If so, they were much to be blamed. But surely this was not the case with the better and wiser part of those who, clinging to the tenets and feelings of the first Reformers, and honouring Archbishop Grindal as much as they dreaded his Arminian successors, were denominated Puritans! They limited their censures to exclusive reading, – to reading as the substitute for, and too often for the purpose of doing away with, preaching.
Ib. lxv. 8. p. 415.
Thus was the memory of that sign which they had in baptism a kind of bar or prevention to keep them even from apostasy, whereinto the frailty of flesh and blood, overmuch fearing to endure shame, might peradventure the more easily otherwise have drawn them.
I begin to fear that Hooker is not suited to my nature. I cannot bear round-abouts for the purpose of evading the short cut straight before my eyes. Exempli gratia; I find myself tempted in this place to ejaculate Psha! somewhat abruptly, and ask, 'How many in twenty millions of Christian men and women ever reverted to the make-believe impression of the Cross on their forehead in unconscious infancy, by the wetted tip of the clergyman's finger as a preservative against anger and resentment? 'The whole church of God!' Was it not the same church which, neglecting and concealing the Scriptures of God, introduced the adoration of the Cross, the worshipping of relics, holy water, and all the other countless mummeries of Popery? Something might be pretended for the material images of the Cross worn at the bosom or hung up in the bed-chamber. These may, and doubtless often do, serve as silent monitors; but this eye-falsehood or pretence of making a mark that is not made, is a gratuitous superstition, that cannot be practised without serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker should have asked – Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians generally? Is it likely to produce this effect and this principally? In common honesty he must have answered, No! – Do I then blame the Church of England for retaining this ceremony? By no means. I justify it as a wise and pious condescension to the inveterate habits of a people newly dragged, rather than drawn, out of Papistry; and as a pledge that the founders and fathers of the Reformation in England regarded innovation as per se an evil, and therefore requiring for its justification not only a cause, but a weighty cause. They did well and piously in deferring the removal of minor spots and stains to the time when the good effects of the more important reforms had begun to shew themselves in the minds and hearts of the laity. – But they do not act either wisely or charitably who would eulogize these maculæ as beauty-spots and vindicate as good what their predecessors only tolerated as the lesser evil.
12th Aug. 1826.
Ib. 15. p. 424.
For in actions of this kind we are more to respect what the greatest part of men is commonly prone to conceive, than what some few men's wits may devise in construction of their own particular meanings. Plain it is, that a false opinion of some personal divine excellency to be in those things which either nature or art hath framed causeth always religious adoration.
How strongly might this most judicious remark be turned against Hooker's own mode of vindicating this ceremony!
Ib. lxvi. 2. p. 432.
The Church had received from Christ a promise that such as have believed in him these signs and tokens should follow them.
'To cast out devils, to speak with tongues, to drive away serpents, to be free from the harm which any deadly poison could work, and to cure diseases by imposition of hands.' Mark xvi.
The man who verily and sincerely believes the narrative in St. John's Gospel of the feeding of five thousand persons with a few loaves and small fishes, and of the raising of Lazarus, in the plain and literal sense, cannot be reasonably suspected of rejecting, or doubting, any narrative concerning Christ and his Apostles, simply as miraculous. I trust, therefore, that no disbelief of, or prejudice against, miraculous events and powers will be attributed to me, as the ground or cause of my strong persuasion that the latter verses of the last chapter of St. Mark's Gospel were an additament of a later age, for which St. Luke's Acts of the Apostles misunderstood supplied the hints.
Ib. lxxii. 15 & 16. p.539.
If Richard Hooker had written only these two precious paragraphs, I should hold myself bound to thank the Father of lights and Giver of all good gifts for his existence and the preservation of his writings.
B. viii. c. ix. 2. vol. iii. p. 537.
As there could be in natural bodies no motion of anything, unless there were some which moveth all things, and continueth immoveable; even so in politic societies, there must be some unpunishable, or else no man shall suffer punishment.
It is most painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable to a thing or class of things, of which, or of the common characters of which, it is a reflection. An idea is a power,
Sermon of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect
Vol. iii. p. 583.
The following truly admirable discourse is, I think, the concluding sermon of a series unhappily not preserved.
Ib. p.584.
If it were so in matters of faith, then, as all men have equal certainty of this, so no believer should be more scrupulous and doubtful than another. But we find the contrary. The angels and spirits of the righteous in heaven have certainty most evident of things spiritual: but this they have by the light of glory. That which we see by the light of grace, though it be indeed more certain; yet it is not to us so evidently certain, as that which sense or the light of nature will not suffer a man to doubt of.
Hooker's meaning is right; but he falls into a sad confusion of words, blending the thing and the relation of the mind to the thing. The fourth moon of Jupiter is certain in itself; but evident only to the astronomer with his telescope.
Ib. p. 585-588.
The other, which we call the certainty of adherence, is when the heart doth cleave and stick unto that which it doth believe. This certainty is greater in us than the other … (down to) the fourth question resteth, and so an end of this point.
These paragraphs should be written in gold. O! may these precious words be written on my heart!
1. That we all need to be redeemed, and that therefore we are all in captivity to an evil:
2. That there is a Redeemer:
3. That the redemption relatively to each individual captive is, if not effected under certain conditions, yet manifestable as far as is fitting for the soul by certain signs and consequents: – and
4. That these signs are in myself; that the conditions under which the redemption offered to all men is promised to the individual, are fulfilled in myself;
these are the four great points of faith, in which the humble Christian finds and feels a gradation from trembling hope to full assurance; yet the will, the act of trust, is the same in all. Might I not almost say, that it rather increases with the decrease of the consciously discerned evidence? To assert that I have the same assurance of mind that I am saved as that I need a Saviour, would be a contradiction to my own feelings, and yet I may have an equal, that is, an equivalent assurance. How is it possible that a sick man should have the same certainty of his convalescence as of his sickness? Yet he may be assured of it. So again, my faith in the skill and integrity of my physician may be complete, but the application of it to my own case may be troubled by the sense of my own imperfect obedience