Against the factious spirits: The Hookerian character of Laudianism

The Treatise of the Sabbath-Day (1635) by Laudian Bishop of Ely Francis White (the work is dedicated to Laud) offers an insight into the fundamentally Hookerian character of what we call Laudianism.

The ecclesiastical patriotism evident in the conclusion to Hooker's Dedication of Book V of the Laws - "By the goodness of almighty God and his servant Elizabeth we are" - became a distinguishing characteristic of avant-garde and Laudian thought.  There was no need to look longingly to the Reformed churches over the seas, because the jewel amongst the Churches of the Reformation was to be found in England.  As White states:

The divine benediction providence, & protection of our great God and Saviour, hath preserved, comforted, and honoured this Church and State, more then a man could have wished or expected, ever since our reformation.

Hooker's defence of tradition as a means of rightly, rationally ordering the Church's life - "Neither may we in this case lightly esteem what hath been allowed as in the judgement of antiquity and by the long continued practise of the whole Church" (V.7.1) - is echoed by White:

Reformed Churches reject not all Traditions, But such as are spurious, superstitious and not consonant to the prime rule of faith, to wit, the holy Scripture: Genuine Traditions agreeable to the rule of Faith, subservient to piety, consonant with holy Scripture: derived from the Apostolical times, by a successive current and which have the uniform testimony of pious antiquity, are received and honoured by us.

Significantly, amongst these traditions the Laudian White places episcopal authority and jurisdiction.  Here, too, he is following Hooker who declared that while episcopal regiment was "even from ancient times, universally established" and derived "from the very Apostles themselves", yet "they cannot say that any Commandment of the Lord doth enjoin" it.  Episcopal authority and jurisdiction is dependent on "force of custom" rather than "true and heavenly law" (VII.5.9). White agrees, pointing to episcopacy as having, with other practices, the sanction of long use from the time of the Apostles for the good ordering of Christian communities, but not itself a divine institution:

Now such are these which follow: The historical tradition, concerning the number, integrity, dignity, and perfection of the Books of Canonical Scriptures. The Catholic exposition on of many sentences of holy Scripture. The holy Apostles Creed. The Baptism of Infants. The perpetual virginity of the blessed Virgin Mary, The righteous observation of the Lord's day; and of some other Festivals, as Easter, Pentecost, & c. Baptising and administration of the holy Eucharist, in public assemblies and congregations: The service of the Church in a known language: The delivering the holy communion to the people in both kinds: The superiority and authority of Bishops, over Priests and Deacons, in jurisdiction, and power of ordination, &c.

Such an understanding of episcopacy, however, does not mean that it therefore lacks divine sanction.  Hooker describes the emergence of episcopal authority and jurisdiction - "this order of Episcopal Regiment by Bishops" - as "divine instinct", for the good ordering of the churches, "to take away factions, contentions and schisms":

Wherefore let us not fear to be herein bold and peremptory, that if anything in the Church's government, surely the first institution of Bishops was from Heaven, was even of God, the Holy Ghost was the Author of it (VII.5.10).

This reflected a significant insistence by Hooker that there is a real sense in which 'secondary' laws - shaped by tradition, custom, and reason, rather than given by divine institution - yet have a divine authority:

The author of that which causeth another thing to be, is author of that thing also, which thereby is caused (III.9.3).

And so what is upheld by "the judgement of antiquity and by the long continued practice of the whole Church" carries a form of divine authority because it is "the voice both of God and nature" that wisdom is found in "antiquity, custom, and consent" (V.7.3); "that which hath been received long since and is by custom now established, we keep as a law which we may not transgress" (I.10.8). On the same basis - the divine sanction of secondary laws - the Church's authority to order its common life through tradition, custom, and reason cannot be dismissed:

Unto laws thus made and received by a whole Church, they which live within the bosom of that Church, must not think it a matter indifferent either to yield or not to yield obedience ... It doth not stand with the duty which we owe to our heavenly father, that to ordinances of our mother the Church we should shew ourselves disobedient. Let us not say we keep the commandments of the one, when we break the law of the other: For unless we observe both, we obey neither (III.9.3).

