sun enlighteneth it and heateth it according to his seasons. The earth nourisheth the plants, the plants feed the beasts, the beasts serve man. Again, nothing is seen here to be made for itself. The sun shineth and heateth; but not for itself the earth beareth, and yet hath no benefit thereby : the winds blow, and yet they sail not: but all these things redound to the glory of the Maker, to the accomplishment of the whole, and to the benefit of man. To be short, the noblest creatures have need of the basest, and the basest are served by the noblest; and all are so linked together from the highest to the lowest, that the ring thereof cannot be broken without confusion. The sun cannot be eclipsed, the plants withered, or the rain want, but all things feel the hurt thereof. Now then, can we imagine that this world which consisteth of so many and so divers pieces, tending all to one end, so coupled one to another, making one body, and full of so apparent consents of affections, proceedeth from elsewhere than from the power of one alone? When in a field we see many battles, divers standards, sundry liveries, and yet all turning head with one sway; we conceive that there is one general of the field, who commandeth them all. Also when in a city or a realm we see an equality of good behaviour in an unequality of degrees of people, infinite trades which serve one another, the smaller reverencing the greater, the greater serving to the benefit of the smaller, both of them made equal in justice, and all tending in this diversity to the common service of their country: we doubt not but there is one law, and a magistrate which by that law holdeth the said diversity in union. And if any man tell of many magistrates, we will by and by inquire for the sovereign. Yet notwithstanding all this is but an order set among divers men, who ought even naturally to be united, by the community of their kind. But when things as well light as heavy, hot as cold, moist as dry, living as unliving, endued with sense as senseless, and each of infinite sorts, do so close in one composition as one of them cannot forbear another; nay rather, to our seeming, the worthiest do service to the basest, the greatest to the smallest, the strongest to the weakest, and all of them together are disposed to the accomplishment of the world, and to the contentment of man who alonely is able to consider it ought we not forthwith to perceive, that the whole world and all things contained therein do by their tending unto us teach us to tend unto one alone? And seeing that so many things tend unto man, shall man scatter his doings unto divers ends? Or shall he be so wretched as to serve many masters? Nay further, to knit up this present point withal, seeing that all things the nobler they be the more they do close into one unity (as for example, we see that the things which have but ere being are of infinite kinds, the things that have life are of infinite sorts, the things that have sense are of many sorts, howbeit not of so many; and the things that have reason are many only in particulars :) doth it not follow also that the Godhead from whence they have their reason, as nobler than they is also much more One than they, that is to say, only One, as well in particularity and number as in kind?

mere

Henry Constable, whose few poems and extant letters indicate much sweetness of character, was in 1595 driven into exile for his fidelity to Roman Catholic opinions. There was some close association, perhaps tie of blood, between Henry Constable and Anthony and Francis Bacon, and to Anthony he wrote, in 1595, "I have a marvellous opinion of your virtues and judgment, and therefore, though in particulars of religion we may be differing, yet I hope that

in the general belief of Christ (which is a greater matter in this incredulous age), and desire of the union of His Church you agree with me, as in the love of my country I protest I consent with you." Loving his country, Henry Constable sought leave to return, and failing in that, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign he returned clandestinely, but was discovered and committed to the Tower. One of his "Spiritual Sonnets" may be taken as an example of the purity of aspiration that could be associated with the worship of the Virgin; something far higher than the idolatries from which he prays that it may save him:

TO OUR BLESSED LADY.

Sovereign of queers! if vain Ambition move
My heart to seek an earthly prince's grace,
Shew me thy Son in His imperial place
Whose Servants reign our Kings and Queens above;
And if alluring passions I do prove

By pleasing sighs, shew me Thy lovely face,
Whose beams the angels' beauty do deface,
And even inflame the seraphim with love.
So by Ambition I shall humble be,

When in the presence of the Highest King
I serve all His that He may honour me;
And Love my heart to chaste desires shall bring,
When Fairest Queen looks on me from her throne,
And, jealous, bids me love but her alone.

of Exeter. Like Spenser, from whom he differed in views of Church polity, he was wholly an Elizabethan writer; each was born about 1553, and they died, before Elizabeth, within a year of each other. In literature Spenser is the greatest representative of Elizabethan Puritanism, and Hooker wrote the wisest and best argument against it. Both were true men who sought to serve God faithfully with all their powers; and they agreed more than they differed. Spenser, indeed, differed so much from the narrower Puritanism of his time, and was so fully in accord with Hooker's religious spirit, that we cannot think of them as in opposite camps. When different tendencies of thought lead men to seek one great end by different ways, and great parties are formed, it is between the lesser combatants--who confound accident with substance and give themselves up to fierce contention about phrases, words, and outward shows-that the distance seems most wide. Between the best and purest upon each side, who are one in aim, and who both look to essentials, the accord is really greater than the discord.

