Richard Hooker, in Book V of his Eccleciastical Polity, prefaces his
detailed defense of the worship system of the Church of England with
some criteria for liturgy. These specific criteria grow from the
general principles of church authority set forth in Books I-IV. The
criteria are: (1) fitness, (2) historical continuity, (3) church
authorization, and (4) practical necessity. These guidelines are troth
conservative and open--useful for 20th century liturgical change.
It hardly needs to be said that the churches of the West, in
the
second half of the 20th century are in a period of liturgical challenge
and change. Practices and words hallowed by long habit are being
altered, and people ask "why?"
When liturgy is undergoing change or when it is in question,
thinking about worship becomes highly conscious. At such times,
churches cannot just do; they must reflect on what they do. Gifted
persons must bring to awareness the principles by which worship is
shaped and carried out. Communities seek to respossess what they have
been given by history and, at the same time, to be open to what is new.
At such times, liturgical communities must be discriminating and
self-critical.
Change, when it comes, in a continuous tradition, puts the
present
in touch with the formative period of the tradition, or with previous
occasions when the tradition has been challenged. Anglicans look
freshly at Cranmer, his intentions and his achievement--as
Presbyterians rediscover Calvin, Lutherans examine Luther, and Roman
Catholics take a fresh look at the Council of Trent. All Christians, of
course, look to the first few centuries, during which the major forms
of Christian liturgy took their enduring shapes.
At a crucial moment in Anglican history, the Elizabethan era,
Richard Hooker, under Puritan challenge, set forth some criteria for
worship. He did so in the course of his profound exposition of the
worship system of the Church of England in Book V (1597) of his of the
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. We shall direct attention to these
criteria, suspecting that they may have some pertinence for today.
1
Hooker undertakes his exposition of the liturgy of the English
Church in Book V of his Ecclesiastical Polity, after a lengthy
investigation of logically prior material. He has known from the start
that he must examine the controverted features of the English worship
system. But for Hooker, the Puritan attack is so fundamental that
before he can take up particular complaints, he must deal, in four
closely-argued books, with issues of authority. Does the Puritan
argument rest on questionable assumptions? What are the grounds and
sources of true authority? only after these impressive "flanking
movements," as C.S. Lewis calls them,[1] is Hooker ready to turn to
particulars.
Hooker opens Book V by establishing some common ground with
his
opponents.[2] Both the Church of England and the Puritan party within
it seek such laws and ordinances as "may rightly serve . . . to
establish the service of God with all things "hereunto appertaining in
some perfect form, (V.iv.3: 2.31, lines 5-7.).[3] All parties are
engaged on a serious matter; both sides might use similar terms to
describe the ends they seek.
Hooker at once introduces a distinction. There is "an inward
reasonable" worship and "a solemn outward serviceable" worship, both of
which are due to God. The former includes "all manner of virtuous
duties that each man ill reason and conscience to Godward oweth." The
latter. represents "whatsoever belongeth to the Church or public
society of God by way of external adoration." Hooker's interest will be
in the public system: "It is of the later of these two whereupon our
present question groweth." Thus Hooker recognizes the validity of acts
of inward, private worship. He will not quarrel with the Puritans
concerning them. Such acts cannot be known and judged by anyone else,
and they are not subject to church regulation. He will focus on the
public, external rites of the church.
2
Neither in Book V nor anywhere else does Hooker give a
definition of
worship, !Dut he supplies fragments of basic description. Later in Book
V he will speak of worship as "mutual conference and as it were
commerce to !oe had between God and us," (V.xviii.1: 2.65, lines 7f).
The words "conference" and "commerce" suggest meeting and exchange.
They imply a listening and speaking, a receiving and giving, an
investment of the life of God in the church and of the life of the
church in God-all brought to public expression in liturgy.
This "mutual conference" is carried out by a complex system of
words
and actions. Hooker makes no apology for this complexity. In Book IV,
where he had approached liturgical issues at a general level, he had
accepted and used the scholastic terms "matter" and "form." He noted
there that although the matter and form of the essential actions of
worship might be carried out quite simply, minimum essentials are never
enough
In every grand or main public duty, which God requireth at the
hands
of his Church, there is, besides that matter and form wherein the
essence thereof eonsistetll, a certain outward fashion whereby the same
is in decent sort administered. (IV.i.2: 1.273, lines 15-20)
He thus rules out a liturgical minimalism which would, in
effect,
ask, "How little can we do in worship and still do what we must?" The
central actions are, for their own fulfillment, associated with further
words, acts, and adornment: "But the due and decent form of
administering those holy sacraments, cloth require a great deal more,"
(IV.1.2: 1.273, lines 28f).