It is this understanding which White invokes in declaring that while ecclesiastical laws and customs cannot claim the status of divine institution, they yet have "divine approbation", not least in serving the Church's peace and good order: 

Although the Ecclesiastical precepts, and constitutions of the Rulers in the Church are not Divine by miraculous and immediate inspiration in such manner as the Precepts of written Law: yet when they are composed according to the Rules and Canons of holy Scripture, and are apt and convenient means, to the better fulfilling of the continandements of God, delivered in holy Scripture; they are by conformity and subordination Divine Law, and by divine approbation, sacred and venerable ...

The matter of these Precepts, being ordered and framed according to the Apostolical rules, Rom. 14:19, I Cor.14:26,40, and according to precedent examples, and precedents of holy Scripture, and the equity and analogy of former divine Lawes, 1 Cor. 9:9,13, and maxims and conclusions of natural reason rectified by Grace, 1 Cor.9:7,10, and the end of such precepts being godly edification, order, decency, and reverent administration of sacred and religious things; the Precepts and Constitutions of the Church (I say) being thus qualified, are sacred and venerable, and their observation is an act of religion, and of obedience, to the general commandment of God ... peaceable and conformable observation of the lawful constitutions of the Church, couching decent and reverent exercising religious offices, is honest, and just, and appertaining to peace, and love.

White's emphasis on acceptance of ecclesiastical laws and customs as a means of securing the Church's peace and unity does, of course, have a profoundly Hookerian quality.  This, after all, was a significant reason, Hooker suggests, for identifying the episcopal regiment as a gift of God: "to enjoy the peace, quietness, order and stability of religion, which prelacy (as hath been declared) causeth" (VII.14.18). It is this which also results in White's critique of the Puritans parallelling Hooker's view of the Disciplinarians.  

Hooker opened and closed the Preface to Laws by invoking "the God of peace" against the contentions of the Disciplinarians  (Preface 1.1 & 9.4). He noted how the Disciplinarians' "severity and sharpness of reproof" gave an appearance of "zeal and holiness" (Preface 3.6). Like those distracted by sickness, they "propose their own for of Church government, as the only sovereign remedy of all evils", akin to proposing a cure "which they least have tried" (Preface 3.8).  Their rule of reading Scripture, Hooker condemns as erroneously restricting the purposes of God -  "it is their error to think that the only law which God hath appointed unto men in that behalf is the sacred Scripture" (I.16.5) - and thus wresting the Church from what is natural, wise, and rational.  Rejecting those ecclesiastical laws founded on tradition, custom, and reason - means by which Wisdom's "voice is the harmony of the world" (1.16.8) - the Disciplinarians are "authors of confusion in the Church" (1.16.7). White saw the same spirit in the Puritans:

But in our times it is otherwise: for our Disciplinarian Guides, with their arguments, Ab authoritate Scriptura negativa: 'The holy Scripture hath commanded none of these Rites, and Observations in particular: Therefore they are Popish traditions,will-worship, and superstition': have made our people wild; and many are so perverse, that they esteem it an high degree of purity and sanctity to perform all religious duties overthwart to the way of the Church. And whereas in times past, it was a general maxim among Christians, ... The love of God abideth not in them, which do not love and observe the unity of the Church. Now, they are reputed most pure and holy, who with greatest boldness quarrel and cavil against the authority, government, and lawful Precepts and Constitutions of the Church.

White's work is reflective of wider Laudian concerns and thus suggestive of a wider interpretation of Laudianism as a defence of a Hookerian vision of the Church of England against the forces of a populist radicalism - what White termed "factious and schismatical spirits" - intent on overthrowing a wise and rational episcopal regiment and liturgical order which preserved the good of the Church's unity and peace.  

The conventional (and woefully inaccurate) presentation of Laudianism as 'innovation' not only entirely disregards the destructive intentions of those who sought 'further reformation', it also gives no recognition whatsoever to the profound similarities between Hooker's defence of the good order of the Church of England and the Laudian defence of that order in the context of the heightened theological and political tensions of the 1630s.  As White's work shows, the theological vision underpinning the Laudian defence of the Church - particularly the understanding of law, tradition, custom, order, and how ecclesial peace is dependent upon these - was profoundly Hookerian.  It was a defence of the "moderate kind" of Reformation "which the Church of England hath taken", as opposed to "that other more extreme and rigorous which certain Churches elsewhere have better liked" (IV.14.6).

To the Laudians and their defence of "the received orders of this Church", for the purpose of securing its "peace and quietness" (Preface 1.2 & 3), we might justly apply Hooker's famous words:

Though for no other cause, yet for this; that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream ...