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The Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s Defence of the ‘Sensible Excellencie’ of Public Worship

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Book cover Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England

Part of the book series: Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature ((CKEML,volume 1))

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Abstract

In a brief chapter within his massive apology of the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer in the fifth book of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1597), Richard Hooker addresses the use ‘of musique with psalmes’ in public worship. In his joint appeal to the authority of Scripture and to philosophical principles suggestive of Neo-Pythagoreanism, this account of liturgical music is emblematic of Hooker’s general method and approach. In the course of this discussion Hooker develops a distinctive hermeneutic whereby ‘signs are to resemble things signified; outward acts to testify to inward dispositions of the heart; human sensible means to show forth hidden divine glory; things visible to correspond to things invisible; the church militant to emulate the church triumphant’. Hooker’s hermeneutics of signs and signification constitutes a crucial strategic device in his theological polemics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, ed. Speed Hill, V.38.1–3; 2:151.4–154.4. Cited hereafter as Lawes, all references provide book, chapter, and section numbers followed by volume, page, and line numbers in the Folger edition (FLE).

  2. 2.

    Lawes, V.38.2; 2:152.12–21.

  3. 3.

    The pamphlet was originally published together with Thomas Wilcox’s An Admonition to the Parliament [1572] and is reprinted in Puritan manifestoes, pp. 20–37.

  4. 4.

    Lawes IV.title; 1:271.4–7.

  5. 5.

    A view of popishe abuses, 29. Field presented a full list of abuses to Parliament on 8 December 1583. See PRO, SP 12/164, 11, fols. 25–26. FLE 6(2):692. Dent, Protestant Reformers, pp. 44–45.

  6. 6.

    A replye to an ansvvere made of M. Doctor VVhitgifte, p. 131.

  7. 7.

    Browne , A true and short declaration, sig. B3v.

  8. 8.

    Lawes, V.38.1; 2:151.5–10.

  9. 9.

    Boethius , De institutione musica libre quinque/Fundamentals of music, p. 9. See Ilnitchi, ‘Musica mundana’, p. 37.

  10. 10.

    Lawes, V.38.1; 2:151.14–24.

  11. 11.

    Lawes, V.38.1; 2:151.6–7.

  12. 12.

    Republic 424b–425a.

  13. 13.

    Republic 435e.

  14. 14.

    Lawes V.38.1; 2:151.4–12.

  15. 15.

    [Willet?] , A Christian Letter (1599) [STC 13721] was the only attack on the Lawes published in Hooker’s lifetime. The complete text, together with Hooker’s marginal annotations, is reprinted in FLE vol. 4, ed. John Booty (1982), pp. 1–79 [cited hereafter ACL]. See FLE 4:76.24–77.11.

  16. 16.

    Lawes, V.38.3; 2:153.7–14. Maurus , De clericorum institutione et ceremoniis Ecclesiae…libri iii (1532), vol. 2:48, p. 129. PL 107:362. See FLE 6(2):700.

  17. 17.

    For more on this theme, see Sophie Read’s essay in this volume (Chap. 8).

  18. 18.

    Lawes, V.38.1; 2:153.17–154.4. Basil, Homilia in Psalmum Primum, in Άπαντα τὰ του̃ μεγαλου̃ καλουμένον Βασιλείου (1551), 55; PG 29:212–13. See FLE 6(2):700.

  19. 19.

    See John Booty’s ‘Introduction to Book V’ in Works of Hooker, vol. 6(1), 183–231. See also Kirby, ‘Angels descending and ascending’.

  20. 20.

    Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, vol. 2 of the Folger edition, cited hereafter as Lawes. V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added).

  21. 21.

    ‘ ̉Eκκλησία ε̉ςτὶν ε̉πίγειος ου̉ρανός.’ ̉ Germanus Nauplius, Αι Θει̃αι λειτουργει̃αι (1526), sig. M2r; PG 98:384. See Lawes V.6.2; 2:34f; see also FLE 6(2):659.

  22. 22.

    ‘Delectatio Domini in Ecclesia est, Ecclesia vero est imago cœlestium.’ De interpellatione David; in Opera Omnia (1567), vol. 4, 410; PL 14:813.

  23. 23.

    ‘Facit in terris opera cælorum.’ Epistle 6:16, in Lucubrationes (1542), 205; PL 58:560.

  24. 24.

    Lawes, V.6.2; 2:34.3–6.

  25. 25.

    See Travers , Ecclesiasticæ disciplinæ, fol. 12 r-v. For a contemporary English translation of Travers’s treatise by Thomas Cartwright , see A full and plaine declaration, pp. 15–16.

  26. 26.

    Lawes, IV.3.1; 1:280.6–16.

  27. 27.

    Lawes, IV.1.3; 1:274.15–27.

  28. 28.

    Kirby, Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist, pp. 29–44.

  29. 29.

    Lawes, IV.1.3; 1:275.21–24.e. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia 2.3.2; Opera (1562), p. 121; PG 3:397. See the translation of this passage in Pseudo-Dionyius: the Complete Works, p. 205: ‘Sacred symbols are actually the perceptible tokens of the conceptual things. They show the way to them and lead to them, and the conceptual things are the source and the understanding underlying the perceptible manifestations of hierarchy ’.

  30. 30.

    See Lochman, ‘Divus Dionysius’. On Hooker’s extensive use of the concept of the ‘ lex divinitatis ’, see Kirby, ‘Grace and Hierarchy’, in Richard Hooker and the English Reformation, pp. 25–40.

  31. 31.

