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Laws they are not, therefore, which public approbation hath not made so. But approbation not only they give who personally declare their assent by voice, sign, or act, but also when others do it in their names by right originally at the least derived from them. As in parliaments, councils, and the like assemblies, although we be not personally ourselves present, notwithstanding our assent is, by reason of others agents there in our behalf. And what we do by others, no reason but that it should stand as our deed, no less effectually to bind us than if ourselves had done it in person. In many things assent is given, they that give it not imagining they do so, because the manner of their assenting is not apparent. As for example, when an absolute monarch commandeth his subjects that which seemeth good in his own discretion, hath not his edict the force of a law whether they approve or

dislike it? Again, that which hath been received long

sithence and is by custom now established, we keep as a law which we may not transgress; yet what consent was ever thereunto sought or required at our hands?

Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent we could in such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man's deed past is good as long as himself continueth; so the act of a public society of men done five hundred years sithence standeth as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortal;. we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still. Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are available by consent.

We shall have to glance back at this passage when illustrating, in another volume, the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke. Laws made

for the ordering of politic societies either establish duties whereunto all men by the law of reason did before stand bound; or else, for particular reasons, make that a duty which before was none. Where a law of society punishes outward transgression of a law of reason or conscience, that law being in part natural, or of divine establishment, is mixedly human. Where it concerns only what reason may under particular conditions hold to be convenient, as the manner in which property shall pass after its owner's death, such law is merely human. Laws whether mixedly or merely human are made by politic societies: some only as those societies are civilly united; some, as they are spiritually joined and form a church. Of human laws in this latter kind the third book of "Ecclesiastical Polity" would treat.

Besides (1) the natural Law of Reason that concerned men as men, and (2) that which belongs to them as they are men linked with others in some form of politic society, there is (3) the law touching the public commerce of the several bodies politic with one another, that is, the Law of Nations. Civil society contents us more than solitary living, for it enlarges the good of mutual participation; not content with this, we covet a kind of society and fellowship even with all mankind. In all these kinds of

law the corruption of men has added to the Primary Laws that suffice for the government of men as they ought to be, Secondary Laws which are needed for men as they are, "the one grounded upon sincere, the other built upon depraved nature. Primary laws of nations are such as concern embassage, such as belong to the courteous entertainment of foreigners and strangers, such as serve for commodious traffic, and the like. Secondary laws in the same kind are such as this present unquiet world is most familiarly acquainted with; I mean laws of arms, which yet are much better known than kept."

Besides this law for civil communion, Christian nations have judged a like agreement needful in regard even of Christianity; and General Councils of the Church represent this kind of correspondence, so that the Church of God here on earth may have her laws of spiritual commerce between Christian nations. "A thing," says Hooker—

A thing whereof God's own blessed Spirit was the author; a thing practised by the holy Apostles themselves; a thing always afterwards kept and observed throughout the world; a thing never otherwise than most highly esteemed of, till pride, ambition, and tyranny began by factious and vile endeavours to abuse that divine invention unto the furtherance of wicked purposes. But as the just authority of civil courts and parliaments is not therefore to be abolished, because sometime there is cunning used to frame them according to the private intents of men overpotent in the commonwealth; so the grievous abuse which hath been of councils should rather cause men to study how so gracious a thing may again be reduced to that first perfection, than in regard of stains and blemishes sithence growing be held for ever in extreme disgrace.

To speak of this matter as the cause requireth would require very long discourse. All I will presently say is this. Whether it be for the finding out of anything whereunto divine law bindeth us, but yet in such sort that men are not thereof on all sides resolved; or for the setting down of some uniform judgment to stand touching such things, as being neither way matters of necessity, are notwithstanding offensive and scandalous when there is open opposition about them be it for the ending of strifes touching matters of Christian belief, wherein the one part may seem to have probable cause of dissenting from the other; or be it concerning matters of polity, order, and regiment in the church; I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame themselves to those heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with so great instancy gave as concerning peace and unity, if we did all concur in desire to have the use of ancient councils again renewed, rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and that of all other the worst, which is by sword.

Here ends the section of the book which speaks of the origin of natural and human law, and Hooker passes to that other Law which became needful, and which God Himself made known by Scripture for our aid in attainment of the highest good. Our desire is to the sovereign good or blessedness, the highest that we know. The ox and ass desire the food, and propose to themselves no end in feeding; they desire food for itself. Reasonable man eats that he may

live, lives that he may work; seeks wealth, health, virtue, knowledge, still as means to other ends. "We labour to eat, and we eat to live, and we live to do good, and the good which we do is as seed sown with reference to a future harvest."

For each means to an end. the desire is proportioned to its convenience; but for the last end the desire is infinite. "So that unless the last good of all, which is desired altogether for itself, be also infinite, we do evil in making it our end; even as they who placed their felicity in wealth, or honour, or pleasure, or anything here attained; because in desiring anything as our final perfection which is not so, we do amiss." "No good is infinite but only God; therefore He is our felicity and bliss. Moreover, desire tendeth unto union with that which it desireth." Our final desire therefore is to be with God, and live, as it were, the life of God.

Is it

Happiness is that estate whereby we attain, as far as possible, the full possession of that which is simply for itself to be desired, the highest degree of all our perfection, which is not attainable in this world. The creatures under man are less capable of happiness, because they have their chief perfection in that which is best for them, but not in that which is simply best, and whatever external perfection they may tend to is not better than themselves. probable that God should frame the hearts of all men so desirous of that which no man may obtain? Beyond the complete satisfactions of the flesh; beyond the completeness in knowledge and virtue that brings social estimation; man covets a perfection that is more than all, " yea, somewhat above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and heavenly, which with hidden exultation it rather surmiseth than conceiveth." This highest perfection man conceives in the nature of a reward. Rewards presuppose duties performed. Our natural means to this infinite reward are our works; nor is it possible that nature should ever find any other way to salvation than only this. But our works cannot deserve; there is none who can say, My ways are pure. “There resteth, therefore, either no way unto salvation, or if any, then surely a way which is supernatural, a way which could never have entered into the heart of man as much as once to conceive or imagine, if God Himself had not revealed it extraordinarily." Thus Hooker passes from the Law of Reason to the Revealed Way of Salvation to Faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in Christ; Hope, the highest object whereof is that everlasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead; Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible beauty which shineth in the countenance of Christ, the Son of the living God. Laws concerning these things are supernatural, being "such as have not in nature any cause from which they flow, but were by the voluntary appointment of God ordained besides the course of nature, to rectify nature's obliquity withal." The revealed law of God does not supersede natural law, but is added to it, and is indeed fraught with precepts of the other also. These precepts are used to prove things less manifest; they are applied with singular use and profit to particular cases; "besides, be they

plain of themselves or obscure, the evidence of God's own testimony added to the natural assent of Reason concerning the certainty of them, doth not a little comfort and confirm the same." Here we are at the second resting-place in Hooker's argument, at which he pauses again to glance over the ground he has traversed, in a little summary. His second summary is this:

We see, therefore, that our sovereign good is desired naturally; that God, the author of that natural desire, had appointed natural means whereby to fulfil it; that man having utterly disabled his nature unto those means hath had other revealed from God, and hath received from heaven a law to teach him how that which is desired naturally must now supernaturally be attained: finally, we see that because those later exclude not the former quite and clean as unnecessary, therefore together with such supernatural duties as could not possibly have been otherwise known to the world, the same law that teacheth them, teacheth also with them such natural duties as could not by light of nature easily have been known.

In the first age of the world memories served for books, but the writing of the Law of God has been by God's wisdom a means of preserving it from oblivion and corruption. The writing is not that which adds authority and strength to the Law of God; but it preserves it from the hazards of tradition. "When the question therefore is, whether we be now to seek for any revealed Law of God otherwhere than only in the sacred Scripture; whether we do now stand bound in the sight of God to yield to traditions urged by the Church of Rome the same obedience and reverence we do to His written law, honouring equally and adoring both as divine: our answer is, no." Hooker next dwells on the fact that "the principal intent of Scripture is to deliver the laws of duties supernatural," and discusses the sense in which Scripture is said to contain all things necessary to salvation. It does not contain necessarily everything in the law of reason that man can discover for himself, but this is no defect. "It sufficeth that Nature and Scripture do serve in such full sort, that they both jointly, and not severally either of them, be so complete, that unto everlasting felicity we need not the knowledge of anything more than these two may easily furnish our minds with on all sides; and therefore they which add traditions, as a part of supernatural necessary truth, have not the truth, but are in error.

Laws are imposed (1) by each man on himself; (2) by a public society upon its members; (3) by all nations upon each nation; (4) by the Lord Himself on any or all of these. In each of these four kinds of law there are (a) Natural laws which always bind, and (b) Positive laws which only bind after they have been expressly and wittingly imposed. Only the positive laws are mutable, but of these not all; some are permanent, some changeable, as changes in the matter concerning which they were first made may exact. All laws that concern supernatural duties are positive. They concern men either as men, or as members of a church. To concern them as men supernaturally, is to concern them as duties which belong of necessity to all. It is so also with

laws that concern them as members of a church, so far as they are without respect to such variable accident as the state of the Church in this world is subject to.

On the other side, laws that were made for men or societies or churches, in regard of their being such as they do not always continue, but may perhaps be clean otherwise a while after, and so may require to be otherwise ordered than before; the laws of God Himself which are of this nature, no man endued with common sense will ever deny to be of a different constitution from the former, in respect of the one's constancy and the mutability of the other. And this doth seem to have been the very cause why St. John doth so peculiarly term the doctrine that teacheth salvation by Jesus Christ, Evangelium æternum, an eternal Gospel; because there can be no reason wherefore the publishing thereof should be taken away, and any other instead of it proclaimed, as long as the world doth continue whereas the whole law of rites and ceremonies, although delivered with so great solemnity, is notwithstanding clean abrogated, inasmuch as it had but temporary cause of God's ordaining it.

We may pass now to Hooker's third summary.

Thus far therefore we have endeavoured in part to open, of what nature and force Laws are, according unto their several kinds the law which God with himself hath eternally set down to follow in his own works; the law which he hath made for his creatures to keep; the law of natural and necessary agents; the law which angels in heaven obey; the law whereunto by the light of reason men find themselves bound in that they are men; the law which they make by composition for multitudes and politic societies of men to be guided by; the law which belongeth unto each nation; the law that concerneth the fellowship of all; and lastly, the law which God himself hath supernaturally revealed. It might peradventure have been more popular and more plausible to vulgar ears, if this first discourse had been spent in extolling the force of laws, in shewing the great necessity of them when they are good, and in aggravating their offence by whom public laws are injuriously traduced. But forasmuch as with such kind of matter the passions of men are rather stirred one way or other, than their knowledge any way set forward unto the trial of that whereof there is doubt made; I have therefore turned aside from that beaten path, and chosen though a less easy yet a more profitable way in regard of the end we propose. Lest, therefore, any man should marvel whereunto all these things tend, the drift and purpose of all is this, even to shew in what manner, as every good and perfect gift, so this very gift of good and perfect laws is derived from the Father of lights; to teach men a reason why just and reasonable laws are of so great force, of so great use in the world; and to inform their minds with some method of reducing the laws whereof there is present controversy unto their first original causes, that so it may be in every particular ordinance thereby the better discerned, whether the same be reasonable, just, and righteous, or no. Is there any thing which can either be thoroughly understood or soundly judged of, till the very first causes and principles from which originally it springeth be made manifest? If all parts of knowledge have been thought by wise men to be then most orderly delivered and proceeded in, when they are drawn to their first original; seeing that our whole question concerneth the quality of Ecclesiastical Laws, let it not seem a labour superfluous that in the entrance thereunto all these several kinds of laws have been considered, inasmuch as they all concur as

principles, they all have their forcible operations therein, although not all in like apparent and manifest manner. By means whereof it cometh to pass that the force which they have is not observed of many.

Then after enforcing the value of a study of the origin of Law and of a discrimination of its several kinds as an aid to just inquiry in the religious controversies of the day, Hooker adds an example, drawn from food, of the true distinguishing of laws, and of their several forms according to the different kind and quality of our actions; so that one and the selfsame thing may be under divers considerations conveyed through many laws; and thus the first book of "Ecclesiastical Polity" closes :

Wherefore that here we may briefly end: Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

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Let us complete the illustration of English Religious Thought under Elizabeth with Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum" (Know Thyself), a poem published in 1599, when he was plain John Davies, on Origin, Nature, and Immortality of the Human Soul." Its author, born in 1570, was the third son of a lawyer practising in Tisbury, Wiltshire. 1580 he lost his father, and his mother took charge of the education of the children. In Michaelmas term, 1585, he went as a commoner to Queen's College, Oxford; in February, 1588 (new style), he entered the Middle Temple; in July, 1590, four months after the death of his mother, he graduated as B.A. at Oxford. John Davies incurred in the Middle Temple more than an average share of the fines and punishments then usual for breach of discipline, and he was called to the grade of utter barrister in July, 1595. In 1593 he had written "Orchestra, or a Poem of Dancing," and it was published in 1596, with a dedication "to his very friend, Master Richard Martin." He was still wild, and after he had cudgelled "his very friend, Master Richard Martin," whom he had called in a sonnet " 'his own selves better half," at a dinner in the Temple Hall, Davies was disbarred and expelled from his inn in February, 1598. Martin was himself given to pranks, a wit and a poet, who like Davies outlived follies of youth. He became M. P. and Recorder of London, and was one of the friends of Selden and Ben Jonson. John Davies went back to Oxford, and there sojourned with sober thoughts, of which the fruit appeared in 1599 in his fine poem on Self-knowledge and the Higher Life of Man, "Nosce Teipsum." The poem and the resolve on a true life that gave birth to it, soon helped John Davies upward in the world. He became known at the Court of Elizabeth, whom he had pleased not only by the dedication of his poem to her, but by writing and publishing also in 1599 twenty-six acrostics in

her praise, "Hymns to Astrea." 1 In 1601 he was reconciled to Martin, re-admitted to his position at the Bar and his seniority, and became a member of Elizabeth's last Parliament. After Elizabeth's death, when Davies was among those who went forward to meet James, the King, on hearing his name, asked whether he was "Nosce Teipsum," and being told that he was, graciously embraced him. In the same year Davies became Attorney-General for Ireland; but he was not knighted until February, 1607. Worthy of the author of "Nosce Teipsum" was his work for Ireland, of which there is a valuable record in prose tracts of his. He lived during the whole reign of James I., and died in Bacon's death year, 1626. The stanza of Sir John Davies's "Nosce Teipsum" was adopted by Sir William Davenant in his "Gondibert," published in 1651, and recommended by him to the post of English heroic measure. Dryden followed the suggestion in his "Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell," and in his "Annus Mirabilis," published in 1667, though the French heroic couplet was then making way. But in that year "Paradise Lost"

appeared, and it was in blank verse.

The author of "Nosce Teipsum" begins by asking why he was sent to the schools, since the desire of knowledge first corrupted man in Paradise. Our first parents desired knowledge of evil as well as of good, but they could know evil only by doing it. With knowledge of evil came a dimmer sight for good. Reason grew dark, and they were bats who had been eagles. But what do we, when with fond fruitless curiosity we seek in profane books for hidden knowledge? We seek an empty gain, and with cloud of error on the windows of our mind we look in vain to recall the knowledge that before the Fall was ours by grace.

"So might the heir, whose father hath in play Wasted a thousand pounds of ancient rent, By painful earning of one groat a day

Hope to restore the patrimony spent.

"The wits that div'd most deep and soar'd most high, Seeking man's powers, have found his weakness such : Skill comes so slow, and life so fast doth fly;

We learn so little, and forget so much.

"For this the wisest of all mortal men

Said, he knew nought, but that he nought did know; And the great mocking master mock'd not then, When he said, truth was buried here below.

"For how may we to other things attain,

When none of us his own soul understands? For which the devil mocks our curious brain When Know Thyself his oracle commands.

"For why should we the busy Soul believe,

When boldly she concludes of that and this; When of herself she can no judgment give,

Nor how, nor whence, nor where, nor what she is?

1 Some are quoted in the volume of this Library containing "Shorter English Poems," pages 259, 260,

"All things without, which round about we see, We seek to know, and have therewith to do: But that whereby we reason, live and be, Within ourselves, we strangers are thereto."

Why does our study turn so little inward? Perhaps because reflection of ourselves shows to man's soul painfully the lower shape it wears. The man lives least at home "that hath a sluttish house, haunted with sprites." The broken merchant looks at his estate with discontent and pain. Yet trouble drives a man to look within himself. Trouble and disgrace had forced Davies to self-contemplation,

"As spiders touch'd, seek their webs' inmost part;
As bees in storms unto their hives return;
As blood in danger gathers to the heart;
As men seek towns, when foes the country burn.

"If aught can teach us aught, Affliction's looks (Making us pry into ourselves so near) Teach us to know ourselves, beyond all books, Or all the learnéd schools that ever were.

"This mistress lately pluck'd me by the ear,

And many a golden lesson hath me taught; Hath made my senses quick, and reason clear, Reform'd my will, and rectified my thought.

"So do the winds and thunders cleanse the air; So working seas settle and purge the wine; So lopp'd and prunéd trees do flourish fair; So doth the fire the drossy gold refine.

"Neither Minerva, nor the learned Muse,

Nor rules of art, nor precepts of the wise, Could in my brain those beams of skill infuse, As but the glance of this Dame's angry eyes. "She within lists my ranging mind hath brought, That now beyond myself I list not go; Myself am centre of my circling thought, Only myself I study, learn, and know.

"I know my Body's of so frail a kind,

As force without, fevers within can kill: I know the heavenly nature of my mind, But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will:

"I know my Soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all :

I know I'm one of nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall:

"I know my life's a pain, and but a span;

I know my sense is mock'd with ev'ry thing: And, to conclude, I know myself a Man,

Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing."

So ends the introduction, and the poem then opens with the thought that into their world sun and moon and stars, eyes of the world, look down; while the eyes, lights of the world of man, have no power to look within. But He who gave eyes to man gave also an inward light whereby to see the true form of the Soul within,

"But as the sharpest eye discerneth nought,

Except the sunbeams in the air do shine; So the best Soul, with her reflecting thought, Sees not herself, without some light divine.

"O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!
Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within;
Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray,
Which now to view itself doth first begin!”

Men find the Soul in air, in fire, in blood, in the elements; in harmonies, complexions,

66 --swarms of atomies

Which do by chance into our bodies flee.

"Some think one general Soul fills ev'ry brain, As the bright sun sheds light in ev'ry star; And others think the name of Soul is vain,

And that we only well mix'd bodies are."

Men place its seat, according to their fancies, in brain, stomach, heart, or liver.

"Some say, she's all in all, in every part;

Some say, she's not contained, but all contains."

There is no fancy about the soul so wild that it has found no master to teach it in his school. God, only wise, has thus punished man's pride of wit.

"But Thou which didst man's Soul of nothing make, And when to nothing it was fall'n again, To make it new the form of man didst take,

And God with God, becam'st a man with men.
"Thou that hast fashion'd twice this Soul of ours,
So that she is by double title Thine,
Thou only know'st her nature, and her pow'rs;
Her subtile form, thou only canst define.

"To judge herself, she must herself transcend,
As greater circles comprehend the less:
But she wants pow'r her own pow'rs to extend,
As fetter'd men cannot their strength express."

By the light of the grace brought by Him whose truth shines with equal ray into the palace and the cottage, by the clear lamp of the divine oracle of Christ, each subtle line of the Soul's face is seen.

"The Soul a substance and a spirit is,

Which God himself doth in the body make, Which makes the man, for every man from this The nature of a man and name doth take.

"And though this spirit be to the body knit,
As an apt means her powers to exercise,
Which are life, motion, sense, and will, and wit,
Yet she survives, although the body dies."

The Soul is a real substance with its own working might that does not spring from power of the senses or from tempering of humours of the body. She is a vine that spreads without a prop; a star with her own native light.

For when she sorts things present with things past, And thereby things to come doth oft foresee, When she doth doubt at first, and choose at last, These acts her own, without the body be.

"When of the dew, which the eye and ear do take From flowers abroad, and bring into the brain, She doth within both wax and honey make: This work is hers, this is her proper pain."

It is the Soul that traces effects to their causes; from seeing the branch conceives the root; and swifter than lightning flies from east to west, and soars above the sky.

"Yet in the body's prison so she lies,

As through the body's windows she must look, Her divers powers of sense to exercise,

By gathering notes out of the world's great book.

"Nor can herself discourse or judge of aught

But what the sense collects and home doth bring; And yet the power of her discoursing thought, From these collections is a diverse thing.

"For tho' our eyes can nought but colours see, Yet colours give them not their power of sight; So, tho' these fruits of sense her objects be,

Yet she discerns them by her proper light.

"The workman on his stuff his skill doth show, And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill: Kings their affairs do by their servants know, But order them by their own royal will.

"So, though this cunning mistress and this queen
Doth, as her instruments, the senses use,
To know all things that are felt, heard, or seen;
Yet she herself doth only judge and choose."

So a wise emperor decides on matters brought him by his subjects' pains; a judge leaves others to collect the diverse facts;

"But when the cause itself must be decreed,
Himself in person, in his proper court,
To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed,
Of every proof, and every by-report.

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