This development beyond the minimum involves words and
actiorls.
Words coupled with actions, Hooker explains, are more forceful than
words alone; and for several reasons:
--They can express the importance of the occasion. Public
actions
"which are of weight" require "some visible solemnity," (IV.i.3: 1.274,
lines 16-18).
--They can impress those who watch and hear:
Not only speech but sundry sensible means besides have always
been
thought necessary, and especially those means which being object to the
eye, the liveliest and most the apprehensive sense of all other, have .
. . seemed the fittest to make a deep and a strong impression. (ib.,
lines 4-8)
--Relatedly, actions joined to words can seal an event in the
doer's
Words troth because they are common, and do not so strongly
move the
fancy of man, are for the most part but slightly heard and therefore
with singular wisdom it hath been provided, that the deeds of men which
are made in the presence of witnesses, should pass not only with words,
but also with certain sensible actions, the memory whereof is far more
easy and durable than the memory of speech can be. (ib., lines 20-27)
Hooker is here supporting a measure of richness or
"solemnity,"
which is appropriate, as he sees it, to civic as well as to church
events. He lived in a ceremonial age, which accepted color, special
garb, and pageantry. Such affirmation of ceremony tapped wide
experience and a deep past:
No nation under heaven either cloth or ever did suffer public
actions which are of weight whether they be civil and temporal or else
spiritual and sacred, to pass without some visible solemnity; the very
strangeness whereof and difference from that which is common, cloth
cause popular eyes to observe and mark the same. (IV. i.3: 1. 274,
lines 15-20)
We live in an un-ceremonial age--radically so in some
communities.
Modern bourgeois society is ill-at-ease with stylized ritual actions.
It lacks a general sense that different styles may be appropriate to
different functions. Important events are carried out in a rather
everyday fashion. We are usually suspicious of display. A few years
ago, Richard Sennett identified the problem in a book called The Fall
of Public Man. [4] our skepticism is understandable. We have found
staged spectacles, such as those mounted by Albert Speer for the Third
Reich, to be manipulative. Grand gestures by individuals (unsupported
by a communal tradition) seem extravagant and self-important. In the
16th century, the Puritans were moving towards modern drabness, and
Hooker was urging the value of color and differentiation.
Note should be taken of Hooker's frequently used adjective
"solemn"--or the noun "a solemnity." It did not refer to something sad
or to an action be carried out in a heavy-hearted way. A solemnity
might be quite festive. Hooker gives the sense of the term when he
speaks of "strangeness" or the difference of a solemn event "from that
which is common." The mark of solemnity was an appropriate
specialness.[5]
The developed system of liturgical acts and words of the
Church of
England (spare and economical by many standards) gave the Puritans
numerous occasions of offense. They mounted a simple, radical critique:
Do only what Scripture authorizes. In the light of this principle, the
Prayer Book system seemed filled with excesses--impious efforts to add
to or improve on what God had given to the church:
For so it is judged, our prayers, our sacraments, our fasts,
our
times and places of public meeting together for the worship and service
of God, our marriages, our burials, our functions, elections, and
ordinations ecclesiastical, almost whatsoever we do in the exercise of
our religion according to laws for that purpose established, all things
are some way or other thought faulty, all things stained with
superstition. (V.iv.1: 2. 30, lines 17-24)[6]
3
Hooker addresses the Puritan objections in a full and orderly
way in
Book V of the Polity--half again as long as Books I-IV and the Preface
together. In turning his great argument to these particulars of
worship, he remarks, in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to Book V, that the
matters of which the Puritans complain "are in truth for the greatest
part such silly things, that very easiness cloth make them hard to be
disputed of in a serious manner.[7]
It is true that the Puritan complaints were, for the most
part,
petty. Moreover, most of them were negations. The Church of England had
put forward a moderate system of rites, and the Puritans had found many
features of it offensive. one thinks of Horton Davies' comment "While
there was substantial agreement in the Puritan coalition on the
delenda, there was substantial disagreement on the agenda."[8] The
alternative usages that the Puritans proposed were, on the whole,
prosy, static, and clerical.
