Seth C. Holler

But at what time a man may be sayde to have attayned so farre foorth the the use of reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those lawes, whereby he is then bound to guide his actions; this is a great deale more easie for common sense to discerne, then for any man by skill or learning to determine: even as it is not in Philosophers, who best knowe the nature both of fire and of golde, to teach what degree of the one will serve to purifie the other, so well as the artisan, who doth this by fire, discerneth by sense when the fire hath that degree of heat which sufficeth for his purpose.

- Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, 1.6.5

Written to (and against) the Puritans in the 16C English Church who had been pressing to do away with that which they deemed to be offensive/unbiblical/too-Romish in English worship and ecclesiology, Hooker’s Preface to Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity begins with a historical account of the origins of presbyterian governance in Geneva. It is not a flattering account.

After describing the presbyterians’ strategies for converting folk from both the rude and learned crowds to their position, Hooker poses a piercing question (which could, I think, be leveled more broadly against the very idea of Protestantism): “I would therefore know whether for the ending of these irksome strifes wherein you and your followers do stand thus formallie devided against the autorized guides of this Church, and the rest of the people subject unto their charge, whether I say ye be content to referre your cause to any other higher judgement then your owne, or else intend to persist and proceed as ye have begun, til your selves can be perswaded to condemne your selves” (Preface, 6.1).

A judge, according to Hooker, is necessary to resolve many (but not all) quarrels. Hooker sees such judges as falling into two categories: those appointed from within a group or body, and those whose authority is “more universall” (6.2). Hooker finds the first kind of judge authorized by Old Testament precedent: in Deuteronomy 17, Moses commands the Israelites to submit their difficult questions to the Levitical priests; the one who refuses to obey the judgment rendered is guilty of presumption, and must be slain. The second kind of judge has New Testament precedent: in Acts 15, the Antiochian Christians (led by Paul and Barnabas, among others) appeal to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem on the question of whether new Christians must be circumcised to be saved (i.e., whether they must first become Jewish before becoming Christian). Without such judges, Hooker says, many of our contentious questions and debates would never be settled-surely a situation that would not please the God of peace.

In 6.3, Hooker then anticipates three objections that the Puritans will advance in response to him:

1. They will quote Galatians 1:8, where St. Paul says he would not even credit an “angel from heaven” who preached ‘a gospel contrary to the one [he] preached’–and then stop up their ears.
2. They will say men and councils can err–and then disregard their judgments.
3. They will claim they cannot contradict the dictates of their consciences–and then persist in disagreeing.

Hooker has three responses:

1. St. Paul’s understanding of the gospel came to him via intuitive (lit. ‘untaught’) divine revelation, which cannot err–your position has been gathered from “your owne only probable collection.”
2. It is true that men and councils can err–but God would rather that we obey an “erroneous sentence” than permit “strifes” to “growe.”
3. If you would obey your consciences, add and apply this rule: “in litigious and controversed causes of such qualitie, the will of God is to have [us] doe whatsoever the sentence of judiciall and finall decision shall determine, yea, though it seeme in [oure] private opinion to swarve utterly from that which is right: as no doubt many times the sentence amongst the Jewes did seem unto one part or other…”

*Image retrieved from the Wikipedia article on Hooker.

Surely the present forme of Churchgovernment which the lawes of this land have established, is such, as no lawe of God, nor reason of man hath hitherto bene alleaged of force sufficient to prove they do ill, who to the uttermost of their power withstand the alteration thereof. Contrariwise, The other which in stead of it we are required to accept, is only by error and misconceipt named the ordinance of Jesus Christ, no one proofe as yet brought forth whereby it may cleerely appeare to be so in very deede.

- Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, Preface, 1.2 [1593]. Hooker writes in defense of the Church of England’s episcopal system of church governance, against Genevan presbyterianism.