Remember

away with good advice and benediction. ing after they left that he had omitted the help of a little money, the good bishop sent a servant to bring Hooker back, and when he returned, said, "Richard, I sent for you back to lend you a horse which hath carried me many a mile, and, I thank God, with much ease." The horse was a walking-stick that Jewel had brought from Germany. "And, Richard, I do not give but lend you my horse: be sure you be honest and bring my horse back to me at your return this way to Oxford. And I do now give you ten groats to bear your charges to Exeter; and here is ten groats more, which I charge you to deliver to your mother, and tell her I send her a bishop's benediction with it, and beg the continuance of her prayers for me. And if you bring my horse back to me, I will give you ten groats more to carry you on foot to the college; and so God help you, good Richard." Thus the loan of the walking-stick pledged Richard to call on his way back. He did call, and then saw for the last time his kindly patron. John Jewel died in September of the same year, 1571, and Hooker would have been unable to remain at Oxford if the president of his college, Dr. Cole, had not at once bidden him go on with his studies, and undertaken to see that he did not want. After about nine months also Hooker was aided by a legacy from the bishop, a legacy of love, not of money.

Richard Hooker's parents were poor, but his uncle John was chamberlain of Exeter, and the boy's schoolmaster, who found in him an actively inquiring mind, and, under a slow manner, a quiet eagerness for knowledge, urged upon this richer uncle that there ought to be found for such a nephew, in some way, at least a year's maintenance at one of the Universities. John Jewel, who was also a Devonshire man, had been sent into his own county and the West of England as a visitor of churches, upon his return to England after the death of Queen Mary. Thus he had established friendly acquaintance with John Hooker, and presently afterwards he was made Bishop of Salisbury, John Hooker then visited the Bishop in Salisbury, and talked about his nephew. Jewel said he would judge for himself, and offered to see the boy and his schoolmaster, When he saw them he gave a reward to the schoolmaster, and a small pension to Richard's parents, in aid of the education of their son. In 1567, when Richard Hooker was a boy of fifteen, Bishop Jewel sent him to Oxford, placing him by special recommendation under the oversight of Dr. Cole, then President of Corpus Christi College. Dr. Cole provided Hooker with a tutor, and gave him a clerk's place in the college, which yielded something in aid of his uncle's contribution and the pension from the bishop. this way Richard Hooker's education was continued for about three years, and then, when he was eighteen, he had a dangerous illness which lasted for two months. His mother prayed continually for the life of her promising son, who used afterwards to pray in his turn "that he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother; of whom he would often say, he loved her so dearly, that he would endeavour to be good even as much for hers as for his own sake." Being recovered at Oxford, Richard Hooker went home to Exeter on foot, with another student from Devonshire, and took Salisbury upon his way, that he might pay his respects to Bishop Jewel. The bishop invited Richard and his companion to dinner, and after dinner sent them

In

Not long before his death Jewel had been talking to his friend Edwin Sandys, who had newly succeeded Edmund Grindal in the bishopric of London. In his talk he had said much of the pure nature and fine intellect and studious life of young Richard Hooker. The Bishop of London resolved, as he heard this, that when he should send Edwin his son to college, though he was himself a Cambridge man, he would choose Oxford, and send him to Corpus Christi, that he might have Hooker for a tutor. This he did about nine months after Bishop Jewel's death. Hooker was then nineteen, and his pupil-afterwards Sir

His

said, "shall teach him learning by instruction and virtue by example: and my greatest care shall be of the last." George Cranmer (nephew's son to the archbishop) and other pupils soon joined Sandys, and found in Hooker a tutor with a rare power of communicating what he knew, and a life unostentatiously devout that stirred their affections. health was not vigorous, and weakened by a sedentary life of study. He was short, stooping, very short-sighted, and subject to pimples: so shy and gentle that any pupil could look him out of countenance. He could look no man hard in the face, but had the habitual down look that Chaucer's host in the Canterbury Tales is made to ascribe to the poet. When Hooker was a rector, he and his clerk never talked but with both their hats off together. He was never known to be angry, never heard to repine,

while he remained at Oxford. In 1581 he was ordained priest, and soon afterwards appointed to preach one of the sermons at Paul's Cross. This appointment led indirectly to his marriage.

