The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
§ 8. Hooker’s literary power
The literary power of Hooker is admirably displayed in his eloquent treatment of the subject of the angels, which played a far more important part in theological speculation then than it does in our time. It is related that, when on his death-bed, Hooker was asked by his friend Saravia the subject of his meditations, and replied, “that he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven; and oh that it might be so on earth.” After speaking of the natural laws, which, so to speak, work automatically, he says:
Here we have an excellent example of Hooker’s literary style: language suitable to the subject, the very construction of the somewhat involved sentences enhancing its dignity, evidences of wide, even if somewhat uncritical, reading as shown by the quotation from the Orphic hymn preserved in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria, and poetic feeling perhaps echoing the words of Spenser’s almost contemporary Faerie Queene. The high place assigned to reason in this book strikes almost the keynote of the entire work, since the consensus of human opinion is, to Hooker, an evidence of revelation. “The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself.” Yet, true to his principles, he declines to bind himself to any single theory of government by drawing a sharp distinction between the law of nature common to all men and “laws positive” which do not bind mankind universally. Reason depends on freedom of the will, and nature, whilst prescribing government as necessary to all societies, “leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrary.” It is this broad generalisation, this determination to lay down the principles on which he proposes to treat the subject, which renders the first book of great importance. We are tempted to forget that the author is engaged in one of the fiercest controversies of a controversial age when we peruse a book in which the philosophy is detached from the immediate present. Like other great Elizabethans, Hooker had the power of writing for all time. He enters the lists of controversy resolved to contend not with the weapons of dexterous argument but with those of a more solid character, drawn from the arsenal of philosophy. “Is there,” he asks at the conclusion of the book, “anything which can either be thoroughly understood or soundly judged of, till the very first causes and principles from whence it springeth be made manifest?”
In the second book, Hooker is still preparing the way for his argument with his opponents and, though dealing with one of their main axioms, he does not so much join issue with them as deal with general principles. The puritans maintained that Holy Scripture must be the sole guide of every action of a Christian’s life. Hooker has little difficulty in showing that the passages of Scripture quoted are irrelevant, and that the opinions of the Fathers cited in support of the thesis are not really applicable to it. The chief interest of this short book, however, lies in the way in which it reverts to those divisions of law made in the first, and shows that, though revealed Scripture is an infallible guide, it is not the only one by which our actions must be determined. There is the same underlying appeal to common-sense that we find in the first book, the same dislike of mere hard logical theory as opposed to practice and experience, which makes Hooker a pre-eminently English theologian. It is worth observing how he sums up the results of accepting the puritan position: