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Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Repentance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Lee W. Gibbs
Lee W. Gibbs
Affiliation:
Cleveland State University
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Extract

A distinctive via media form of Christian faith and practice emerged within the structures of the Elizabethan Settlement of religion. Roman Catholic opponents of the Settlement struggled throughout the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) to undo it, while Protestant opponents persistently strove for further reform. The character of the Church of England and of what was in later years to be known as Anglicanism was largely shaped during this critical stage of its development in response to the external and internal pressures generated by these opposition parties.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

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References

1 This article is a companion piece to Gibbs, Lee W., “Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Justification,” HTR 74 (1981) 211–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is in great part based upon research done for writing the commentary on Book VI of Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, to be published in the forthcoming two-part volume 6 of the Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker, ed. Hill, W. Speed. Volumes 1-5 of this edition have been published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 1977-1990)Google Scholar; volume 6 is being published by the Press of Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, NY: projected for March 1993). Unless otherwise noted, all subsequent references to the Laws and other works by Hooker are to this edition. References are to volume number, followed by page and line numbers.

2 The term “Puritan” is used here and throughout this article as referring to “Elizabethan presbyterians,” that is, to those advanced Protestant reformers in late sixteenth-century England who wanted to see the English Church brought into conformity with the presbyterian form of church polity established by Calvin in Geneva.

3 On the textual, literary, and historical problems of the three last books of the Laws in general and of Book VI in particular, see Stanwood, Paul G., “Textual Introduction: The Three Last Books,” in Works of Richard Hooker (Folger Library Edition) 3. xiii–xliv. See alsoGoogle ScholarHill, W. Speed, “Hooker's Polity: The Problem of the ‘Three Last Books,’” Huntington Library Quarterly 34 (1971) 317–36; andCrossRefGoogle Scholar Arthur Stephen McGrade, “The Three Last Books and Hooker's Autograph Notes,” in the forthcoming volume 6 of the Folger Library Edition of Hooker's Works.

4 On the “doctrinal” disagreement between Edwin Sandys and Lancelot Andrewes that caused the project of publishing the last three books of Hooker's Laws to be abandoned, see Sisson, C. J., The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940) 14–17,Google Scholar 99-102, 127-56.

5 Hooker, , Laws, 3. 6.1-6Google Scholar.

6 John Keble, “Editor's Preface,” in idem, ed., The Works of Richard Hooker (rev. R. W. Church and F. Paget; 7th ed.; 3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1888) 1. xxxiv-ix.

7 Keble was the first to print these notes, discovered in the library of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, in his 1836 edition of Hooker's Works (3. 133-68); he was also the first to describe the general content and arrangement of Hooker's material in the missing draft as reconstructed from the notes of Cranmer and Sandys (see “Editor's Preface” in the 1888 ed., 1. xxxvi-vii). A revised version of these notes has been republished in the Folger Library Edition, 3. 107-40.

8 For Walton's account, see his Appendix to The Life of Mr. Richard Hooker (in the 1888 ed. of Hooker's, Works, 1. 91–92).Google Scholar C. J. Sisson and David Novarr have convincingly undermined Walton's “fiction” of the destruction of the last three books of the Laws as an effort on behalf of the high church episcopacy and monarchy of the Restoration to disparage their authenticity because of contents that were inconsistent with divine right theories concerning the authority of bishops and princes. See Sisson, , The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, xi-xiv, 86–88,Google Scholar 108, 185-87; and Novarr, , The Making of Walton's “Lives” (Cornell Studies in English 41; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958) chaps. 7-9Google Scholar.

9 The following scholars have argued on internal grounds the plausibility of regarding the extant Book VI as an integral part of Hooker's “revision” of the original and now lost version: Raymond Aaron Houk, “Introduction,” in idem, ed., Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity: Book VIII (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931) 71-72, 101; Craig, Hardin, “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity—First Form,” Jhi 5 (1944) 91–104;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSisson, C. J., The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, 105Google Scholar; McGrade, Arthur Stephen, “Repentance and Spiritual Power: Book VI of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” JEH 29 (1978) 163–76; andGoogle ScholarLoyer, Olivier, L'Anglicanisme de Richard Hooker (2 vols.; Paris: Librarie Honore Champion, 1979) 1. 63–78;Google Scholar 2. 609-10, 721-23. While not addressing the basic issue of the relation of the original missing draft of Book VI with the traditional version published in 1648, Rudolph Almasy made a very important contribution to the discussion by reconstructing a great part of the original draft by reading the notes of Cranmer and Sandys in the context of the polemical literature of the time; see Almasy, Rudolph, “Richard Hooker's Book VI: A Reconstruction,” Huntington Library Quarterly 42 (1979) 117–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 These notes, which contain rough general sketches of Hooker's arguments in Books VI through VIII, were discovered in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Their discovery was announced by Stanwood, Paul G. in “The Richard Hooker Manuscripts,” Long Room 11 (1975) 7–10,Google Scholar and they were first published in the Folger Library Edition of Hooker's, Works (3. 462–538).Google Scholar On the dating of these notes between 1593 and 1599, see Stanwood's, “Textual Introduction” in the Folger Library Edition, 3. xx–xxiGoogle Scholar.

11 What would have been the expanded defense of the ecclesiastical courts can be reconstructed from Hooker's Autograph Notes, where he is gathering a large number of legal texts, apparently in response to the request of Cranmer and Sandys that he elaborate the distinction between the kinds of cases that are dealt with in “civil courts” and “spiritual courts,” and their further urgent request that he expound more fully upon those cases that are “mixt,” that is, those cases that may be or are dealt with both by civil and ecclesiastical courts. See Cranmer (3. 111.4-15) and Sandys (3. 130.30-132.3) for their notes on the now-lost original version of Book VI.

12 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 4.7–6.4. On the distinction between spiritual jurisdiction as “ordinary” (that is, pertaining only to ordained clergy) or “delegated” (that is, assigned by the bishops to their delegated representatives who may be laymen), see Simpson, W. J. Sparrow, “Jurisdiction in Hearing Confessions,” in Box, Hubert S., ed., The Theory and Practice of Penance by Priests of the Anglican Communion (London: S. P. C. K., 1935) 48.Google Scholar The distinction first appears in the twelfth century and was first used theologically in the thirteenth century to interpret the meaning of “the power of the keys” given by Christ to his church (Matt 16:19). Aquinas expounds at length on this distinction in S.th., tertiae partis supplementum, q.19, a.3; see also q.21, a.l and a.2.

13 Act of Supremacy, 1 Eliz. 1, c. 2, cited by Hooker in Autograph Notes, 3. 468.19-20.

14 See Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 430.24-434.14.

15 On the significance for the Church of England of the rejection of the sacrament of private penance and the substitution of public confession and absolution for it, see Booty, John E.. “The English Reformation: A Lively Faith and Sacramental Confession,” in Elmen, Paul, ed., The Anglican Moral Choice (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1983) 15–32, 251-53.Google Scholar

16 Works of Richard Hooker, 5. 105-69.

17 Aquinas, S.th., Ia2ae, q.l 13, a.8; see also 3a q.85, a.6. Compare Hooker, , A Learned Discourse of Justification (5. 129.2-130.12).Google Scholar For an account of how Hooker's intimately related doctrine of justification synthesizes Reformation and Roman Catholic teaching by means of this same Thomistic distinction between “order” and “dignity,” see Gibbs, , “Richard Hooker's Via Media Doctrine of Justification,” 219–20Google Scholar.

18 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 7.29-31.

19 In the context of his discussion of absolution in chapter 6, Hooker takes the schoolmen t o task for their distinction between attrition or servile fear as a partly meritorious work that i s transformed by means of grace conferred through the sacrament of penance into fully meritorious contrition; see ibid., 3. 93.18-95.4.

20 Ibid., 3. 14.8-15.6.

21 On the long and controversial history of the interpretation of these texts, see Tierney, Brian, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955; reprinted 1968) 25–26Google Scholar.

22 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 14.18-23.

23 Ibid., 3. 15.7-11.

24 Ibid., 3. 15.20-22.

25 Ibid., 3. 14.23-27.

26 Ibid., 3. 16.18-45.16.

27 Under the rubric of making satisfaction to God, Hooker, with the mainstream of the Protestant Reformation, attacks the Roman doctrines of purgatory and the treasury of meritorious works built up by supererogatory works of saintly Christians, concluding that “by this posterne gate, commeth in the whole Mart of Papall indulgences” (ibid., 3. 68.28-69.4).

28 Ibid., 3. 70.11-97.8.

29 Hooker (ibid., 3. 85.7 and n. i) claims Calvin's authority to assist him in his anti-Catholic polemic, citing Calvin's attack on the Roman teaching that the sacraments are only “instrumental causes” of divine grace in Calvin's Acta Synodi Tridentinae cum antidoto. He (ibid., 3. 45.28 and n. d) also invokes Calvin's allowance of private confession of one Christian to another after abuses have been removed. See Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Macneil, John T., ed.; Battlas, Ford Lewis, trans.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) 3. 4.7 (vol. 1, pp. 630–32)Google Scholar.

30 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 478.27-30.

31 The law underwriting the jurisdiction assumed and interpreted by the English ecclesiastical courts was the Corpus Juris Canonici. Although there was never an official or unexpurgated edition published in England, modifications were made deleting passages having to do with such issues as the authority of the papacy and the organization of religious houses. See The Canon Law of the Church of England: Being the Report of the Archbishops' Commission on Canon Law, together with Proposals for a Revised Body of Canons (London: S.P.C.K., 1947) xi, 42Google Scholar.

32 On the separation of the spiritual from the civil courts as one of the major changes introduced by the Norman conquest, see Makower, Felix, The Constitutional History and Constitution of the Church of England (1895; reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1960) 465–66. For accounts of the encroachments of the common lawyers upon areas previously ceded to the ecclesiastical courts, seeGoogle ScholarHoulbrooke, Ralph, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation, 1520-1570 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) 116,Google Scholar 266-68; and Helmholz, R. H., Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 20–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 471.12-30.

34 On the vituperative attacks of the Puritans against the chancellors and commissaries, who were usually laymen, see Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Jonathan Cope, 1967) 37–38Google Scholar.

35 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 469.13, 24-33; 470.1-7; 471.25-30.

36 Ibid., 3. 468.21-469.2.

37 Ibid., 4. 482.10-13.

38 See Logan, F. Donald, Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England: A Study in Legal Procedure from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968) 17–19; see alsoGoogle ScholarPrice, F. Douglas, “Abuses of Excommunication and the Decline of Ecclesiastical Discipline under Queen Elizabeth,” English Historical Review 57 (1942) 111–15Google Scholar.

39 Works of Richard Hooker, 1. 11.23-33.

40 Ibid., 3. 113.1-123.19; 134.6-137.17.

41 Calvin, (Institutes, 4. 11.1 [vol. 2. pp. 1,212])Google Scholar was the source of the presbyterian argument that the Jewish Sanhedrin as the continuation of the ancient Mosaic system is the scriptural model for presbyteriai organization.

42 Works of Richard Hooker, 3. 117.13-118.2; 121.34-125.29; 137.5-139.18.

43 Ibid., 3. 125.29-130.11; 139.18-140.12.