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RICHARD HOOKER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

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RICHARD HOOKER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN RELIGIOUS REFORMS

VOLUME2

Editor

Irena Backus, University of Geneva

Board of Consulting Editors

Michael J.B. Allen, University of California at Los Angeles

Guy Bedouelle, Universite de Fribourg

Emidio Campi, University ofZiirich

Bernard Cottret, Universite de Paris-Versailles

Denis Crouzet, Universite de Paris IV-Sorbonne

Luc Deitz, Bibliotheque nationale de Luxembourg

Paul Grendler, (Emeritus) University ofToronto

Susan C. Karant-Nunn, University of Arizona, Tucson

Ralph Keen, University of Iowa

Maria-Cristina Pitassi, University of Geneva

Herman J. Selderhuis, Theological University Apeldoorn

David Steinmetz, Duke University, Durham, NC

Christoph Strohm, Ruhr Universitiit Bochum

Mark Vessey, The University of British Columbia

Lee Palmer Wandel, University of Wisconsin-Madison

David F. Wright, The University of Edinburgh

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RICHARD HOOKER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

Edited by

W.J. TORRANCE KIRBY McGill University, Montreal, Canada

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA. B.V.

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A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress .

ISBN 978-90-481-6462-2 ISBN 978-94-017-0319-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0319-2

Printed on acidjree paper

AII Rights Reserved © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2003

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording

or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered

and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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In Memoriam

Georges Edelen

and

Barry Grant Rasmussen

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CONTENTS

List of Contributors

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Foreword P. G. Stanwood

Preface W. J. Torrance Kirby

I. THE ORDERS OF GRACE AND NATURE

The Priority of God's Gracious Action in Richard Hooker's Hermeneutic

IX

xi

xiii

xix

Barry G. Rasmussen 3

Powers of Nature and Influences of Grace in Hooker's Lawes William H. Harrison 15

Grace and Hierarchy: Richard Hooker's Two Platonisms W. J. Torrance Kirby 25

II. PROVIDENCE AND PREDESTINATION

Richard Hooker and the Debates about Predestination, 1580-1600 W. David Neelands 43

Richard Hooker on the Un-conditionality of Predestination Daniel Eppley . 63

Providence, Predestination, and Free Will in Richard Hooker's Theology Egil Grislis 79

III. THE CHURCH AND COMMON PRAYER

Richard Hooker on the Identity of the Visible and the Invisible Church W. David Neelands 99

Angels descending and ascending: Hooker's discourse on the 'double motion' of Common Prayer W. J. Torrance Kirby 111

Sorrow and Solace: Richard Hooker's Remedy for Grief John K. Stafford 131

vii

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Vlll Contents

IV. GRACE AND THE SACRAMENTS

Presence and Absence: Richard Hooker's Sacramental Hermeneutic Barry G. Rasmussen 151

'Participation of God Himselfe:' Law, the mediation of Christ, and sacramental participation in the thought of Richard Hooker Charles W. Irish 165

Grace, Sin, and Nature: Richard Hooker's Theology of Baptism John K. Stafford 185

Reflections on Richard Hooker's understanding of the Eucharist Egil Grislis 207

V. POLEMICS OF REFORM

Language and Exclusion in the First Book of Hooker's Politie Rudolph P. Almasy 227

Book VI of Hooker's Lawes Revisited: the Calvin Connection Lee W. Gibbs . 243

Book VI and the 'Tractate on Penance:' do they belong together? Rudolph P. Almasy 263

Richard Hooker and Christopher St. German: Biblical Hermeneutics and Princely Power Daniel Eppley . 285

BmLIOGRAPHY

Richard Hooker: A Selected Bibliography Egil Grislis with the assistance of John K. Stafford

Index of Subjects and Names

Index of Hooker's Works

INDEX

297

321

331

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List of Contributors

Rudolph P. Almasy

Daniel Eppley

Lee W. Gibbs

Egil Grislis

William H. Harrison

Charles W. Irish

W. J. Torrance Kirby

W. David Neelands

Barry G. Rasmussen (d. 2003)

John K. Stafford

P. G. Stanwood

IX

Eberly College West Virginia University

McMurry University

Cleveland State University

University of Manitoba

College of Emmanuel and St. Chad University of Saskatchewan

McGill University

McGill University

Trinity College University of Toronto

University of Manitoba

St. John's College University of Manitoba

University of British Columbia

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ACL

Answere

Autograph Notes

Cert.

Dublin

FLE

r. .. vm

Inst.

Just.

Keble

Lawes

LCC

OS

Pride

Abbreviations and Acronyms

A Christian Letter of certaine English Protestantes (1599), volume 4 of the The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker

The Answere of Mr Richard Hooker to a Supplication preferred by Mr Walter Travers to the HH. Lords of the Privie Counsell, volume 5 of the Folger edition

Hooker's Autograph Notes from Trinity College, Dublin, MS 364, fols. 69-84, volumes 3 & 4 of the Folger edition

Hooker, A Learned Sermon of the Certaintie and Perpetuitie of Faith in the Elect, vol. 5 of the Folger edition

Hooker, Dublin Fragments, volume 4 of the Folger edition

The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker'

Books I through Vill, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical/ Politie

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559

Richard Hooker, A Learned Discourse of Justification, Workes, and how the foundation of faith is overthrown, volume 5 of the Folger edition

John Keble, ed., The Works of . .. Mr Richard Hooker, 7th edn., revised R.W. Church and F. Paget, Oxford, 1888

Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical/ Politie t

Library of Christian Classics

John Calvin, Opera Selecta, ed. P. Barth, W. Niesel, D. Scheuner. 5 vols., Munich, 1926-52

Hooker, A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride, volume 5 of the Folger edition

* References to the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker cite volume, page, and line numbers. t All references to the Lawes give book, chapter, and section followed by the standard FLE citation.

xi

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xii

PS

Remedie

RHC

SRH

ST

ww

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Parker Society editions of the works of the English Reformers, 56 volumes, Cambridge, 1840-

Hooker, A Remedie against Sorrow and Feare, volume 5 of the Folger edition

Arthur Stephen McGrade, ed., Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, 1997

W. Speed Hill, ed., Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays preliminary to an Edition of his Works, 1972

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York, 1947

Works of John Whitgift, DD, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. John Ayre for the Parker Society, Cambridge, 1851

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Foreword

P. G. STANWOOD

H OOKER, it might almost be said, is the name of a book rather than the name of a man," wrote Christopher Morris in his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of the first five books of the Lawes

of Ecclesiasticall Politie. Now almost 100 years later, we know much more both about the book and the man. Of Hooker himself, C. J. Sisson's Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker (1940)1 opened up and clarified many details of the life. His biographical research has been expanded in a number of ways, especially through the careful scrutiny and reassembling of Izaak Walton's early "official" Life (1666) by David Novarr in The Making of Walton's "Lives" (1958), and most recently by Jessica Martin in her fascinating study of Walton's Lives: Conformist Commemorations and the Rise of Biography (2001). Georges Edelen left his biography of Hooker unfinished at the time of his death, but much of his deep learning and scholarship is displayed in his detailed chronology of Hooker's life prefixed to the commentary volumes of the Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, and also in his editorial work on the Preface and Books I­N of the Lawes in that edition. In addition, Philip Secor has recently published Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (1999), a lively and engaging portrait aimed at a general audience. These studies are only a few of the many examples of renewed and continuing interest in Hooker the man; now, as never before, is it possible to see and appreciate Hooker in his time and place. The extraordinary richness and variety of books and articles, most of them published in the last few years, and recorded in the bibliography of the present volume, is testimony to this exciting revival of interest.

Hooker is of course known for the Lawes (though ten sermons or tractates also survive), which has had a long and enduring history. Keble's first edition of the Works, with his textual apparatus and commentary, appeared in 1836, and the 7th edition, revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget, in 1888. This last remained in print until the 1960s (still available at that time from the Clarendon Press stock), and in reprints to the present day,

1 Details of works cited in this Foreword appear in the Selected Bibliography, compiled by Egil Grislis and John Stafford, which appears at the end of this volume.

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XIV P. G. STANWOOD

forming the basis, for example, of such editions as that in the Everyman's Library. One may even say that Hooker's Lawes, in some version, has been in print since it first appeared. Hooker saw the Preface and the first four books through the press in 1593, and the fifth book in 1597. When he died in 1599, the last three books, which their author had promised, remained unpublished, but various editions of this work continued to appear throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1662 the Lawes, with the posthumous Books VI, Vll, and VID at last were published, prefaced by Bishop John Gauden's prolix and unflattering Life of Hooker. The next edition of 1666 substituted Walton's Life, but the text remained the same, and it would not in any essential way change (apart from typographical and orthographical interventions) until the coming of the Folger Edition.

The need for a thorough study of Hooker's text in light of new information, especially of recently discovered manuscripts, and the application of modem textual analysis, was obvious to a number of early modem scholars from various areas-literature, history, political philosophy, and theology-who applauded the leadership of W. Speed Hill in laying plans for a new edition in 1967 and organizing an editorial committee that began meeting in 1970. In the same year, Hill published his Descriptive Bibliography of Hooker's works, which he soon followed with Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works (1972). This volume demonstrated through the wide range of approaches to Hooker something of the shape that a contemporary commentary might take. Besides Hill's seminal essay on the evolution of Hooker's Lawes, other contributors included Egil Grislis, John Booty, Georges Edelen, each one presenting Hooker from his own specialist view, but demonstrating also the usefulness of visiting Hooker through interdisciplinary means.

But detailed commentary would need to make use of accurate texts­Keble had made a start, but the desire was to begin afresh, to study the earliest textual witnesses. The Folger Library, which in November 1970, encouraged by its then director 0 . B. Hardison, had agreed to sponsor the new and complete edition of Hooker. Its rich collection of Renaissance books, with many copies of the early Hooker folios, was a natural place for the textual editors to work: eventually Edelen, Hill, Booty, Laetitia Yeandle, and myself would form the textual group, but the whole company, including the commentary editors, met regularly and collaboratively in Washington, or in Cambridge, Mass., and on occasion in Chicago. While the Folger Library would remain central to our work, 2 all of us needed to consult the resources

2 During the years of making the Hooker edition, Laetitia Y eandle, who edited the Sermons and Tractates, was Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Library. Now retired, she is

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Foreword XV

of other libraries. Hill, for example, would spend many weeks in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with the printer's copy of Book V, containing Hooker's corrections-the unique manuscript that became the copy-text of the new (and certainly now the definitive) edition. Laetitia Yeandle would also visit libraries in England and Ireland in connection with her editing of the texts of Hooker's Sermons and Tractates.

My own work on the posthumously published Books VI, VII, and VID was perhaps the most complex textual undertaking of the Folger Edition of the Lawes. Whether Hooker had completed these books before he died, or was in the midst of revising them, we cannot be certain. They are in any case unfinished, or not in the form that Hooker would have wished, should he have lived. Books VI and VID were first published, but in truncated fashion, during the Civil War, in 1648, but both had circulated in manuscript. Book VI, for which we have two manuscript copies as well as the printed text, with its surviving chapters on penance, has always seemed to many scholars difficult to reconcile with Hooker's plan to write about the rule of lay elders (my own view is that it is a rightful, though dislocated part of a lost or unfinished book). And Book VID, on the regal dominion, was particularly well known through manuscripts that circulated before the text was printed. There are at least ten such manuscripts, most of them differing from one another both in details and in the arrangement of whole sections. Even the text of Book VII, on the episcopacy, the most complete of these last books of the Lawes, hides a mystery. It appeared for the first time in the folio edition of 1662, with all eight books (the 6th and 8th being still much in the same form as they appeared in 1648). But Book VII had no previous history-no known manuscripts, no printed versions, and no contemporary reference to the book after Hooker's death. And its inclusion in the 1662 folio seems to have been a late decision, for the press was stopped in order to make room for it.3

At the time when the Folger Edition of Hooker was being constructed, serious textual editors and critics worked under the influence of W. W. Greg's "Rationale of Copy Text" (1950) and his followers, notably Fredson

continuing her interest in Hooker by establishing in the Library a large archive of materials, including notes, photographs, proof sheets, etc., used by the Hooker editors and the publishers, Harvard University Press, and Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, NY and Tempe, AZ). 3 Bishop John Gauden of Exeter, editor of the 1662 folio, claimed to have worked from Hooker's holograph copy, which neither he nor the printer hardly altered in any way. I present my detailed conclusions about the printing of Book VII in the Textual Introduction of my edition of the posthumous books. See The Folger Library Edition, volume 3, and the discussion of Book VII, pp. xliv-li.

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xvi P. G. STANWOOD

Bowers, the great editor of Renaissance dramatic works.4 The aim was to create "the ideal text," or a text as near to the author's intentions as possible, a notion that has withered in recent years, as Hill himself has described in a series of articles.5 This ideal text would be the result of detailed scrutiny and comparison of all known copies of a given work. Print copies in the early modem period might, of course, all be different, and so as many examples needed to be seen so far as possible, for printers commonly acted as editors and made changes both before and during printing runs. Such an ideal text is not always possible in practice, and the effort of comparing many copies seems often to have diminishing returns. But like the other textual editors, I worked diligently toward the ideal, employing the remarkable Hinman Collator in the Folger Library. This machine, devised by Charlton Hinman in his study of Shakespeare's first folio,6 allows one to compare a single "best" copy that remains the same with multiple copies, one-by-one, of that same text. Through a system of mirrors and blinking lights, operated like an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine, it is possible to see differences of one text compared against another, from whole words and phrases to such minutiae as commas, turned letters, and spacing. In this way, I studied many (but not quite all!) of the many copies of Hooker's Seventh Book of the Lawes in the 1662 edition. And so also did Edelen construct the texts of the Preface and Books I-IV -Hill had the advantage of working with the printer's copy of Book V, but he nevertheless collated a number of printed copies.

Laetitia Yeandle and I had a limited number of manuscripts and early

4 Greg's influential essay appers in his Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). G. Thomas Tanselle has written an important account of Bowers's enormous influence, complete with bibliography and a chronology of the life: The Life and Works of Fredson Bowers (Charlottesville: The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1993). See W. Speed Hill's review essay of this book, "The Ironies of Paternity," Documentary Editing 16 (1994): 29-33. 5 See especially Hill's excellent summary and assessment of textual and bibliographical practices in "Where are the Bibliographers of Yesteryear?", in Pilgrimage for Love: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of Josephine A. Roberts, ed. Sigrid King, 115-32 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999). This article is based on "Where We Are and How We Got Here: Editing After Post-Structuralism," contributed to a forum convened by Susan Zimmerman and appearing in Shakespeare Studies 24 (1996): 38-46. 6 See The First Folio of Shakespeare {1623], prepared by Charlton Hinman, "The Norton Facsimile" (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). Hinman writes in his preface: "The primary aim of the present facsimile is to furnish a reliable photographic reproduction of what the printers of the original edition would themselves have considered an ideal copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare" (p. xxii). Hinman based his edition on the eighty copies of the First Folio in the Folger Library.

