straightway prepared for publication several of Hooker's sermons, which were published at Oxford in 1612 and 1613. On Spencer's death the papers passed to Dr. John King, bishop of London; on King's death in 1621 they were claimed by Archbishop Abbott, and were taken to Lambeth before 1633. On 28 Dec. 1640 Laud's library at Lambeth was given into Prynne's custody, and on 27 June 1644 a vote of the Long parliament made Hooker's manuscripts over to Hugh Peters. Their history has not been further traced. But there is no doubt that many copies were made from them, and from Spencer's notes and Jackson's transcripts, before they reached Hugh Peters. Some of these, including a valuable copy of the eighth book, fell into Ussher's hands, and are now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Others are among William Fulman's papers in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Walton knew of at least half a dozen copies of what claimed to be the last two books of the ‘Politie,’ most of them pretending ‘to be the author's own hand, but much disagreeing, being, indeed, altered and diminished as men have thought fittest to make Mr. Hooker's judgment suit with their fancies or give authority to their corrupt designs.’
A critical examination shows that the seventh and eighth books, in their existing shape, are constructed from Hooker's rough notes, and, although imperfect, are pertinent to his scheme; but that the so-called sixth book has no right to its place in Hooker's treatise. According to Hooker's list of subjects ‘to be handled,’ which appeared in his first volume, his sixth book was to treat ‘of the power of jurisdiction which the reformed platform claimeth unto lay-elders;’ but after stating that subject, and briefly discussing the nature of spiritual jurisdiction, the sixth book, as it stands now, straightway embarks on a dissertation ‘of penitence,’ and deals thenceforth with ‘primitive and Romish penance in their several parts, confession, satisfaction, absolution.’ The basis of these chapters are, doubtless, notes by Hooker, but not notes prepared for the ‘Ecclesiasticall Politie.’ This is placed beyond controversy by the fact that there are extant in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, manuscript comments prepared by Cranmer and Sandys on Hooker's first draft of his sixth book, and these comments fully discuss ‘lay elders and presbyteriall jurisdiction,’ and omit all mention of ‘penance.’ Ussher's chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Barnard or Bernard [q. v.], in his ‘Clavi Trabales, or Nails fastened by some great Masters of Assemblies confirming the King's Supremacy and the Church Government under Bishops’ (1661), showed that Gauden's edition of Hooker's eighth book was derived from a very imperfect transcript, and supplied omitted passages from a manuscript copy in his possession which had belonged to Ussher. Many of Bernard's additions, which deny that kings are accountable to their subjects for their conduct, have been incorporated in later editions of the ‘Politie.’
The original aim of Hooker's ‘Ecclesiasticall Politie’ was to supply the Elizabethan settlement of English ecclesiastical government with a philosophical and logical basis. And so largely rational is his examination of the general principles involved in church government, that an important part of his treatise belongs to the domain of moral and political philosophy rather than to that of theology. His puritan opponents asserted that all religious doctrines and institutions derived their sanction solely from Scripture, and that any addition to or deviation from the doctrines and institutions ordained in Scripture was erroneous, and deserving of condemnation. From this view Hooker dissented. He argued that human conduct was to be guided by ‘all the sources of light and truth with which man finds himself encompassed,’ and that those sources of light were only in part disclosed in the Scriptures. The universe, in Hooker's view, was governed by natural law, which was not expounded at all in the Scriptures. Natural law embodies God's supreme reason, and appoints to the whole field of Nature, moral as well as physical, the means by which it works out perfection in its several parts. Natural law is ascertained and is recognised as binding by man's reason; and to its authority church and civil government, like all human institutions, must conform. ‘Obedience of creatures to the law of nature is the stay of the whole world.’ The Scriptures, however, supplement natural law with a supernatural law, which furnishes man with knowledge of a future life and other mysteries of faith. ‘The insufficiency of the light of nature is by the light of Scripture … fully and perfectly supplied’ (bk. ii. viii. 3). Incidentally Hooker explains the origin of civil government as due to ‘a common consent’ given by men in a prehistoric era ‘all to be ordered by some who they should agree upon’ (bk. i. ch. x.). He thus distinctly anticipates the theory of a social compact which Locke and Rousseau developed later. The range of Hooker's argument grows narrower as he leaves, at the end of Book ii., his general discussion of the nature of law, and of the relations that subsist between the natural and the scriptural or supernatural law. In Book iii. he argues that there is