Man’s understanding, though allied to the angelical, operates differently. The angels understand intuitively, man by the painful use of the discursive reason. Again, the angels have perfected their understanding and are replete with all the knowledge they are able to hold. Man, even though he may in the end rival the angels in knowledge, begins in ignorance. What marks man from angel and beast is his capacity for learning: both his “erected wit” in perceiving perfection and his aptitude for “nurture” or education in his raising himself toward it. Hence it was that the learning of a Sidney, a Donne, or a Milton was an ethical and religious matter. To learn was to exercise one of the great human prerogatives. But what is it that man should especially learn? The lowest form of understanding concerns our own immediate acts. Though inanimate things are quite shut out from this, fire for instance not knowing that it burns, the animals have got some understanding of seeking perfection through their acts. Man is conspicuous, according to Hooker, by seeking perfection through knowledge of things external to himself. Or, as we might put it, one of man’s highest faculties is his gift for disinterested knowledge. It was through that gift that he might learn something of God.

- Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, ch. 5; my emphasis

This is astounding. In the paragraph I’ve provided below, Andrewes draws the kind of profound parallel that can only be drawn after percolating in the Gospel–or perhaps (strangely enough) after reading or hearing it read for the first time. To understand this paragraph, you need only know two things. First, that Andrewes is preaching on Christmas Day–the day, of course, for celebrating the Incarnation. This is what he means by “to-day” in the first two sentences. Second, that “[between] Moses and Elias” and “brightness of His glory” refer to the Transfiguration of Christ (Matt. 17).

So to-day, but after much worse. To-day, in the flesh of a poor babe crying in the cratch, in medio animalium; after, in the rent and torn flesh of a condemned person hanging on the Cross, in medio latronum, in the midst of other manner persons than Moses and Elias; that men even hid their faces at Him, not for the brightness of His glory, but for sorrow and shame. Call you this manifesting? Nay, well doth the Apostle call it the “veil of the flesh,” as whereby He was rather obscured than any way set forth [Heb. 10.20]; yea eclipsed in all the darkest points of it.

- Lancelot Andrewes, from the same sermon I quoted before

Of God the Prophet Esay saith, Vere Deus absconditus es tu; God is of Himself a mystery, and hidden [Is. 45.15]; and, that which is strange, hidden with light which will make any eyes past looking on Him [1 Tim 6.16]. But a hidden God our nature did not endure. Will you hear them speak it plainly? Fac nobis deos, “make us visible gods who may go before us,” and we see them [Ex. 32.1]. Mystical, invisible gods we cannot skill of. This we would have; God to be manifested. Why then, “God is manifested” [1 Tim. 3.16]

- Lancelot Andrewes, from a sermon on Christmas Day, 1607, on 1 Timothy 3.16

Isaiah 9:6: For unto us a Child is born, and unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and He shall call His Name Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

With a principality, or government, and that upon His shoulders; somewhat a strange situation. It is wisdom that governs; that is in the head, and there is the crown worn; what have the shoulders to do with it? Certainly somewhat by this description. The shoulder as we know is the bearing member, and unless it be for heavy things, we use it not. Ordinary things we carry in our hands, or lift at the arms’ end; it must be very heavy if we must put shoulders and all to it. Belike, governments have their weight–be heavy; and so they be; they need not only a good head, but good shoulders, that sustain them.

[...]

Yet is not this Christ’s bearing, though this He did too; there is yet a farther thing, He hath a patience paramount, beyond all the rest. Two differences I find between Him and others. 1. The faults and errors of their government, others do bear, and suffer–indeed suffer them; but suffer not for them. He did both; endured them, and endured for them heavy things; a strange superhumeral, the print whereof was to be seen on His shoulders. [...] And not against his will; “Come,” said He, “you that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” by loading Myself; take it from your necks, and lay it on Mine own. Which His suffering, though it grew so heavy as it wrung from Him plenty of tears, a strong cry, a sweat of blood,–such was the weight of it;–yet would he not cast it off, but there held it still, till it made Him “bow down His head and give up the ghost.”

- Lancelot Andrewes, “A Sermon Preached before the King’s Majesty, at Whitehall” on December 25, 1606

When the ancients and medievals refer to ‘the freedom of the will,’ do they mean only to establish the general principle that men, unlike animals or plants, are endowed with minds? That we can regulate our lives according to reason?

Men are blinded with ignorance and error; many things may escape them, and in many things they may be deceived; yea, those things which they do know they may either forget, or upon sundry considerations let pass; and although themselves do not err, yet may they through malice or vanity even of purpose deceive others. Howbeit infinite cases there are wherein all these impediments and lets are so manifestly excluded, that there is no show or colour whereby any such exception may be taken….

