Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker (March 1554 – November 3, 1600) was an Anglican priest and an influential theologian. Hooker's emphases on reason, tolerance and inclusiveness considerably influenced the development of Anglicanism. He was the co-founder (with Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker) of Anglican theological thought.

Statue of Hooker in front of Exeter Cathedral

Title page of 1666 edition Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

Quotes

• Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
  • Quoted by Samuel Johnson in the preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

• To fathers within their private families Nature hath given a supreme power; for which cause we see throughout the world even from the foundation thereof, all men have ever been taken as lords and lawful kings in their own houses. Howbeit over a whole grand multitude having no such dependency upon any one, and consisting of so many families as every politic society in the world doth, impossible it is that any should have complete lawful power, but by consent of men, or immediate appointment of God; because not having the natural superiority of fathers, their power must needs be either usurped, and then unlawful; or, if lawful, then either granted or consented unto by them over whom they exercise the same, or else given extraordinarily from God, unto whom all the world is subject.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book I. Ch. x. 4, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 242

• They saw that to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book I. Ch. x. 5, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 243

• It is an axiom of Nature that natural desire cannot utterly be frustrate.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book I. Ch. xi. 4, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 257

• [O]f 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.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book I. Ch. xvi. 8, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 285

• By the Church therefore in this question we under stand no other than only the visible Church. For preservation of Christianity there is not any thing more needful, than that such as are of the visible Church have mutual fellowship and society one with another. In which consideration, as the main body of the sea being one, yet within divers precincts hath divers names; so the Catholic Church is in like sort divided into a number of distinct Societies, every of which is termed a Church within itself.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book III. Ch. i. 14, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 351

• Because we maintain that in Scripture we are taught all things necessary unto salvation; hereupon very childishly it is by some demanded, what Scripture can teach us the sacred authority of the Scripture, upon the knowledge whereof our whole faith and salvation dependeth? As though there were any kind of science in the world which leadeth men into knowledge without presupposing a number of things already known. No science doth make known the first principles whereon it buildeth, but they are always either taken as plain and manifest in themselves, or as proved and granted already, some former knowledge having made them evident. Scripture teacheth all supernatural revealed truth, without the knowledge whereof salvation cannot be attained. The main principle whereupon our belief of all things therein contained dependeth, is, that the Scriptures are the oracles of God himself. This in itself we cannot say is evident. For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it in heart, as they do when they hear that "every whole is more than any part of that whole," because this in itself is evident. The other we know that all do not acknowledge when they hear it. There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all believers. Scripture teacheth us that saving truth which God hath discovered unto the world by revelation, and it presumeth us taught other wise that itself is divine and sacred.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), Book III. Ch. viii. 13, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), pp. 375-376

• Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1597), Book IV. Ch. xi. 7, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. I, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 457

• We agree that pure and unstained religion ought to be the highest of all cares appertaining to public regiment: as well in regard of that aid and protection which they who faithfully serve God confess they receive at his merciful hands; as also for the force which religion hath to qualify all sorts of men, and to make them in public affairs the more serviceable, governors the apter to rule with conscience, inferiors for conscience sake the willinger to obey. It is no peculiar conceit, but a matter of sound consequence, that all duties are by so much the better performed, by how much the men are more religious from whose abilities the same proceed. For if the course of politic affairs cannot in any good sort go forward without fit instruments, and that which fitteth them be their virtues, let Polity acknowledge itself indebted to Religion; godliness being the chiefest top and wellspring of all true virtues, even as God is of all good things.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book V. Ch. i. 2, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. II, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), pp. 13-14

• So natural is the union of Religion with Justice, that we may boldly deem there is neither, where both are not. For how should they be unfeignedly just, whom religion doth not cause to be such; or they religious, which are not found such by the proof of their just actions?
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book V. Ch. i. 2, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. II, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 14

• The mind while we are in this present life, whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or howsoever exercise itself, worketh nothing without continual recourse unto imagination, the only storehouse of wit and peculiar chair of memory.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book V. Ch. lxv. 7, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. II, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 323

• We hold; that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England; therefore as in a figure triangular the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the selfsame line is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest: so, albeit properties and actions of one kind do cause the name of a commonwealth, qualities and functions of another sort the name of a Church to be given unto a multitude, yet one and the selfsame multitude may in such sort be both, and is so with us, that no person appertaining to the one can be denied to be also of the other.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book VIII. Ch. i. 2, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. III, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 330

• Without order there is no living in public society, what the because the want thereof is the mother of confusion, whereupon upon division of necessity followeth, and out of division, inevitable destruction. The Apostle therefore giving instruction to public societies, requireth that all things be orderly done. Order can have no place in things, unless it be settled amongst the persons that shall by office be conversant about them. And if things or persons be ordered, this doth imply that they are distinguished by degrees. For order is a gradual disposition.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book VIII. Ch. ii. 2, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. III, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), pp. 341-342

• The whole world consisting of parts so many, so different, is by this only thing upheld; he which framed them hath set them in order. Yea, the very Deity itself both keepeth and requireth for ever this to be kept as a law, that wheresoever there is a coagmentation of many, the lowest be knit to the highest by that which being interjacent may cause each to cleave unto other, and so all to continue one.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book VIII. Ch. ii. 2, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. III, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 342

• When therefore Christian kings are said to have spiritual dominion or supreme power in ecclesiastical affairs and causes, the meaning is, that within their own precincts and territories they have authority and power to command even in matters of Christian religion, and that there is no higher nor greater that can in those causes over-command them, where they are placed to reign as kings. But withal we must likewise note that their power is termed supremacy, as being the highest, not simply without exception of any thing.
  • Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Book VIII. Ch. ii. 3, quoted in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker: With An Account of His Life and Death. by Issac Walton. Vol. III, ed. John Keble (1845 ed.), p. 343

Attributed

• The mixture of those things by speech which are by nature divided is the mother of all error.
  • Attributed to Hooker in Henry George's The Science of Political Economy[1]. Possibly from "Laws III.3.1" per [2]

Quotes about Richard Hooker

• Hooker, although he founded—perhaps because he founded—no especial school, has, perhaps more than any other single writer, given to our Anglican theology a tone a direction which it has never lost.
  • Alfred Barry, 'Richard Hooker', Masters in English Theology; Being the King's College Lectures for 1877 (1877), p. 59

• To the Memory of RICHARD HOOKER, Prebendary of this Cathedral, And Author of the Book entitled Ecclesiastical Polity, who, exhibiting in his writings the profoundness of a Scholar, and in his life the holy simplicity of an Apostle, successfully vindicated the forms and ordinances of the Episcopal Church of this Nation, and her primitive usage of the sweetest Songs of Sion, Anthems and Antiphonal Harmonies, adapted to the words of the inspired Psalmist. He died, A.D. 1600. This tribute of respect and veneration for so great a name, is offered here, by W. L. Bowles, Canon Residentiary, 1836.
  • William Lisle Bowles, quoted in The Patronage of the English Bishops. Two Addresses to the House of Lords and Commons of England, and to the British Nation, on the Proposal of the Church Commissioners, to Transfer to the Bishops, the Patronage of Deans and Chapters ... With a Preface, and Dedications to the Right Honourable Lord John Russell and the Bishop of London (1836), p. 8

• I began my study with relation to our home matters with Hooker's Ecclesiasticall Policy [sic], which did so fixe me that I never departed from the principles laid down by him, nor was I a litle delighted with the modesty and charity that I observed in him which edified me as much as his book instructed me.
  • Gilbert Burnet, 'Burnet's Autobiography', A Supplement to Burnet's History of My Own Time, Derived From His Original Memoirs, His Autobiography, His Letters to Admiral Herbert and His Private Meditations, All Hitherto Unpublished, ed. H. C. Foxcroft (1902), p. 460

• She [Lady Falkland] continued to read much, and when she was about twenty years old, through reading, she grew into much doubt of her religion. The first occasion of it was reading a Protestant book, much esteemed, called "Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity:" it seemed to have left her hanging in the air, for having brought her so far (which she thought did very reasonably), she saw not how nor at what she could stay till she returned to the church from whence they were come.
  • Elizabeth Cary, The Lady Falkland, Her Life (1861), p. 9