The first stone of St. Paul's, as we have it now, was not laid until nearly a hundred years later, in 1675, and the new building was raised in accordance with the classicism of that later time. The old cathedral, ruined by the Fire of London, was, like other English cathedrals, Gothic, and had, until 1561, a spire. But in that year there broke over London a great storm, that struck with lightning first the Church of St. Martin upon Ludgate Hill, and soon afterwards the spire of St. Paul's, a structure of wood covered with lead, which it set on fire. The fire burned downwards for four hours, melted the church bells, and then ran along the roof, which

could be witty without use of an ill word, and by his presence restrained what was unfit, without abating what was innocent, in the mirth of others. In December of the year 1573, in which the Bishop of London's son became his pupil, Hooker became one of the twenty foundation scholars of his college, who were, by the founder's statutes, to be natives of Devonshire or Hampshire. Hooker became Master of Arts in 1577, and in the same year Fellow of his College. His first pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, remained the attached friends of Richard Hooker, who worked on at Oxford, devoting himself much to study of the Bible, which was written, he said, "not to beget disputations, and pride, and opposition to government; but charity and humility, moderation, obedience to authority, and peace to mankind;" qualities of which "no man did ever yet repent himself on his death-bed."

In 1579, when he and Edmund Spenser were about twenty-six years old, and Spenser published his first book, "The Shepherd's Calendar," Richard Hooker was appointed to read the public Hebrew lecture in the University, and continued to do so

fell in. There were collections in all dioceses for the restoration of the church, and it was roofed again, but the steeple never was rebuilt.

Paul's Cross stood in the churchyard on the north side of the cathedral, towards the east end. A cross in that place is said to have been first erected by Goodrich, abbot of Peterborough, to remind passersby to pray for the souls of certain monks of Peterborough there buried, who had been massacred by the Danes in the year 870. There was already a custom of preaching at this cross in the latter years of Edward III. The cross preached from in Elizabeth's reign had been built on the old site by Thomas Kempe, who was Bishop of London from A.D. 1450 to A.D. 1490.

Careful choice was made of the preachers who were invited to deliver sermons at St. Paul's Cross. Besides his fee, each minister who was not resident in London had right of board and lodging for two days before and one day after his sermon, in a house kept for the purpose, which was known as the Shunamite's House. A friend had persuaded Richard Hooker not to make the journey from Oxford to

London on foot, but to go on horseback; the weather being wet, and he no rider, he arrived at the Shunamite's House soaking, and sore, with a very bad cold, and doubt whether the two days' rest would so far recover him that he could preach. But the mistress of the house, a Mrs. Churchman, paid such exemplary attention to him, that when Sunday came he was equal to his duty. Then the good woman advised her grateful guest that, as he was of a tender constitution, he should take a wife who could nurse him, prolong his life, and make it comfortable. To this counsel the simple-hearted scholar duly assented, and asked Mrs. Churchman to find for him such a wife. She found him her own daughter Joan, whose chance of a husband seemed otherwise, perhaps, not of the best, since she had no money, and was neither good-looking nor good-tempered.' Her father was a pious man, who had failed in business as a draper in Watling Street, and had been made keeper of the Shunamite's House because he was fit for the office, and in need of help to live. Hooker's marriage drew him from his quiet student life at Oxford. A small living was given to him near Aylesbury, at Drayton-Beauchamp, in December, 1584, and he had lived for about a year in his country parsonage when he was visited by his old pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer. They found him reading Horace in a field, and minding a few sheep while the servant was gone to his dinner and to help in household work. They sat with him until the man returned, then went with him into the house, but lost his company when Richard was called to rock the cradle of his firstborn. They left next day with no flattering opinion of Mrs. Hooker, but with increased reverence for their old tutor, whom they saw gently bearing a life of poverty in a home where there was no sympathy to cheer it. When Cranmer glanced at this on leaving, Hooker is said to have replied, " My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I that am none ought not to repine at what my wise Creator has appointed for me, but labour, as indeed I do daily, to submit mine to His will, and possess my soul in patience and peace."