Yea, that which is more, utterly to infringe the force and strength of man’s testimony were to shake the very fortress of God’s truth. For whatsoever we believe concerning salvation by Christ, although the Scripture be therein the ground of our belief; yet the authority of man is, if we mark it, the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture. The Scripture could not teach us the things that are of God, unless we did credit men who have taught us that the words of Scripture do signify those things. Some way therefore, notwithstanding man’s infirmity, yet his authority may enforce assent.

- Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 2.7.3 (first published 1593; my text is McGrade and Vickers’s 1975 abbreviated edition)

…Angels passe not to ends, but by wayes and meanes, nor men to the glory of the triumphant Church but by participation of the Communion of the Militant. To this note David sets his Harpe, in many, many Psalms: Sometimes, that God had suffered his enemies to possesse his Tabernacle, (Hee forsooke the Tabernacle of Shiloh, Hee delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemies hands [Ps. 78.60]) But most commonly he complaines, that God disabled him from comming to the Sanctuary. In which one thing he had summed up all his desires, all his prayers, (One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I looke after; That I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the dayes of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his Temple [Ps. 27.4]) His vehement desire of this he expresses againe, (My soule thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appeare before God? [Ps. 42.2]) He expresses a holy jeaulousie, a religious envy, even to the sparrows and swallows, (yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for her selfe, and where she may lay her yong, Even thine Altars, 0 Lord of Hosts, my King and my God. [Ps. 84.3]) Thou art my King, and my God, and yet excludest me from that, which thou affordest to sparrows, And are not we of more value then many sparrows? [Luke 12.7]

- Donne, Sermon on Psalm 63:7 (Jan. 29, 1625 or 1626)

Thus to my lord, the Lord did say:
Take up thy seate at my right hand,
Till all thy foes that proudly stand,
I prostrate at thy footestoole lay.
From me thy staffe of might
Sent out of Sion goes:
As victor then prevaile in fight,
And rule repining foes.

But as for them that willing yeld,
In solempne robes they glad shall goe:
Attending thee when thou shalt show
Triumphantly thy troopes in field:
In field as thickly sett
With warlike youthfull trayne
As pearled plaine with dropps is wett,
Of sweete Auroras raine.

The Lord did sweare, and never he
What once he sware will disavow:
As was Melchisedech soe thou,
An everlasting priest shalt be.
At hand still ready prest
To guard thee from annoy,
Shall sitt the Lord that loves thee best,
And kings in wrath destroy.

Thy Realme shall many Realmes containe:
Thy slaughtred foes thick heaped ly:
With crusshed head ev’n he shall dye,
Who head of many Realmes doth raigne.
If passing on these waies
Thou tast of troubled streames:
Shall that eclips thy shining raies?
Nay light thy glories beames.

- from Rathmell’s edition (1963)

For bleeding fuell for thy alters flame,
To gaine thy grace what bootes it me to bring?
Burnt-offrings are to thee no pleasant thing.

The scholarly jury is still out on the precise dating of the Sidney Psalms. (They survive only in MS, and were not widely publicized until the 19th century). But dozens of English speakers translated the Hebrew Psalms in the 16th and 17th centuries. Here are a few more early English translations:

Wycliffe (1395): For if thou haddist wold sacrifice, Y hadde youe; treuli thou schalt not delite in brent sacrifices.

Miles Coverdale (1535; this version lacks verses): For yf thou haddest pleasure in sacrifice, I wolde geue it the: but thou delytest not in burntofferynges.

Douai-Rheims (1582-1610): Because if thou wouldest haue had sacrifice, I had verily giuen it: with holocaustes thou wilt not be delighted.

Geneva (1587): For thou desirest no sacrifice, though I would giue it: thou delitest not in burnt offering.

AV (1611): For thou desirest not sacrifice: else would I giue it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

More here.

In man his [God's] administration is this, that he hath imprinted in him a faculty of will, and election; and so hath something to reward in him…. But the free will of man God visites, and assists with his grace to doe supernaturall things…. When man does any thing conducing to supernatural ends, though the worke be Gods, the will of man is not merely passive. The will of man is but Gods agent; … For, the will considered, as a will, (and grace never destroyes nature, nor, though it make a dead will a live will, or an ill will a good will, doth it make the will, no will) might refuse or omit that that it does.