• The foundation document, in Anglican perception, had been provided by Richard Hooker... Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the first and greatest apologia for Anglicanism, was published in instalments (1594, 1597, 1648, 1662); the political Book VIII countered the hostile thesis that "unto no civil prince or governor there may be given such power of ecclesiastical dominion as by the laws of the land belongeth unto the supreme regent thereof". It proceeded from the assumption that "there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of England" (ch. 1.2). This, indeed, constituted the political aspect of the Anglican via media... Political involvement in the life of the Church could not validly be described as Erastianism, it was argued. The monarch was anointed and clothed in priestly vestments at his coronation; Parliament was a lay synod. Both were part of the Church, not separate and secular agencies subordinating the Church to their control. But Hooker's doctrine contained a fatal flaw: it was ambiguous about the title of the "chief Governor" on whom the whole system depended, and even appeared to recognise conquest and de facto power. Providence, though heavily emphasised, might point in more than one direction.
  • J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (1994), pp. 157-158

• There is no learning that this man hath not searched into; nothing too hard for his understanding; this man indeed deserves the name of an author; his books will get reverence by age, for there is in them such seeds of eternity, that if the rest [of his writings] be like this, they shall last till the last fire shall consume all learning.
  • Pope Clement VIII on the first four books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (c. 1597), quoted in Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr. Rich. Hooker, The Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1665), p. 71

• [T]he Non-Conformists (heretofore call'd Puritans) or Calvinists are Sound in the Faith, and Orthodox in their Principles, and profess all Christian Truths necessary to Salvation. You never saw in England a Puritan, saith Dr. Crackantharp, that was an Heretick: There is no quarrel between us (Conformists) and the Puritans concerning Faith, or any Doctrines of Faith. Our Church and they contend about Rites and Discipline, but we consent and agree in Matters of Faith. The same we find attested by several other Learned Men of our Church, as Mr. Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 3d.
  • John Edwards, Veritas Redux. Evangelical Truths Restored, Volume I (1707), pp. 549-550

• [I]t must not be forgotten, that in the very midst of the Paroxisme betwixt Hooker and Travers, the latter stil bare (and none can challenge the other to the contrary) a reverend esteem of his adversary. And when an unworthy aspersion (some years after) was cast on Hooker, (if Christ was dasht, shall Christians escape clean in their journey to heaven) Mr Travers being asked of a private friend, what he thought of the truth of that accusation, In truth, (said he) I take Mr Hooker to be a holy man. A speech with coming from an adversary, sounds no less to the commendation of his charity who spake it, then to the praise of his piety of whom it was spoken.
  • Thomas Fuller, The church-history of Britain from the birth of Jesus Christ until the year M.DC.XLVIII endeavoured by Thomas Fuller (1655), pp. 217-218

• Into a new extreme; he bade them stay,
  And shew'd between each ditch the safest way.
  He did Democracy and misrule hate,
  And lov'd the Order both of Church and State.
  • John Gauden, The Life and Death of Mr Hooker, in Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1662), p. 38

• [I]n the spring and summer of 1828 I set to work on Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity and read it straight through. Intercourse with my saintly elder sister Anne had increased my mental interest in religion and she though generally of Evangelical sentiments had an opinion that the standard divines of the English Church were of great value. Hooker's exposition of the claims of the Church of England came to me as a mere abstraction: but I think that I found the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, theretofore abhorred, impossible to reject and the way was thus opened for further changes.
  • William Ewart Gladstone, 'Early Religious Opinions, 1828–41' (26 July 1894), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica, eds. John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (1971), p. 150

• Unlimited Non-resistance can no more be inferr'd from this Scheme, than from that, espoused and established by the Excellent and Judicious Mr. Hooker, which founds the Authority of Governours upon the Voluntary Compact of Men.
  • Benjamin Hoadly, 'Preface', The Measures of Submission to the Civil Magistrate Consider'd, in a Defense of the Doctrine Deliver'd in A Sermon Preach'd before the Rt. Hon. the Lord-Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, Sept. 29. 1705. (1718), pp. xl-xli

• To fortify your own principles, and to qualify yourselves to give the Laity the instruction they so much need in this important subject, of the deference due from the private Christian, in matters purely Spiritual, to the authority of the Church, and to a Ministry of Divine institution, I would advise, that you make the writings that remain of the Apostolical Fathers, more especially of St. Clement and St. Ignatius, your constant study. They may be redde either in the Original, or in Bishop Wake's translation. Much edification on the same subject is to be drawn from the Ecclesiastical Polity of the Learned Hooker; and from the writings of an eminent Divine of the Church of Ireland, in the last century, the celebrated Charles Leslie.
  • Samuel Horsley, The Charge of Samuel, Lord Bishop of St. David's, to the Clergy of His Diocese, Delivered at His Primary Visitation, in the Year 1790 (n.d.), pp. 37-38

• Dr. Heylin's History of the Reformation and the preface of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Policy thoroughly convinced him that neither the Church of England, nor Calvin, or any of the Reformers, had power to do what they did, and he was confident, he sayd, that whosoever reads those two books with attention, and without prejudice, would be of the same opinion.
  • James II of England, quoted in J. S. Clarke, The Life of James the Second, Vol. I (1816), p. 630

• Of their Nation, Hookers Ecclesiasticall historie...for church matters.
  • Ben Jonson, advice to William Drummond of Hawthornden (January 1619), quoted in Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. R. F. Patterson (1923), pp. 13-14

• [N]o man can set a better state of the question between Scripture and tradition, than Hooker doth. His words are these: "The Scripture is the ground of our belief; the authority of man (that is the name he gives to tradition) is the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture." ... [W]e resolve our faith into Scripture as the ground; and we will never deny that tradition is the key that lets us in.
  • William Laud, A Relation of the Conference betweene William Lawd...and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (1639), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume II: Conference with Fisher (1849), p. 103

• It is hard to overestimate the importance of Hooker. He was probably the greatest defender of the Prayer Book. The strength of his defense is to be found in his use of the philosophia perennis, and of the theology built upon it. He so employs this traditional thought that the Book of Common Prayer becomes meaningful and inherently significant.
  • John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (1963), p. v

• His truest successor in political thinking was Burke, and Burke believed in meeting the new political situation with the wisdom of the past, but he also believed that a new situation should be interpreted in terms of its own needs and characteristics... Burke's notion is that of the constant use of the past, but also the use of creative freedom to meet the fresh and novel demands of the present. This doctrine Burke draws from Hooker.
  • John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (1963), pp. vi-vii

• In such a Christian society as Hooker conceived England to be, bishops and other clergy have distinct functions from those of civil officials... But they are both ministers of the same Christian society, the society which is both Church and state. Church and state are two functions of one Christian society. It is a Christian society because the whole society is dedicated to the Christian way of life as the common good. Hooker's fundamental conception is that the common good of the Christian state and that of the Christian Church are identical... If we should say to Hooker that secular life stands over against spiritual, his answer would be that either the common good of the nation is the Christian way of life or the nation is no longer Christian. Hooker believes that the redemption of public life is the highest work of Christianity. He does not wish to set Church and state apart; he wishes Christianity to be the common life of the nation. The life of the nation should be a single cultural life: the life of the Incarnation as the common good of the whole people. If this is true, there are not two societies, one Christian and the other secular.
  • John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (1963), p. 166

• Hooker's ideal is the Respublica Christiana, the Christian state. In such a state, the head of the state is head of the Church. That is because there is one cultural life, one common good and one governmental mode of expressing that common good. This is the reason why Hooker accepts Constantine and Justinian as the typical Christian rulers, just as he accepts the Kings of Israel as the typical Jewish rulers. As the Kings of Israel headed the whole community as both Church and state, so Justinian was head of the whole society which was both Church and state. Hooker accepts Christianity as a religious culture, and at its best it is a social life transfigured by the Incarnation. Hooker is the heir of the ages, and uses not only Justianian of the East but St. Thomas of the West. If there is not a unity of culture the Church becomes a sacral society and the state becomes a secular society... Culture cannot be disintegrated without disaster. What is needed is a redeemed culture transfiguring both Church and state.
  • John Sedberry Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (1963), p. 167

• Hooker would not have been, but for the existence of Catholics and Puritans, the defeat of the former and the rise of the latter.
  • John Henry Newman, Lectures and Essays on University Subjects (1859), p. 89

• [H]e himself was by temperament inclined to deference, scrupulous in his regard for authority, an enthusiast for order. Moreover, he was a shy man, loving a quiet, retired life, and even then easily abashed: and it may well be that he thought of the great world and those who shone in it with a child-like sense of remoteness and alarm which he was not self-conscious enough to disguise.
  • Francis Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1907), pp. 258-259

• Mr. Chetwind fell commending of "Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity," as the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian, which puts me upon the buying of it, which I will do shortly.
  • Samuel Pepys, diary entry (29 June 1661), quoted in Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S. Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II. Vol. I (1854), p. 197

