, are notwithstand-ing in some sort ordered by the first eternall lawe.53

To sum up, the nomo-theology of Book One displays many of the distinctive char-acteristics of the Thomist account of law as a hierarchical emanation of the EternalLaw. Yet, by gathering natural law and divine law together within the second eter-nal law, Hooker introduces a decisively significant Augustinian theological turn.

The Eternal Law proper, i.e. the first eternal law, is distanced from its derivativeforms of law in such a fashion that the natural law cannot serve to mediate betweenfallen humanity and the divine source of Justice. In this respect Hookers theory oflaw takes on the marked Augustinian f lavor of his soteriology:

the light of nature is never able to finde out any way of obtayning the reward ofblisse, but by performing exactly the duties and workes of righteousnes. Fromsalvation therefore and life all flesh being excluded this way, behold how the

wisedome of God hath revealed a way mysticall and supernaturall, a way direct-ing unto the same ende of life by a course which groundeth it selfe upon theguiltines of sinne, and through sinne desert of condemnation and death.54

There is no natural mediation between fallen humanity and divine justice,but solely by means of grace a way mysticall and supernaturall is the gulf

between man and God bridged. In this respect, the hierarchical dispositioof lawscannot serve to link heaven and earth in any salvific fashion. Grace alone is capableof overcoming the distance.55In this way, Hookers appropriation of the Thomistlegal theory with its assumption of gradual hierarchical mediation is properlyunderstood to be contained withinthe boundaries of an Augustinian logic of hypo-static mediation. Hooker allows the logic of hierarchy, but not at all in the Thomistsoteriological sense of a gradual dispositioconnecting heaven and earth, with natureassisting grace. This containment of the hierarchical principle within an Augus-tinian hypostatic framework has very pronounced implications for ecclesiology and

constitutional theory. These implications are worked out by Hooker throughoutthe remainder of his treatise. Leaving books II through VII aside in admittedlyprocrustean fashion, we propose to examine the consequences of our reading ofHookers nomo-theology for the interpretation of his theory of sovereignty.

53 Lawes,I.3.1; FLE,1:63.1429.54 Lawes,I.11.5, 6; FLE,1:118.1118.55 See Ranall Ingalls, Sin and Grace, in Companion to Richard Hooker, 15183.


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Augustinian constitutionalism: Law makes the King

There are two critical features of Hookers theory of sovereignty which stand atthe center of the debate over the coherence of his thought. First is his claim thatthe power of Supreme Jurisdiction over the Church or Ecclesiastical Domin-ion rightfully belongs to the Civil Prince or Governor to order and disposeof spirituall affayres, as the highest uncommanded Commander in them;56 thesecond is the distinctively dialectical manner of his assertion of the divine right ofsovereigns as Godes Lievtenants who, nonetheless, should attribute to the law

what the law attributes to them, namely power and dominion.57

unto kings by human right, honour by very divine right, is due. Manns ordi-nances are many times presupposed as groundes in the statutes of God. Andtherfore of what kinde soever the means be wherby Governours are lawfullyadvanced unto their seates as we by the law of God stand bound meekly toacknowledg them for Godes Lievtenantes and to confesse their power his . . .58

Scholars have frequently portrayed the boldly Erastian constitution described anddefended by Hooker in Book VIII as essentially irreconcilable with the supposedly

Thomistic nomo-theology outlined in Book I. Peter Munz sets the pattern when heargues that in his defence of the royal ecclesiastical supremacy Hooker abandons his

previous adherence to a Thomist theology of law with its gradual disposition of thepowers of nature and grace in favour of a species of Tudor Averroism. 59Hookers

willingness to affirm subjection of the governance of the church to the civil poweris deemed inconsistent with the Thomist first principles, that is to say, with thelogic of the lex divinitatiswhereby the temporal power must be subordinated hier-archically to the spiritual power as the order of nature itself is subordinated to theorder of grace, or as natural law is subordinate to divine law. Munzs argument takesas its unspoken premise that Hooker actually affirms the Thomist metaphysics ofhierarchical dispositio. Given such a premise, Hookers generall meditations of

Book I are plainly contradicted in the view of Munz and in that of many otherscholars besides by the particular decisions concerning constitutional orderargued in Book VIII.60This conclusion drawn concerning the logical incoherenceof Hookers account of sovereignty with his legal principles rests, however, on a fal-lacy, namely that the nomo-theology of Book I is indeed a simple appropriation of

Thomist metaphysical principles. We have attempted to show above how Hooker

56 Lawes,VIII.1.8; FLE,3:330.1416.57

Lawes,VIII.2.1; FLE,3:332.2324: Attribuat Rex Legi quod Lex attribuit ei potesta-tem et Dominium.

58 Lawes,VIII.3.1 [Keble 2.6]; FLE,3:335.22336.4.59 Munz, Place of Hooker, 49-57.60 Munz, Place of Hooker, 96-111.


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does indeed appropriate elements of Aquinass theory of law, how on occasion heappears almost to be quoting directly from the Summa, but how also, nonetheless,

he modifies the Thomist legal theory substantively by setting it within a largerframework marked by its Augustinian soteriological assumptions. Our main pur-pose in comparing the arguments of Books I and VIII yet again is to attempt toshow that, far from tending to logical incoherence, Hookers Erastian defence of theCivil Magistrates role as the highest uncommanded Commander61of the ecclesi-astical as well as the civil hierarchy is nothing less than the practical completion ofhis argument, the necessary fulfilment of his nomo-theology.

Hookers defense of the constitutional arrangements of the Elizabethan Settle-ment is not inaccurately described as an instance of Tudor Averroism.62Marsilius

of Padua was, after all, a vocal critic of the claims of the papacy to jurisdiction overprinces on very similar Augustinian theological grounds.63The relevance of thisfourteenth-century work of Augustinian political theology to Hooker is evidentin Marsiliuss chief aim, namely to expose the Roman papacys quest for domi-nation the libido dominandi definitive of Augustines civitas terrena that is,supreme jurisdiction over not only the spiritual and ecclesiastical realms, but overthe temporal or civil realms as well.64According to Marsilius, this over-reachingof spiritual authority was the central cause of conflict and disorder within Chris-tendom.65 In the bull Unam SanctamBoniface VIII set out a series of dogmatic

61 LawesVIII.1.8 [Keble 2.1]; FLE, 3: 330.15.62 The label is employed by Munz, Place of Hooker, 101. Hugh Kearney portrays Hooker in

this respect as proto-Hobbesian: see Hooker: A Reconstruction, 30011. For Tudor appealsto the political theology of Marsilius, see Shelley C. Lockwood, Marsilius of Padua and theCase for the Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society6 (1990):89119.

63 Marsilius of Padua, The defence of peace: lately translated out of laten in to englysshe, with the

kynges moste gracyous priuilege (London: Robert Wyer, 1535). Although completed in 1324 and

circulated in manuscript, the original Latin text was not printed until 1522 in the Basle edition byBeatus Bildius: Opus insigne cui titulum fecit autor [Marsilius] Defensorem pacis (Basle, 1522). Seethe modern English translation by Alan Gewirth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980).

64 According to Augustine, the two cities the civitas Dei and the civitas terrena are

constituted by two modes of love, viz. amor Deiand libido dominandi. See de civitate Dei, XIV.1.For Augustine it is characteristic of the latter to confuse the finite and temporal good with theinfinite and eternal good, and this is the nub of Marsiliuss satire.

65 Marsilius, Defender of the Peace: Christ Himself did not come into the world to rulemen, or to judge them by civil judgment, nor to govern in a temporal sense, but rather to subject

Himself to the state and condition of this world; that indeed from such judgment and rule He

wished to exclude and did exclude Himself and His apostles and disciples, and that He excludedtheir successors, the bishops and presbyters, by His example, and word and counsel and com-mand from all governing and worldly, that is, coercive rule. I will also show that the apostleswere true imitators of Christ in this, and that they taught their successors to be so. I will furtherdemonstrate that Christ and His apostles desired to be subject and were subject continually to


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propositions which culminated in the assertion of papal supremacy.66His assertionof the popes supremacy with the corollary subordination of princes and civil rulers

to the papal plenitudo potestatis is grounded in an interpretation of Romans 13according to the logic of the lex divinitatis the same logic which informs Thomas

Aquinass theory of the hierarchically ordered, dispositive emanation of the speciesof law in the prima secund parsof his Summa Theologica.67Over against the logicof dispositio implied by the lex divinitatis favored by both Aquinas and BonifaceVIII, Marsilius proposes a radical redefinition of spiritual power along Augustin-ian soteriological lines and consequently in direct opposition to the hierarchicalclaims of the papacy to the plenitudo potestatis implicit in the lex divinitatis. Overagainst the metaphysics of hierarchical dispositio, Marsiliuss Augustinian critique

asserts a hypostatic relation between the spiritual and temporal realms, between theorders of grace and nature. This Augustinian rejection of the metaphysical primacyof mediated hierarchy (lex divinitatis) undergirding the logic of Unam SanctamledMarsilius to assert the converse and equally totalizing claim of the temporal powerover all matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

An Augustinian hypostatic view of the relation between spiritual and temporalpower similar to that which informs the Marsilian political theology also shapesHookers interpretation of the relation between church and commonwealth and theunity of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the person of the godly Prince:

A Churchand a Commonwealthwe graunt are thinges in nature the one dis-tinguished from the other, a Commonwealthis one way, and a Churchanother

way defined . . . We may speake of them as two, we may sever the rights andcauses of the one well enough from the other in regard of that difference which

we graunt there is between them, albeit we make nopersonal[my italics here]difference. For the truth is the Churchand the Commonwealthare names whichimport thinges really different. But those thinges are accidentes and such acci-dentes as may and should alwayes lovingly dwell together in one subject.68

the coercive jurisdiction of the princes of the world in reality and in person, and that they taughtand commanded all others to whom they gave the law of truth by word or letter, to do the same

thing, under penalty of eternal condemnation. See Paul Halsall, Medieval Source Book, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/marsiglio4.html.

66 The Bull was formally issued on 18 November 1302. The original is no longer in exis-tence; the oldest text is in the registers of Boniface VIII in the Vatican archives, Reg. Vatic., L, fol.387. SeeExtravagantes Decretales Communes, I.8.1, De Maioritate et Obedientia,in Corpus IurisCanonici, ed. E. Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879; repr. Graz: Akademische

Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955, 1959), 2: cols. 124546. For an English translation of the bull seeBrian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 10501300 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1988), 18889.

67 For Aquinass formulation of the lex divinitatissee STIIa II, q.172, art.2.68 Lawes,VIII.l.2, 5; FLE,3:3l8, 324.


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Proceeding from an Augustinian and Aristotelian premise, that church and com-monwealth can be united as accidents within a single subject, and that civil and

ecclesiastical jurisdiction may coincide in the person of the Prince as the Act ofSupremacy proclaims,69is for Hooker a logical and necessary consequence of thenomo-theology set out by him in the first book of the Lawes. Indeed it is the com-mon thread of Hookers political Augustinianism which connects the arguments ofBooks I and VIII and renders them coherent with each other.

Hookers interpretation of the royal supremacy certainly bears more than apassing resemblance to the political theology of Marsilius. The common groundis a shared embrace of the precepts of political Augustinianism. 70 It is preciselyowing to Marsiliuss thoroughly Augustinian insistence upon the need to distin-

guish sharply and clearly and therefore hypostatically rather than disposi-tively between the spheres of the spiritual and the temporal powers that theexternal and coercive jurisdiction over the church as a human, political organiza-tion is ascribed by him to the sovereign power of the Legislator. By a similar line ofreasoning Hooker maintains that Christ alone (solus Christus)71exercises headshipover the Church as an inner, invisible, and mystical civitas i.e. the church as asocietie supernaturall while the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Prince belongsproperly to the outward, visible, and external civitas i.e. the church as a human,politique societie:

The Church being a supernaturall societie, doth differ from naturall societiesin this; that the persons vnto whom wee associate our selues, in the one aremen simply considered as men; but they to whom we bee ioyned in the other,are God, Angels, and holy men. the Church being both a society, and a societysupernaturall; although as it is a society, it haue the selfe same originall grounds

which other politique societes haue, namely the naturall inclination which allmen haue vnto sociable life, and consent to some certaine bond of association,

which bond is the law that appointeth what kind of order they shall be associ-ated in: yet vnto the Church as it is a societie supernaturall this is peculiar,

that part of the bond of their association which belong to the Church of God,

69 1 Elizabeth I, cap. 1; Statutes of the Realm, 4:35055. See also 26 Henry VIII, cap. 1; SR

3:49293.70 On the theme of political Augustinianism in the Middle Ages, see R.W. Dyson, St

Augustine of Hippo: The Christian Transformation of Political Philosophy (London and New York:Continuum, 2005) and idem, Normative Theories of Society and Government in Five MedievalThinkers: St. Augustine, John of Salisbury, Giles of Rome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), and cf. R. A. Markus, Christianity and the Secular

(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).71 See Lawes,VIII.4.9 [Keble 4.9]; FLE,3:377.1620: Himonly therefore we doe acknowl-edg to be that Lordwhich dwelleth liveth and raigneth in our hartes; himonly to be that Headwhich giveth salvation and life unto his body; himonly to be that fountaine, from whence theinfluence of heavenly grace distilleth . . .