- from a sermon on Genesis 1:26, delivered in April, 1629. Qtd in Johnson, The Theology of John Donne, 24

When he riseth in the morning, he bethinketh himselfe what good deeds he can do that day, and presently doth them; counting that day lost, wherein he hath not exercised his Charity.

- George Herbert, The Countrey Parson, ch. 12, “The Parson’s Charity”

He often readeth the Lives of the Primitive Monks, Hermits, and virgins, and wondreth not so much at their patient suffering, and cheerfull dying under persecuting Emperours, (though that indeed is very admirable) as at their daily temperance, abstinence, watchings, and constant prayers, and mortifications in the times of peace and prosperity. To put on the profound humility, and the exact temperance of our Lord Jesus, with other exemplary vertues of that sort, and to keep them on in the sunshine, and noone of prosperity, he findeth to be as necessary, and as difficulty at least, as to be cloathed with perfect patience, and Christian fortitude in the cold midnight stormes of persecution and adversity.

- George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple, or The Countrey Parson, His Character, and Rule of Holy Life, ch. 9, “The Parson’s State of Life”

In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers—knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter—he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 2: “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion”

Past and present, God’s will prevails.

Hence, understanding is always best

and a prudent mind. Whoever remains

for long here in this earthly life

will enjoy and endure more than enough.

- Beowulf, ll. 1057-1061, Heaney’s translation

So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high

Which hung not but so swift with tempest fell

On the proud crest of Satan that no sight

Nor motion of swift thought (less could his shield)

Such ruin intercept. Ten paces huge

He back recoiled, the tenth on bended knee

His massy spear upstayed, as if on Earth

Winds under ground or waters forcing way

Sidelong has pushed a mountain from his seat

Half sunk with all his pines.

- Milton, Paradise Lost, 6.189 - 198 (from the Norton Critical Edition)

Let us therefore that have now at this time our eyes opened again through the tender mercy of God, keep a mean. Let us so put our trust in the mercy of God through Christ, that we know it our duty to keep the law of God and to love our neighbours for their father’s sake which created them and for their Lord’s sake which redeemed them, and bought them so dearly with his blood. Let us walk in the fear of God, and have our eyes open unto both parts of God’s covenants, certified that none shall be partaker of the mercy, save he that will fight against the flesh, to keep the law. And let us arm ourselves with this remembrance, that as Christ’s works justify from sin and set us in the favour of God, so our own deeds through working of the spirit of God, help us to continue in the favour and the grace, into which Christ hath brought us; and that we can no longer continue in favour and grace than our hearts are to keep the law.

- William Tyndale, Tyndale’s New Testament (1534): “W.T. unto the Reader”

…the man who sees a cucumber and thinks it a woman is labeled mad because this happens very rarely.

- Folly, in Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly

For those of you who haven’t noticed, this blog is on hold. It shall continue to be on hold until I finish my oral exam in mid-April. See you then.

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, towards the beginning.

Significantly, this [14th century] brand of Augustinianism concentrated almost exclusively on the anti-Pelagian pole of his thought and largely overlooked the anti-Donatist pole. When Bradwardine mentioned the Donatists at the beginning of his book, he did not even refer to their doctrine of church and sacraments. Such a separation between the two poles of Augustine’s thought had also been characteristic of the corpus of Augustine’s own writings. The “Augustinian synthesis” that resolved the conflicts during the century following his death and that had gone on to shape medieval doctrine set its repetition of the anti-Pelagian Augustine’s doctrine of the sovereignty of grace into the context of the anti-Donatist Augustine’s doctrine of the unity of the catholic church and the objectivity of sacramental grace. Although the two would not become completely unraveled until the Reformation, we may perhaps see the beginnings of the process here, also because at this time the distinction between the “absolute” and the “ordered” will of God was being applied to the doctrine of the sacraments in such a way as to appear to make the efficacy of the means of grace dependent upon the arbitrary decree of God rather than upon grace inherent in the sacraments themselves.

- Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300 - 1700), ch. 1. (Pelikan was a Lutheran when he wrote this book.)

If Winnie-the-Pooh ever took to the bottle, this is exactly what he’d want.

Slate.