• [H]e was a great admirer of Calvin, whose writings he regarded as one of the three pillars of the faith and worship of the reformed English Church, along with the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. All leaders of the Church, from John Jewel to John Whitgift, were in Calvin's debt, in Hooker's opinion. His quarrel was only with the Calvinist discipline and with the biblical extremism that some Puritans were trying to impose in England. The presbyterian polity might or might not be suitable for Geneva and other principalities, but here in England, Hooker believed, there was an existing ecclesiastical polity which conformed to the traditions and laws of his country.
  • Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (1999), p. 244

• Hooker insisted that all legitimate political power comes originally from the community and may return to it again under certain dire circumstances. He speaks of a social compact whereby power was first transferred from the people to a government, perhaps a monarch. Such notions were later used to justify rebellion against kings. Is this where Hooker was headed—toward a modern theory of consent and revolution, à la John Locke and Thomas Jefferson? Certainly not! Hooker meant only that, as Aristotle said, we are all political animals by nature and cannot live in isolation outside society. Since selfishness puts us at war with one another in an ungoverned society, we form civil governments to maintain peace and provide the order necessary for our general tranquillity. Only in this general and theoretical sense did Hooker speak of popular sovereignty and social compact.
  • Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (1999), p. 257

• Hooker made the point that Church and state together make a single society, a Christian commonwealth. This was the heart of Hooker's political philosophy and Saravia would have applauded it. Both men believed that there was no one in the Church of England who was not at the same time a citizen of the English commonwealth, or any member of the commonwealth who was not also a member of the Church of England. Citizens exercised their civic duties as members of the commonwealth and their religious duties as members of the Church. But in all things they were members of a single Christian commonwealth of England... In this realm of England...there was but one society: a true Christian commonwealth headed by only one ruler, a sovereign queen.
  • Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (1999), p. 311

• In the long crowded roll of great English men of letters there is no figure of greater significance to the instructed mind than Hooker... His own life's work [The Ecclesiastical Polity] is a monument of pure and splendid prose style and lucid philosophical thought, based on unsurpassed scholarship in the vast field of his theme. The book itself is a milestone in the history of a great English institution [the Anglican Church] and of religious thought.
  • Charles Jasper Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1940), p. ix

• Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is more than a magnificent piece of prose writing, more than a full statement of the views of a philosopher defending the position of the church against its Puritan enemies. It is a document of Church history of the first importance, a manifesto to which the Church returns at every crisis to seek justification and vindication.
  • Charles Jasper Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1940), p. 6

• What admirable height of learning and depth of judgment dwelled within the lowly mind of this true humble man, great in all wise men's eyes, except his own; with what gravity and majesty of speech his tongue and pen uttered heavenly mysteries, whose eyes in the humility of his heart were always cast down to the ground; how all things that proceeded from him were breathed, as from the spirit of love, as if he like the bird of the Holy Ghost, the dove, had wanted gall; let them that knew him not in his person judge by these living images of his soul, his writings. For out of these, even those who otherwise agree not with him in opinion, do afford him the testimony of a mild and a loving spirit; and of his learning, what greater proof can we have than this, that his writings are most admired by those who themselves do most excel in judicious learning, and by them the more often they are read, the more highly they are extolled and desired?
  • John Spenser, preface to the first five books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1604), quoted in The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, With an Account of His Life and Death, Volume I (1888), p. 122

• Hooker's apologia for the Church of England has stood the test of time: a national Church needs a strong ecclesiology if it is not to become the property or puppet of the State. In spite of the very changed social and political circumstances of today, the relationship between the Crown and the Church of England remains unbroken... Hooker was among the foremost Christian apologists of his day. His conviction that the truth was discerned with reference to revelation, tradition, and reason has frequently been cited as the foundation stone of an Anglicanism that is both Catholic and Reformed.
  • David Stancliffe, 'Proem', Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism (1999), pp. vii-viii

• [T]he incomparable Mr. Hooker.
  • Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium [1660] (1851), p. ii

• There is a wheel within a wheel; a secret sacred wheel of Providence (most visible in marriages), guided by His hand that allows not the race to the swift nor bread to the wise, nor good wives to good men: and He that can bring good out of evil (for mortals are blind to this reason) only knows why this blessing was denied to patient Job, to meek Moses, and to our as meek and patient Mr Hooker.
  • Izaak Walton, in Philip B. Secor, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism and Son of Exeter. Walton (August 9, 1593 - December 15, 1683) was the chief biographer of Hooker.

• I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.
  • Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker. In Walton's Lives, George Saintsbury, ed., reprinted in Oxford World's Classics (1927).