    For Aquinas’s formulation of the lex divinitatis see Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae q.172 art.2: ‘As the Apostle says (Rom. 13.1), Things that are of God are well-ordered. Now the Divine ordering ( lex divinitatis ) according to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. V), is such that the lowest things are directed by middle things. Now angels hold a middle position between God and men, in that they have a greater share in the perfection of the Divine goodness than men have. Wherefore the divine enlightenments and revelations are conveyed from God to men by the angels ’. See also Turner, ‘How to read the pseudo-Denys today?’

  32. 32.

    Lawes, VIII.Supplement II; 3:493.33–494.13; see also FLE 6(2):1080–81. Book VIII was posthumously first published separately in an edition by James Ussher in 1648, and was included in John Gauden’s complete edition of the Lawes in 1662. For the publishing history see P.G. Stanwood’s Introduction to FLE vol. 3.

  33. 33.

    Autograph Notes (Supplement II), 3:494.

  34. 34.

    ‘Sensible things’ and ‘hierarchies’ are both translated as ‘sacramenta’ in the Latin edition of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. See Comm. on 1:275.21–24e in FLE 6(1):602.

  35. 35.

    Lawes, V.6.2; 2:33.26–34.6 (emphasis added).

  36. 36.

    Lawes, I.16.4; 1:137.13–30.

  37. 37.

    Lawes I.16.4; 1:137.28–30.

  38. 38.

    Lawes V.29.5; 2:127.12–14.

  39. 39.

    The Collect appointed in the Book of Common Prayer to be read on 29 September.

  40. 40.

    Lawes, V.25.2; 2:114.13–21. See Mohamed, ‘Renaissance thought on the celestial hierarchy’, pp. 570–72.

  41. 41.

    Lawes, V.39.1; 2:154.5–7.

  42. 42.

    Lawes V.39.4; 2:158.16–20.

  43. 43.

    Cartwright , Replye, p. 203.

  44. 44.

    ACL 4:23.10–24.8; 4:65.1.

  45. 45.

    Newman, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, especially Chap. 2; see John Keble’s ‘Introduction’ to his edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, rev. Francis Paget (1888); Haugaard, ‘Prelude: Hooker after 400 Years’, pp. 873–80; Porter, ‘Hooker, the Tudor Constitution, and the via media’, p. 103; Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English Magisterial Reformer’.

  46. 46.

    MacCulloch , The Later Reformation in England, p. 29.

  47. 47.

    See, e.g., Lake, ‘Business as Usual?’

  48. 48.

    FLE, 6(1):6–7.

  49. 49.

    Lawes, V.6.2; 2:33.26.

  50. 50.

    Cartwright , A Replye, p. 131.

  51. 51.

    Cartwright , A Replye, p. 106.

  52. 52.

    For a discussion of the distinction between the ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘apologetic’ approaches to ecclesiology and religious reform, see Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, pp. 249–94.

  53. 53.

    Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude.

  54. 54.

    Bullinger, Sermonum Decades, 5:280–81. Nelson-Burnett, ‘Heinrich Bullinger’.

  55. 55.

    Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist. On Vermigli’s sacramental theology see Opitz, ‘Eucharistic Theology’. Zuidema, Peter Martyr Vermigli; McLelland, The Visible Words of God.

  56. 56.

    Campi and Reich, eds. Consensus Tigurinus.

  57. 57.

    For Hooker’s ‘treatise’ on Patristic Christological orthodoxy, see Lawes V.50–56; 2:207–44. See Booty, ‘Introduction to Book V’, FLE 6(1):193 and Kirby, Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, pp. 74–79.

  58. 58.

    Lawes, V.50.2; 207.19–208.13.

  59. 59.

    Lawes, V.50.3; 2:208.8–13.

  60. 60.

    Lawes, V.57.5; 2:247.5–22.

  61. 61.

    My translation; see ‘The Zurich Agreement’, in Campi and Reich, eds. Consensus Tigurinus.

  62. 62.

    V.67.5; 2:334.17–33. ‘The Bread and Cup are his Body and Blood, because they are causes instrumental, upon the receit whereof, the Participation of his Body and Blood ensueth. For that which produceth any certain effect, is not vainly nor improperly said to be, that very effect whereunto it tendeth. Every cause is in the effect which groweth from it. Our Souls and Bodies quickned to Eternal Life, are effects; the cause whereof, is the Person of Christ: His Body and Blood are the true Well-spring, out of which, this Life floweth. So that his Body and Blood are in that very subject whereunto they minister life: Not onely by effect or operation, even as the influence of the Heavens is in Plants, Beasts, Men, and in every thing which they quicken; but also by a far more Divine and Mystical kinde of Union, which maketh us one with him, even as He and the Father are one’.

  63. 63.

    Lawes, V.67.5; 2:334.17–33.

  64. 64.

    See Lawes, V.58.2; 2:249.161–250.3.

  65. 65.

    Lawes, V.67.11; 2:338.13–340.1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Torrance Kirby

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  1. Torrance Kirby
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Subha Mukherji

  2. Department of Politics, University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Tim Stuart-Buttle

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A portion of this chapter has appeared in print as W.J. Torrance Kirby, ‘“Between the throne of God in heaven and his church upon earth here militant”: instruction and prayer in the fifth book of Hooker’s Lawes’, Dionysius 29 (2011), pp. 247–58. I am grateful to the journal’s editor for allowing me to reproduce it here.

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Kirby, T. (2018). The Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker’s Defence of the ‘Sensible Excellencie’ of Public Worship. In: Mukherji, S., Stuart-Buttle, T. (eds) Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England. Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, vol 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71359-5_3

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