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This relation of subordination between the spiritual and the temporal realmsestablishes the ecclesiastical hierarch as an ordained agent or sacramental mediator

between the worlds. Hookers naming of the Sovereign as uncommanded Com-mander a probable allusion to Aristotles unmoved mover would no doubthave pleased both Thomas Aquinas and Boniface, yet the metaphysical premiseconcerning the manner of that mediation has been radically transformed. Hookerparts company with the two scholastics when he avoids inferring any necessarysubjection of the terrestrial (i.e. civil) to the spiritual (i.e. ecclesiastical) power. Onthe contrary, he attributes the plenitude of power unequivocally to the Civil Magis-trate, thereby completely redefining the meaning of the relation between the pow-ers. Ecclesiastical power is reinterpreted as belonging to terrestrial government;

the church is a politique societie. Just as Aristotles unmoved mover gives life andmotion to the entire physical cosmos, so also the Prince is the lex animata() of the political realm politique societie ( ) inthe case of England, a free Christianstate or kingdom where one and the selfsamepeople are the Churchand the Commonwealth.77

In making this claim is Hooker trapped in some deep internal contradiction ofargument? Is this the product of an incoherent political theology? Such has been theprevailing judgement of numerous scholars for many years. By attending closely tothe underlying Augustinian contours of Hookers thought, however, we can discern

in this account of the nature of the sovereign power a theological pattern reminis-cent of the subtle structure of his nomo-theology in Book I. Just as the hierarchicaldispositioof the generic division of laws is contained by a broader hypostatic logic onthe basis of the distinction drawn between the first and second eternal laws, so herethe hierarchical dispositioof jurisdiction and authority is interpreted within the larger

Augustinian frame. The church as a mystical, invisible, and divine societie super-naturall is distinguished hypostatically from the church as an external, visible, andhuman politique societie. Christ alone rules as head of the societie supernaturall

where he rules by the inward influence of heavenly grace:

we make the Spirituall regiment of Christ to be generally that wherby hisChurchis ruled and governed in thinges spirituall. Of this generall we maketwo distinct kindes, the one invisibly exercised by Christhimself in his own

but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man . . . This authority

is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to him and his

successors . . . Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinanceof God [Rom. 13: 2], unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings . . . See Giles of Rome,De ecclesiastica potestate, ed. Arthur P. Monahan (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), I.4,(1720), and Monahans introduction, xxvii.

77 Lawes,VIII.3.5; FLE,3:355.33.


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person, the other outwardly administred by them whom Christdoth allow tobe the Rulersand guiders of his Church.78

The species of jurisdiction are hypostatically distinguished as visible/invisible,inward/outward, temporal/eternal, yet Christ is nonetheless personally the sourceof both. Being severed in nature, these two kindes of power are incommensu-rable, and therefore cannot be ordered by means of gradual dispositio. Consequently,there can be no dispositive subordination of human jurisdiction to spiritual juris-diction, but solely a hypostatic distinction as Marsilius also argued. The resultis a humanizing of the church as an external, political organization, with theconsequence that there is no longer a theological or metaphysical necessity for an

essential distinction to be drawn between ecclesiastical and civil power; bothproperly belong to the sphere of the politique societie. There is also a concomitantand symmetrical sacralizing of the commonwealth:

even as the soule is the worthier part of man, so humane societies are muchmore to care for that which tendeth properly unto the soules estate then forsuch temporall thinges as this life doth stand in need of . . . so in all com-monwealths things spirituall ought above temporall to be provided for. Andof things spirituall the chiefest is Religion.79

Moreover, since civil jurisdiction derives authority directly from heaven, Goddoth ratifie the workes of that Soveraigne authoritie which Kings have receivedby men.80 For Hooker the logic of hierarchical dispositio is retained within theorganization of the state a term he uses in a remarkably modern sense with itsnaturall but not personall distinction between civil and ecclesiastical powers.81

Yet these powers are united in the person of the sovereign, in a manner analogousto the uniting of diverse species of law within the second eternal law. Hierarchicalorder properly obtains within the self-complete unity of the politique societie,rather than through a subordination of a temporal jurisdiction to a separated spiri-

tual jurisdiction. Hierarchy continues to obtain within the political realm, but ahierarchy answerable to the Prince as sole and supreme ruler:

. . . in a free Christianstate or kingdom where one and the selfsame people arethe Churchand the Commonwealth, God through Christdirecting that people,to see it for good and weighty considerations expedient that their SovereignLordand Governor in causes civil have also inEcclesiasticallaffairs a supreme

78 Lawes,VIII.4.9; FLE,3 :377.710.79

Lawes,VIII.1.4; FLE,3:321.1016.80 Lawes,VIII.3.1; FLE,3:336.14.81 Lawes, VIII.1.2; FLE, 3:320.912: They hold the necessitie of personall separation

which cleane excludeth the power of one mans dealing in both, we of naturallwhich doth no hin-der, but that one and the same person may in both beare a principal l sway (emphasis added).


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power, forasmuch as the light of reason doth lead them unto it, and againstit, Gods own revealed law hath nothing; surely they do not in submitting

themselves thereunto any other than that which a wise and religious peopleought to do.82

82 Lawes, VIII.3.5; FLE,3:355.


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richard hookers augustinian political theology

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