The consequence of this visit was that Edwin Sandys strongly represented to his father, who was then Archbishop of York, Hooker's desert and need. The next opportunity was therefore taken of using patronage for the substantial improvement of his fortunes, and in March, 1585, Richard Hooker, then only thirty-four years old, was made Master of the Temple. Walter Travers, who had the Earl of Leicester for patron, had been appointed Evening Lecturer at the Temple. We have already spoken of him as a friend of Thomas Cartwright, and one of the leaders of the Puritan cause in the Church of England; the same who had been busy about the first separate Presbyterian congregation when that was

formed at Wandsworth. The Puritan element was strong even in this society of lawyers, and many thought that Walter Travers should have been appointed to the place given to Richard Hooker. Hooker preached in the morning, Travers in the evening: so it was said that "the forenoon sermon spake Canterbury; and the afternoon Geneva." Then Archbishop Whitgift prohibited the preaching of Travers. The prohibition was appealed against in vain. Whitgift's policy was the Queen's; he sought to compel unity. The Queen trusted him as she had trusted Archbishop Parker, practically transferred to him her supremacy over the Church of England, and called him "her little black husband." This treatment of Walter Travers raised a bitter controversy. Richard Hooker sought in his gentle way to maintain himself against it; the hardest thing said by him in the matter, being in reply to the accusations against him, "that he prayed before and not after his sermons; that in his prayers he named bishops; that he kneeled both when he prayed and when he received sacrament: and," he said, "other exceptions so like these, as but to name I should have thought a greater fault than to commit them."

The bitterness of personal contention pained Hooker acutely. He could not take part in it, and it distracted him when he would give pure thought to the principles involved in the dispute. There was a great controversy within the Church, a desire for truth and right was at the heart of it on both sides, but on each side, as usual, blind passion was eloquent, and there were many partisans who never looked below the surface, Hooker desired escape out of the noise, that he might make a right use of his powers in God's service, and at last he wrote this letter to the Archbishop:

My Lord,-When I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage: but I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; and indeed God and Nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. My lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers here have proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions; and to satisfy that, I have consulted the Scripture, and other laws, both human and divine, whether the conscience of him and others of his judgment might be so far complied with as to alter our frame of church-government, our manner of God's worship, our praising and praying to Him, and our established ceremonies, as often as his and other tender consciences shall require us. And in this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise in which I intend a justification of the Laws of our Ecclesiastical Polity; in which design God and His holy angels shall at the last great day bear me that witness which my conscience now does, that my meaning is not to provoke any, but rather to satisfy all tender consciences; and I shall never be able to do this but where I may study, and pray for God's blessing on my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions; and therefore, if your grace can judge me worthy of such a favour, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun.

The result of this pleading was that, in the year 1591, Richard Hooker resigned the more lucrative and, in a worldly sense, important office of Master of the Temple, and was presented to the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire, about six miles from Salisbury, and to a prebend of small value-NetherAvon-in Salisbury Cathedral. At Boscombe he was remote enough from strife of cities, and would be free to use his pen while doing his duty to his parishioners; for the whole population of his parish was scarcely above a hundred. Richard Hooker lived four years at Boscombe-from 1591 to 1595and there he completed by March, 1593, the first four of the eight books which he had planned as the natural division of his work. They were first published in 1594. The spirit and plan of the whole work are thus expressed by Hooker himself in his "Preface to them that seek (as they term it) the Reformation of Laws and Orders Ecclesiastical in the Church of England." First, as to its spirit, let this passage testify :