Yet Hooker does dispute the Puritan objections "in a serious
manner." He argues theologically and deeply. Through his work it
becomes clear that the worship of the Church of England is not just a
body of individual judgments, but it forms a system,' with internal
coherence. Hooker goes to principles, often uncovering unexpectedly
serious reasons for what is done. The Prayer Book had been in place
continuously for a generation when Hooker wrote. Its words and
directions had been put together without express criteria. The process
may not have been altogether pragmatic, but if there were guiding
principles, they were left implicit. But Hooker examined the English
Book of Common Prayer and discovered a depth and consistency in it that
had gone unexpressed before. His "criteria" may be after-the-fact, but
one could argue that liturgical criteria are usually after-the-fact. He
set out to defend a system which he found to be eminently defensible.
In tactics, Hooker represented the established church and its
authorized customs--things that British Christians could, for the most
part take for granted. No one who accepted the system had to think why
things were done; they were done. The Puritans, for their part, mounted
an articulate critique, saying what the Church of England should not
do. They held the initiative, for they were on the attack. In this
situation one could not respond by urging the continuance of
unreflective custom or habit. Nor could the Church of England prevail
(although after Hooker's time it tried) by securing compliance through
enforcing laws and imposing penalties. Rather, it had to state a fresh,
considered case for what it authorized. It had to provide
reasons--reasons arising out of Christian truth. Determinations of
practice had to be rooted in general principles, representing a
coherent case. "We being defendants do answer that the ceremonies in
question are godly, comely, decent, profitable for the Church,"
(IV.iv.2: 1.286, lines 15-17).
Portions of this argumentative ground had been covered, albeit
at a
quite general level, in the previous Book of the Polity. There Hooker
had dealt with principle--the Puritan "general exceptions." The
Puritans had urged five lines of opposition to the rites and customs of
the establishment:
- The offensive ceremonies are lacking in apostolic
simplicity; they are too stately or elaborate.
- They are too similar to the uses of the Romish church.
(Hooker's reply to this point is the most developed.)
- The uses that are in common with Rome were derived from
Judaism.
- They lead to idolatry and are therefore scandalous.
- They differ from the uses of the earlier Reformed
churches.
Hooker can assume the argumentation of Book IV when in Book V
he considers specific practices.
4
Hooker turns from answering general negations in Book IV to
dealing
with controverted particulars in Book V. But he approaches by way of
establishing criteria for worship. He will be dealing with a large and
miscellaneous agenda. He does not want a mere list of particular
answers to particular complaints. If the Bible is not (as he had
earlier argued it is not) a rule-book for public worship, so that the
church is forever bound to apostolic practice (insofar as that might be
determinable), what principles do guide? obviously all things must
follow divine positive law and natural law.[9] But are there other
axioms that are closer to the sort of determinations required by
liturgy?
Here the ground had been at least partially occupied by some
of the
Puritans. They held that the practices of public worship should be
guided by principles drawn from the New Testament itself, and they
cited four such principles, taken from Paul's treatment of worship and
conscience in 1 Corinthians:
- Nothing should be admitted which is scandolous or gives
offense.
- Everything should be decent and
- should tend to edification.
- All should be to the glory of God.
Hooker does not really quarrel with these points.[10 But they
are so
general that they do not much advance the discussion. The Church of
England would think of itself as fully in conformity with these
apostolic guidelines. In effect, the argument could be paraphrased:
The Puritans contended:
--St. Paul says that everything should be edifying;
--we find versicles and responses unedifying;
--therefore St. Paul is against you.
The establishment would counter:
--St. Paul says that everything should be edifying;
--we find the use of versicles and responses suitable and
edifying;
--therefore you misapply St. Paul.
In other words, the Puritan form of argument claimed, in a
simplistic way, New Testament grounds for things that were in fact
matters of judgment. Hooker's opponents sought to hold the Church of
England to the stringent rule of authorizing only what is commanded in
the Word of God--a rule which would allow no room for judgment. Then
they introduced these general principles, assuming that their
liturgical customs complied with them, while those authorized for the
Church of England did not. It seems obvious to Hooker that the Puritans
simply want to remove the particular order established in the English
Church and replace it with their own.
Hooker proposes "Four General Propositions," which are closer
to the
real determination of liturgical practice. He wants to be able to
discuss what is good (and by implication what is bad) liturgical
practice and why. Yet he wants to be open and flexible. More than one
practice might satisfy his criteria. Hooker knows that Christian
liturgical life has been remarkably varied, and concrete situations may
commend practices which should not be universalized. So he puts forward
criteria which provide useful guidelines, but criteria within which
some flexibility is possible.
5
1. Fitness: The first of Hooker's criteria by which authorized
customs or rites should be judged as having or lacking the approval of
conscience is, somewhat surprisingly, functional:
There must be in such rites or ceremonies reason--not to
suppose
them better than any that might be, but "to show their convenience and
fitnes, in regard of the use for which they should serve," (V.vi.1:
2.33, lines 3f).
Having made this sensible and modern-sounding affirmation,
Hooker
asks that no slight view be taken of the end which the words and
actions of liturgy are to serve. He says that no cultural material is
fully adequate for this supreme use. He cites two things:
First, the uniqueness of the church and its purpose:
This present world affordeth not any thing comparable unto the
public duties of religion. For if the best things have the perfectest
and best operations, it will follow that seeing man is the worthiest
creature upon earth, and every society of men more worthy than any man,
and of societies that most excellent which we call the Church; there
can be in this world no work performed equal to the exercise of true
religion, the proper operation of the church of God. (V.vi.1: 2.33,
lines 10-17)
Second, the infinite majesty of God:
For as much as religion worketh upon him who in majesty and
power is
infinite, as we ought we account not of it, unless we esteem it even
according to that very height of excellency which our hearts conceive
when divine sublimity itself is rightly considered. In the powers and
faculties of our souls God requireth the uttermost which our unfeigned
affection towards him is able to yield. So that if we affect him not
far above and before all things, our religion hath not that inward
perfection which it should have, neither do we indeed worship him as
our God. (ib., lines 17-26)
In this remarkable passage, Hooker begins by sounding
instrumental,
perhaps almost manipulative. He counsels: Shape worship so that it
suits its purpose. Then he asks that the shapers of worship stand in
awe before that purpose. There is an interior pressure on the materials
and forms of worship--pressure from the transcendent character of the
divine object of worship. Along with a desire to have worship that is
worthy of God, there must be a recognition that no worship we can
fashion is or can be equal to such a standard.
In filling out this criterion of fitness, Hooker observes that
fitness implies also some mode of correspondence or resemblance:
That which inwardly each man should be, the Church outwardly
ought
to testify. And therefore the duties of our religion which are seen
must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be. Signs must
resemble the things they signify. . . . Duties of religion performed by
whole societies of men, ought to have in them according to our power a
sensible excellency, correspondent to the majesty of him whom we
worship. Yea then are the public duties of religion best ordered, when
the militant Church cloth resemble by sensible means . . . that hidden
dignity and glory wherewith the Church triumphant in heaven is
beautified. (V.vi.2 2.33, line 26--p.34, line 6)
In this passage, Hooker weaves together several themes: The
visible
forms of worship should correspond with the unseen affections of the
worshippers. They should have a sensible excellency appropriate to God.
And they should show in the church militant the hidden glory of the
church triumphant.
If the perfect representation of the divine is impossible, as
Hooker
has argued it is, we may not for that reason do nothing at all. Rather,
certain elements of our common world can suggest, by resemblance, the
character and majesty of God--some can suggest it better than others.
The church's task is to use its powers of discrimination to bring into
use those visible things that most adequately represent the invisible
God.
Hooker sums up his first criterion in terms that may be
thought
ringing or modest, depending on where a reader may choose to put the
emphasis:
Let our first demand be therefore, that in the external form
of
religion such things as are apparently, or can be sufficiently proved,
effectual and generally fit to set forward godliness, either as
betokening the greatness of God, or as beseeming the dignity of
religion, or as concurring with celestial impressions of the minds of
men, may be reverently thought of; some few, rare, casual, and
tolerable, or otherwise cureable, inconveniences notwithstanding.
(V.vi.2: 2.34, lines 15-22)
Having proposed an exacting standard, Hooker might hope that
his
readers would recall his comment, made in an earlier place, that forms
of worship must suggest; they cannot capture or define: "The sensible
things which Religion hath hallowed, are resemblances framed according
to things spiritually understood, whereunto they serve as a hand to
lead, and a way to direct," (IV.1.3: 1.275, lines 22-24).
2. Tradition: The second criterion (developed in a fine
extended passage in V.vii) is long continued use:
Neither may we . . . lightly esteem what hath been allowed as
fit in
the judgment of antiquity and by the long continued practice of the
whole Church; from which unnecessarily to swerve experience hath never
as yet found it safe. (sec.1: 2.34, lines 24-27)
Hooker argues that antiquity has judged certain practices fit.
(He
says nothing as to how such judgment was rendered.) This fitness has
been confirmed by "the long continued practice of the whole Church"--
thus entering considerations of regional extent as well as length of
time; creating something like a Vincentian canon for liturgy. The
moderns are to the ancients as youths are to their elders. The aged are
wise and experienced. Their counsel should be accepted by the young.
"In whom therefore time hath not perfected knowledge, such must be
contented to follow them in whom it hath," (sec.1: 2.35, lines
17f).[11]
Hooker would be surprised to hear "experience" opposed to
"tradition." The principles of our elders, he says, derive from their
experience; attention to their principles makes us beneficiaries of
their prior experience.
That which showeth them to be wise, is the gathering of
principles
out of their own particular experiments. And the framing of our
particular experiments according to the rule of their principles shall
make us such as they are. (sec. 2: 2. 36, lines 7-11)
Hooker counsels caution about changing things long approved:
"The
love of things ancient cloth argue staidness, but levity and want of
experience maketh apt unto innovations," (sec.3). old things have been
tested--"there are few things known to be good, till such time as they
grow to be ancient," (sec.3).
Readers of Book IV will be reminded of things said there:
In all right and equity, that which the Church hath received
and
held so long for good, that which public approbation hath ratified,
must carry the benefit of presumption with it to be accounted meet and
convenient. They which have stood up as yesterday to challenge it of
defect, must prove their challenge. . . . The burden of proving cloth
rest on them. (IV.iv.2: 1.286, lines 10-15, 21f)
In sum, where fitness is not itself sufficient to determine,
"the
judgment of antiquity concurring with that which is received may induce
them to think it not unfit, who are not able to allege any known
weighty inconvenience which it hath, or to take any strong exception
against. (V.vii.4: 2.37, lines 22-25)
3. Authorization: The third of Hooker's criteria is the voice
of the
Having spoken of the respect in which precedent or tradition
should
be held, Hooker continues by asserting the church's freedom in matters
of discipline. The church of Christ has a right and a competence to
do--even to do what has not been done before:
All things cannot be of ancient continuance which are
expedient and
needful for the ordering of spiritual affairs but the Church being a
body which dieth not hath always power, as occasion requireth, no less
to ordain that which never was, than to ratify what hath been before.
V.viii. 1 2.38, lines 2-6)
Here again, the author echoes something he had said in Book
IV: "We
lawfully may observe the positive constitutions of our own Churches,
although the same were but yesterday made by ourselves alone," (IV.v:
1.288, lines 24-26). This point seems to be Hooker's recognition of
historical novelty. Conditions can arise for which historical precedent
gives no real parallel; when that happens, Hooker understands that the
church is not helpless.
In response to the varied circumstances of history, the church
may
rightly do in one time something different from that which it had
rightly done at another: "The Church hath authority to establish that
for an order at one time, which at another time it may abolish, and in
both do well," (V.viii.2: 2.38, lines 17-19). Not many thinkers in the
late 16th century were aware of historicism to this degree. Everything
that is done is done with reference to a situation. In a changed
situation, one may be most faithful to past intention by instituting a
different practice. Although the point is common now, it was not common
when Hooker wrote.
The church does not make its determinations arbitrarily. It
draws on
"wisdom ecclesiastical." This freedom of which Hooker speaks is a
freedom of the church--not of the individual or a congregation. No one
is competent to judge alone. one should not set oneself above the
church. "The bare consent of the whole Church should itself in these
things stop their mouths who living under it, dare presume to bark
against it," (sec. 3: 2.39, lines 22-24).[12] When he speaks of"the
whole church," Hooker is evidently here thinking of the Church of
England as self-governing and able (as other churches are also able) to
determine its own affairs. other social units have their means of
establishing order and securing compliance. Should the church of God be
unable to command consent? The Puritans have reacted from Rome's
excessive claims for the church into too little recognition of the due
rights of the church. Hooker maintains that both extremes are
harmful.[13]
He questions the separation that the Puritans make between
Scripture
and church: "Suppose we that the sacred word of God can at their hands
receive due honor, by whose incitement the holy ordinances of the
Church endure every where open contempt?" (sec.4: 2.40, lines 14-17).
Moreover, the obedience to such ordinances should be ungrudging: "Where
our duty is submission, weak oppositions betoken pride," lb., lines
23f).
In sum, where divine law, invincible argument or serious
inconvenience do not determine, the authority of the church should
determine; and its determinations should be found binding by each
individual:
The very authority of the Church itself, . . . may give so
much
credit to her own laws, as to make their sentence touching fitness and
convenience weightier than any bare and naked conceit to the contrary;
especially in them who can owe no less than childlike obedience, to her
that hath more than motherly power. (sec.5: 2.4O, lines 3O-35)
4. Necessity: Hooker concludes his series of "general
propositions"
with some (again a little surprising) remarks in behalf of necessity:
What ought to be done in divine worship cannot be determined
by
general principles alone. There is great variety in the tradition, and
circumstances may prevent carrying out the ideal. When that happens, to
do the best one can in the situation is not to do second best. Hooker's
criterion of necessity thus has real theoretical dignity. It is not a
concession or something to be acted on with apology: "In evils that
cannot be removed without the manifest danger of greater to succeed in
their rooms, wisdom, of necessity, must give place to necessity,"
(V.ix.1: 2.41, lines 5-7).
And, in words that might well be hung in every vesting room,
choir
room, and sacristy: "When the best things are not possible, the best
may be made of those that are," (ib.: lines 10f).
The church should not be "inhuman and stern" concerning
spiritual
ordinances. God, for cause, has even modified the orderly ways of
nature; and artists may knowingly violate canons of their craft.
Although there are principles in liturgy, they should not be
inflexible. There are matters of conscience that are not against, but
above the law--"things which law cannot reach unto," (sec.3: 2.44, line
29). The church should, in honor of due regulation, allow the
relaxation of regulation and consider exceptions:
We . . . require that it may not seem hard, if in cases of
necessity, or for common utility's sake, certain profitable ordinances
sometime be released, rather then all men always strictly bound to the
general rigor thereof. (v.ix.5 2.46, lines 1-4)
Quite remarkably, it is here, in his consideration of
liturgical
matters, that Hooker includes his most extended treatment of equity.
Here, rather than in Book I, which contains the heart of his legal
philosophy, Hooker speaks of moderating the letter of the law when a
strict application would violate its spirit: "Many things by strictness
of law may be done, which equity and honest meaning forbiddeth. Not
that the law is unjust, lut unperfect; nor equity against, but above
the law." (ib.: 2.44, lines 27f)
Did Hooker think that liturgical regulation especially should
be
flexible and sensitive to persons and situations? or was he saying that
the Puritans did not realize that law, rightly understood, contains
principles for its own accommodation to cases? The Puritans made law a
more rigid thing than it needed to be. The necessary moderation of a
law need not overthrow law, rather it expresses "the liberty that law
with equity and reason granteth," (V.ix.4: 2.45, lines 34f).
The necessity of recognizing necessity is created by the fact
that
things go wrong! (How many of the theoreticians of liturgy in the 16th
century had been parish clergy, as Richard Hooker had? Although he is
not talking about individual judgment nor about the shaping of local
customaries, nonetheless at times the parish priest's weekly wrestling
with sheer liturgical obstinancy seems to show through.) He said: "In
polity as well ecclesiastical as civil, there are and will be always
evils which no art of man can cure, breaches and leaks more than man's
wit hath hands to stop," (V.ix.2: 2.43, lines 3-5).
He proposes that the present controversy has been conducted
too much
at the level of conflicting dogmatic principles. The disputants have
ignored "what restraints and limitations" all such principles have in
practice. Experience of the variety of life is the source "from whence
to draw the true bounds of all principles." Such discrimination,
attentive to the realities of experience, is more difficult than is the
simple pronouncement of generalities: It ". . . requireth more
sharpness of wit, more intricate circuitions of discourse, more
industry and depth of judgment, than common ability cloth yield."
Popularly the generalizations are grasped, but the complexity of
concrete experience is exacting and elusive.[14]
All satisfactory liturgical practice is with reference to a
situation. It is risky to universalize. "We must not . . . imagine that
all mens cases ought to have one measure," (V.ix.2: 2.44, line 13).
6
These four "general principles" are only a methodological
introduction to the detailed discussions that occupy Hooker's great
Fifth Book. But these principles deserve more than to be gone over
quickly while a reader hurries on to see what Hooker will say about a
particular controverted point. These liturgical "middle axioms" show
Hooker's ability to mingle penetrating inquiry with openness to
concrete complexity. He is poised between antiquity and modernity. It
could well be argued that, as liturgical change continues in the
Anglican tradition which Hooker did much to shape, and as such change
makes criteria important, Hooker's respectful but critical appeal to
fitness, historical continuity, church authorization, and practical
necessity have not been altogether dated by the passage of three
centuries.
Some remarks on festival days, which Hooker makes a little
later in
Book V, might, in the light of his principles, be thought applicable
generally to forms of"external adoration:"
They are the splendor and outward dignity of our religion,
forcible
witnesses of ancient truth, provocations to the exercise of all piety,
shadows of our endless felicity in heaven, on earth everlasting records
and memorials, wherein they which cannot be drawn to hearken unto that
we teach, may only by looking upon that we do, in a maimer read
whatsoever we believe. (V.lxxi.ll: 2.383, lines 16-21)
[1] Lewis, C.S., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century,
oxford, The Clarendon Press: 1954, p. 459. Lewis' dozen pages on Hooker
(pp. 451-63) are as good a summary of Hooker's work and importance as
can be found.
[2] Rather to one's surprise, Hooker does not begin at once to
address the Puritan liturgical objections. Rather, he opens with a
lengthy passage on the importance of religion and on the danger to the
commonwealth from atheism on the one hand and superstition on the
other. He looks at the issue from its extremes. He first examines
insufficient religion as a civic threat (atheism, V. i-ii), and then he
turns to excessive religion (superstition, V iii-iv). On]y after
clearing this proposition that sound religion is a "stay of the state"
is he ready to examine the specifically liturgical matters. By giving
the liturgical issues this social context, he indicates how much he
thinks is at stake in the present dispute.
[3] Hooker is quoted from the Folger Library Edition of The
Works of
Richard Hooker, W.Speed Hill, general editor, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 1977 et. seq. I cannot be the only reader who,
despite endless gratitude for a reliable text, finds this elegant
edition less 'reader friendly" than the old Keble or EML editions. I
therefore identify quotations by the familiar Book, chapter and section
references, followed, after a colon, by the volume, page, and lines of
the passage in the Folger Library edition. Spelling has been
modernized.
[4] Richard sennett, The Fall of Public Man, New York, vintage
Books: 1978. In this complex and informed work of social criticism, the
writer argues that the loss, in the modern industrial west, of public
culture, public roles, decorum, style and rhetoric has placed an
extraordinary emphasis on private life, on one's own unassailable
experience, and on individual charism, and has opened modern society to
"the tyranny of intimacy."
[5] See C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, London, oxford
UP
1949, pp. 15f. Lewis concludes his remarks on the meaning of pomp and
solemnity in the 16th and 17th century "The modern habit of doing
ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility. rather it
proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his
readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual,"
p. 16.
[6] Another list, by Hooker, of a Puritan bill of particulars,
in III.v.: L214, lines 21-29, goes:
Having an eye to a number of rites and orders in the Church of
England, as marrying with a ring, crossing in the one sacrament,
kneeling at the other, observing of festival days more than only that
which is called the Lord's day, enjoining abstinence at certain times
from some kinds of meat, churching of women after child-birth, degrees
taken by divines in universities, sundry Church-offices, dignities, and
callings for which they found no commandment in the holy scripture,
they thought by the one only stroke of that axion [Do only what
scripture warrants.] to have cut them all off.
The longest list of Puritan complaints, again organized by
Hooker,
and important because it pertains particularly to the content of the
Book of Common Prayer, is in V.xxvii. 1
[7] Folger Library Edition, 2.2, lines 20-22.
[8] Davies, Horton, From Andrewes to Baxter and For,
1603-169O, vol.
2 of Worship and Theology in England, Princeton, NJ, Princeton UP 1985,
p. 410. This is not the only place in which Davies makes this memorable
comment.
[9] In Francis Paget's old, but elegant An Introduction to the
Fifth
Book of [looker's Treatise "Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,"
oxford, The Clarendon Press: 1899, p. 128, the author makes it clear
that the previous four Books of the Polity must be assumed here.
Hooker's criteria apply only within the area, already cleared by him,
within which human laws are compenent. In V.viii.2: 2.39, lines 8-11,
Hooker says: "What Scripture cloth plainly deliver, to that the first
place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is
whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; and
after those the voice of the Church succeedeth."
[10] These Puritan points and Hooker's discussion of them
occupy the early part of Book 11.
[11] Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an approximate contemporary of
Hooker, made a characteristic reversal of this admiration for
antiquity. He said that rather than being elderly, wise and
experienced, the ancients lived before the fund of experience had had
much time to grow. They were the youth of the race. With respect to us,
the age in which the ancients lived was the elder, but with respect to
the world it was the younger. The moderns are beneficiaries of longer
experience, live at a more advanced age of the world, and are the true
elders. Nocum Organum, Book I, Aphorism 84.
[12] Hooker's point that judgment about necessity was, in his
mind,
to be the judgment of the church, not the judgment of an individual or
a congregation, is made in the closely-written tenth chapter of Book v,
coming at the conclusion of his lengthy development of his "Four
General Propositions." Having put forward criteria for the public
worship of the church, and having put them in such a way as to allow
for judgment, he now explains that private judgment is not what he has
in mind. He has been talking about criteria that might guide churches.
The prose rhythm of the opening portion of the chapter is
established by four "If against . . ." clauses. The entire section
consists of two of Hooke's wonderful, cantilevered sentences.
He seems to aim his remarks at persons who took themselves to
be led
by the Spirit, and whose individual following of the Spirit (as Hooker
saw it) portended chaos for the church: When persons follow "those
inventions whereby some one shall seem to have been more enlightened
from above than many thousands, . . . what other effect could hereupon
ensue, but the utter confusion of his Church under pretense of being
taught, led, and guided by his spirit?" This individualism seems to
Hooker simply arrogant: "Where such singularity is, they whose hearts
it possesseth ought to suspect it." Editors in annotating this section
give no references to passages or writings of Hooker's usual opponents.
There are not many other places in which Hooker refers so directly to
this "pentecostal" style of sectarian opposition. Who were these
"spirituals?" When did they emerge onto the scene so that he had to
take note of them? Does this tenth section of Book V follow from the
foregoing "propositions" somewhat as though it had been added in
response to an emergent issue?
[13] "Our dislike of them, by whom too much heretofore hath
been
attributed unto the Church, is grown to an error on the contrary hand,
so that now from the Church of God too much is derogated. By which
removal of one extremity with an other, the world seeking to procure a
remedy, hath purchased a mere exchange of the evil which before was
felt," (V.vii.4: 2.4O, lines 9-14). Hooker in section viii asserts the
prerogatives of the church, but by the same stroke he casts the Puritan
critics in the position of individual complainers.
[14] This is not the only place in which Hooker, himself a
theoretician, expresses his conviction that abstract theorizing is
easy, and likely to be misleading; whereas concrete experience is
complex, difficult, and likely to contain surprise.
~~~~~~~~
By DANIEL B. STEVICK[*]
[*] Daniel B. Stevick, STD, is Emeritus Professor of Liturgics
and
Homiletics of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. He is now
living in Swarthmore, PA, where he is writing and doing adjunct
teaching in the Philadelphia area. His most recent books are Baptismal
Moments Baptismal Meanings and The Crafting of Liturgy.