THE

WORKS

OF

THAT LEARNED AND JUDICIOUS DIVINE,

MR. RICHARD HOOKER:

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF

HIS LIFE AND DEATH,

BY

ISAAC WALTON.

ARRANGED BY

THE REV. JOHN KEBLE, M. A.

LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD,

PROFESSOR OF POETRY.

SECOND EDITION.

"All things written in this booke I humbly and meekly submit to the censure
"of the grave and reverend Prelates within this land, to the judgment of learned
and the sober consideration of all others. Wherein I may happely erre as
"others before me have done, but an heretike by the help of Almighty God I will
"never be."-HOOKER, MS. Note on the title leaf of the "Christian Letter."

men,

VOL. III.

OXFORD,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

MDCCCXLI.

Clar. Press

1.6.75.

Lay Elders, one of the chief Points in Controversy.

OF THE

LAWS

OF

ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

1

BOOK VI.

CONTAINING their fifTH ASSERTION, WHICH IS", THAT OUR LAWS
ARE CORRUPT AND REPUGNANT TO THE LAWS OF GOD, IN MATTER
BELONGING TO THE POWER OF ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION, IN
THAT WE HAVE NOT THROUGHOUT ALL CHURCHES CERTAIN LAY-
ELDERS ESTABLISHED FOR THE EXERCISE OF THAT POWER1.

THE

с

Ch. i. I.

The question their between us,

whether all

into congregahave rishes ought

tions or pa

to have lay

per- elders in

vested with

risdiction in

HE same men which in heat of contention do hardly BOOK VI. either speak or give ear to reason, being after sharp and bitter conflict retired to a calm remembrance of all former proceedings; the causes that brought them quarrel, the course which their stirring affections followed, and the issue whereunto they are come; may adventure, as troubled waters, in small time, of their own power of juaccord, by certain easy degrees settle themselves again, and spiritual so recover that clearness of well-advised judgment, whereby they shall stand at the length indifferent, both to yield and admit any reasonable satisfaction, where before they could not endure with patience to be gainsayed. Neither will I despair of the like success in these unpleasant controversies a The words which is, are inserted from the Dublin MS. b conflicts Ed. 1651. (which will be designated in these notes by the letter E.) c striving E.

[Although the present editor is convinced, for the reasons assigned in the preface, that the sixth book completed by Hooker is now almost or altogether lost, still he has judged it best on consideration to leave the following pages in their usual place: first, because the early part of them does appear to have formed part of

HOOKER, VOL. III.

some rough draft of the book on lay
elders; secondly, because it seemed
safer to await the judgment of lite-
rary men in general, before ex-
punging so large a portion of the
treatise: thirdly, because he believes
the whole to be Hooker's, though
wrongly inserted into his great
work.]

B

causes.