Amongst ourselves, there was in King Edward's days some question moved, by reason of a few men's scrupulosity, touching certain things. And beyond seas, of them which fled in the days of Queen Mary, some contenting themselves abroad with the use of their own service book at home, authorised before their departure out of the realm; others liking better the Common Prayer Book of the Church of Geneva translated; those smaller contentions before begun were by this mean somewhat increased. Under the happy reign of her Majesty which now is, the greatest matter a while contended for was the wearing of the cap and surplice, till there came Admonitions directed unto the High Court of Parliament, by men who, concealing their names, thought it glory enough to discover their minds and affections, which now were universally bent even against all the orders and laws wherein this church is found unconformable to the platform of Geneva. Concerning the defender of which Admonitions, all that I mean to say is but this:-There will come a time when three words uttered with charity and meekness, shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit. But the manner of men's writing must not alienate our hearts from the truth, if it appear they have the truth: as the followers of the same defender doth think he hath, and in that persuasion they follow him, no otherwise than himself doth Calvin, Beza, and others, with the like persuasion that they in this cause had the truth. We being as fully persuaded otherwise, it resteth that some kind of trial be used to find out which part is in error.

Nor is mine own intent any other in these several books of discourse, than to make it appear unto you that for the Ecclesiastical Laws of this land we are led by great reason to observe them, and ye by no necessity bound to impugn them. It is no part of my secret meaning to draw you hereby into hatred, or to set upon the face of this cause any fairer gloss than the naked truth doth afford; but my whole endeavour is to resolve the conscience, and to show as near as I can what in this controversy the heart is to think, if it will follow the light of sound and sincere judgment, without either cloud of prejudice or mist of passionate affection. Wherefore, seeing

that laws and ordinances in particular, whether such as we observe, or such as yourselves would have established, when the mind doth sift and examine them, it must needs have often recourse to a number of doubts and questions about the nature, kinds, and qualities of laws in general, whereof, unless it be thoroughly informed, there will appear no certainty to stay our persuasion upon: I have for that cause set down in the first place an introduction on both sides needful to be considered: declaring therein what law is, how different kinds of laws there are, and what force they are of according unto each kind. This done-because ye suppose the laws for which ye strive are found in Scripture, but those not for which we strive, and upon this surmise are drawn to hold it as the very main pillar of your whole cause, that Scripture ought to be the only rule of all our actions, and consequently that the Church orders which we observe being not commanded in Scripture are offensive and displeasant unto God-I have spent the second book in sifting of this point, which standeth with you for the first and chiefest principle whereon ye build. Whereunto the next in degree is, that as God will have always a Church upon earth while the world doth continue, and that Church stand in need of government, of which government it behoveth Himself to be both the author and teacher; so it cannot stand with duty, that man should ever presume in any wise to change and alter the same; and therefore, that in Scripture there must of necessity be found some particular form of Ecclesiastical Polity, the laws whereof admit not any kind of alteration. The first three books being thus ended, the fourth proceedeth from the general grounds and foundations of your cause, unto your general accusations against us, as having in the orders of our Church (for so you pretend) corrupted the right form of Church Polity with manifold Popish rites and ceremonies, which certain Reformed Churches have banished from amongst them, and have thereby given us such example as (you think) we ought to follow. This your assertion hath herein drawn us to make search, whether these be just exceptions against the customs of our Church, when ye plead that they are the same which the Church of Rome hath, or that they are not the same which some other Reformed Churches have devised. Of those four books which remain and are bestowed about the specialties of that cause which lieth in controversy, the first examineth the causes by you alleged, wherefore the Public Duties of Christian religion, as our prayers, our sacraments, and the rest, should not be ordered in such sort as with us they are; nor that power whereby the persons of men are consecrated unto the ministry, be disposed of in such manner as the Laws of this Church do allow. The second and third are concerning the power of Jurisdictionthe one, whether laymen, such as your governing elders are, ought in all congregations for ever to be invested with that power; the other, whether bishops may have that power over other pastors, and therewithal that honour which with us they have. And because, besides the power of order which all consecrated persons have, and the power of jurisdiction which neither they all, nor they only have, there is a third power-a power of ecclesiastical dominion-communicable, as we think, unto persons not ecclesiastical, and most fit to be restrained unto the Prince our sovereign commander over the whole body politic: the eighth book we have allotted unto this question, and have sifted therein your objections against those Pre-eminences Royal which thereunto appertain.

Thus have I laid before you the brief of these my travails, and presented under your view the limbs of that cause litigious between us; the whole entire body whereof being thus compact, it shall be no troublesome thing for any man to find each particular controversy's resting-place, and the coherence