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Foreword xvii

printed editions from which to establish our texts of the Sermons and Tractates and the curiously incomplete Book VI of the Lawes.1 But Book Vill was particularly vexing to edit because of its manuscript tradition, and above all because of the discovery of further manuscripts, and particularly of Hooker's draft notes in Trinity College, Dublin, long buried and unnoticed amongst the papers of Archbishop James Ussher, clearly intended for some stage of the writing of Book Vill (and probably also for some part of Book VI). These notes proved unmistakably the authenticity of these last books of the Lawes, and laid forever to rest the old idea, originally fostered by Izaak Walton, that the posthumous books were in some way suspiciously un-Hookerian. But the study and collation of the manuscripts would now take much longer, for the twenty-seven folio pages of Hooker's autograph notes (many in Latin) called for a careful diplomatic transcription, translation, and comment-a process requiring nearly a year of my full-time attention, and one which was not concluded until A. S. McGrade's extensive discussion appeared in the Commentary volume of the Folger Library edition in 1993, some twenty years after their discovery.

One may still hope for the discovery of a complete manuscript of Book VI, though I am doubtful that one exists, and perhaps also a finished draft of Book Vill, but again this is not likely to happen soon, if ever. Thus the difficulties of constructing these texts on the basis of known materials, and most of all the building of Book Vill out of such diverse sources­autograph notes and drafts, seventeenth-century manuscripts as well as printed texts-were necessarily complex. To recover an ideal text in view of these problems would have been an exercise in frustration and vanity, and certainly a challenge to the editorial theories that were then current. If one were to begin this editorial work again, the result would, I think, remain much the same and the process of reaching the final goal similar to what I followed: analysis and collation of all texts, including their relationship to one another (and the significance of the autograph notes), and the exercise of judgment. One must always continue to avoid personal feelings and indeed not to construct or "improve" a text in the way that one supposes is pleasing or "correct"-"second-guessing" an author 400 years after the original composition is a practice rightly to be eschewed. Decisions must be based on available evidence and well meaning eclecticism carefully avoided. One must accept the fact that what the author desired may be

7 The Sermons and Tractates offered their own textual challenges, as Laetitia Y eandle scrupulously demonstrates in her edition of them (in volume 5 of the Folger Edition), and so also John Booty in his text of Hooker's marginal notes in his copy of A Christian Letter (in Attack and Response, volume 4 of the same edition).

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xviii P. G. STANWOOD

difficult or even impossible to discern. Yet in the case of Hooker's Book Vill the textual notes are so full that anyone who wishes may reconstruct the individual manuscripts. The desire of the edition-of Book Vill and of all Hooker's Works in the Folger Edition-is to provide a readable text, and a reliable one that scholars and students may securely and conveniently use. The Folger Edition provides such benefits and it is founded on editorial principles that ought to inspire confidence. I am doubtful that if we were to begin the work on the edition anew-now 30 years later-our final results would be greatly different, though we would necessarily wish to offer lipservice to other, though not necessarily braver or better, modes of textual criticism and construction than the Greg-Bowers paradigm of the 1960s.

A conference in Washington, DC, in September 1993, marked the completion of the Folger Edition of Hooker's Works, twenty years after Hill's preliminary Studies volume. The collection of essays that originated there, Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community ( 1997), explored in various ways Hooker's stature as a great Elizabethan author and theologian. Yet Hooker becomes especially noteworthy "when we see how deeply, deliberately, and personally engaged he was in controversies of great moment and uncertainty."8 Hooker' s thought and writing is of enduring importance, depth, range, and fascination, as the present volume continues to prove. The present essays were presented at meetings of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference held at Cleveland (2000), Denver (2001), and San Antonio (2002). One notable session was a round table discussion on the current state of Hooker studies, called "Interpretations of Doctrine and Polity," with panelists Hill and others who recalled the textual and critical labor of the Folger Edition-and the stimulus for new study and research engendered by it-and they pointed toward further ways of reading and interpreting this protean figure, perhaps a kind of "book," but indeed a man, as Jonson said of Shakespeare, "not of an age, but for all time!"

8 See A. S. McGrade, who edited this collection, in his preface (p. xii).

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Preface

T HE PAST GENERATION has witnessed a genuinely remarkable renaissance in the critical study of the thought of Richard Hooker, pre-eminent apologist of the Elizabethan Settlement. The recent

completion of the new critical Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker (1977-1998) under the general editorship of W. Speed Hill represents a most significant milestone in Hookerian studies. 1 Not since John Keble's labours in the early nineteenth century has so much effort been poured into the editing of Hooker's works. 2 Prior to the launch of the new Folger Edition, an excellent collection of essays titled Studies in Richard Hooker (1972), also edited by Hill, offered a valuable digest of the current state of scholarly criticism which served in turn to shape the discussion of the last three decades. 3 Another valuable collection of critical studies was published under the editorship of A. S. McGrade following an international conference held at the Folger Shakespeare Library and Washington National Cathedral in 1993 to mark the quatercentenary of the first edition of the first four books of Hooker's treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical/ Politie and the completion of the Folger edition.4 Other important collections of essays have also appeared in recent years.5 Now that this new critical edition, together with its two excellent companion volumes of introduction and commentary, is finally complete, it would seem to be a fitting opportunity to

1 W. Speed Hill, gen. ed., The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vols. 1-5 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ . Press, 1977-1990); vols. 6 (2 parts) & 7 (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993-98) 2 W. Speed Hill, "Editing Richard Hooker: A Retrospective," Sewanee Theological Review: A Celebration of Richard Hooker 36.2 (Easter 1993): 185-199 3 W. Speed Hill, ed., Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works. Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Univ., 1972 4 Arthur Stephen McGrade, ed., Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997) 5 See the recent collection of essays edited by William Haugaard in the Anglican Theological Review 84.4 (Fall, 2002). In the past decade other anthologies have appeared in Churchman 114.1 (2000), ed. Gerald Bray; the Journal of Religious History 21 (1997), ed. Bruce Kaye; see also John E. Booty, ed., A Celebration of Richard Hooker (on the 400th Anniversary of Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity), Sewanee Theological Review 36.2 (Easter 1993); and Donald S. Armentrout, ed., This Sacred History: Anglican Reflections for John Booty (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1990).

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XX TORRANCE KIRBY

look back and take stock. Has the great textual-critical labour significantly altered our view of the substance of Hooker's achievement as a philosopher and theologian? What shifts in interpretation or historical assessment, if any, have occurred over the past thirty-odd years? And what are the prevalent questions percolating among current interpretations of Hooker's thought?

The seventeen essays in this volume were all presented by the contributors at three recent annual meetings of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference: at Cleveland in 2000, Denver in 2001, and San Antonio in 2002. From the outset a certain "convivium theologicum" began to develop at these recurrent conferences, with an agenda of discussion focussed chiefly on the question of Richard Hooker's debt and contribution to the advancement of the Reformation in England. As this conversation matured, it became clear that an effort should be made to publish the proceedings. The aim of the present volume is to offer a window into this conversation to others who are likewise interested to engage Richard Hooker's achievement as a theologian. The essays contained in this collection address five principal loci of Hooker's theological inquiry, all of which, in one way or another, represent considerations of key importance in sixteenth-century theological discourse. These five loci are: 1) Hooker's foundational discussion of the relation between the "orders" of grace and nature; 2) his contribution to Reformed soteriology, particularly through his formulation of the doctrines of providence and predestination; 3) his ecclesiology, a central concern of his defence of the Elizabethan Settlement in the Lawes; 4) his profound discourse concerning the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies incorporated in the Book of Common Prayer; and, finally, 5) aspects of the polemical context of theological reform in the late-Elizabethan period. It is hoped that this collection of essays will serve both to broaden and deepen the discussion of Hooker's noteworthy contribution to late sixteenth-century religious reform.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Georges Edelen, editor of the first volume of the Folger edition, and also of Barry Rasmussen, a contributor to this volume, both of whom died earlier this year. Their respective contributions to Richard Hooker scholarship will be missed.

W. J. Torrance Kirby McGill University

Ascension Day, 2003