"Our office be from God and Christ": Laud's defence of the Hookerian vision

Our being bishops jure divino, by divine right, takes nothing from the king's right or power over us. For though our office be from God and Christ immediately, yet we may not exercise that power, either of order or jurisdiction, but as God hath appointed us, that is, not in his Majesty's or any Christian king's kingdoms, but by and under the power of the king given us so to do.  And were this a good argument against us, as bishops, it must needs be good against priests and ministers too, for themselves grant that their calling is jure divino, by divine right; and yet I hope they will not say that to be priests and ministers is against the king, or any his royal prerogatives - Archbishop Laud in Star Chamber, 1637.

I never claimed the King's Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, as incident to my Episcopal or Archiepiscopal Office in this Kingdom: Nor did I ever deny, that the exercise of my Jurisdiction was derived from the Crown of England. But that which I have said, and do still say, concerning my Office and Calling, is this, That my Order, as a Bishop, and my Power of Jurisdiction, is by Divine Apostolical Right, and unalterable (for ought I know) in the Church of Christ. But all the Power I, or any other Bishop hath to exercise any the least Power, either of Order or Jurisdiction, within this Realm of England, is derived wholly from the Crown: And I conceive it were Treasonable to derive it from any other Power, Foreign or Domestick - Archbishop Laud at his trial, 1644. 

Laud's understanding of episcopacy is routinely invoked to demonstrate how Laudianism was supposedly an 'innovation' in the Church of England, a rupture with a more cautious and generous Elizabethan and Jacobean past.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, for example, very oddly suggests that episcopacy was routinely regarded as having "secular and not sacred overtones" until the arrival of the avant-garde and the Laudians.

What this entirely overlooks is the robust defence of episcopacy offered by Calvinist Episcopalians, a defence which was couched in the same language used by Laud. The 1608 sermon by George Downame (later Bishop of Derry) led him into public controversy in which, with the support of James VI/I (the King made Downame a royal chaplain), he vigorously argued for episcopacy as being of divine institution.  Downame's strong Calvinist credentials were clearly not understood to be incompatible with his understanding of episcopacy:

the episcopall function, or gouernment by bishops, is of apostolicall institution: therefore the episcopal function is a divine ordinance ... yet notwithstanding, is not directlie of diuine institution; although there be small difference between these two (as I vnderstand divine institution) because what th' apostles did in the execution of their apostolical function, they did by direction of the holy Ghost, so that they might truly say, both of their ordinances, 'it seemed good to the holy Ghost and vs'; and of the parties by them ordained, 'attend the flocke ouer which the holy Ghost hath made you bishoppes'.

This continued support for episcopacy as of divine institution was continued by Calvinist Episcopalians, with Joseph Hall - then Bishop of Exeter, and a firm anti-Laudian - publishing in 1640 his Episcopacie by divine right:

imparity in the Governours of the Church, and the power of Episcopall Iurisdiction, is not of any lesse than Apostolicall and divine Institution ... That government, whose ground being laid by our Saviour himselfe, vvas aftervvards raised by the hands of his Apostles, cannot be denied to be of Divine Institution. A Proposition so cleare, that it were an injurie to goe about to prove it. He cannot be a Christian, who will not grant, that, as in Christ, the Sonne of God, the Deity dwelt bodily; so, in his servants also and agents under him; the Apostles, the Spirit of the same God dwelt; so as all their actions, were Gods by them. Like as it is the same spring-water that is derived to us, by the Conduit-pipes; and the same Sun-beames, which passe to us through our windowes. Some things they did as men; actions naturall, civill, morall; these things were their own: yet they even in them no doubt were assisted with an excellent measure of grace. But those things which they did, as Messengers from God (so their names signifie) these were not theirs, but his that sent them. An Ambassador dispatcheth his Domesticall affaires, as a private man; but when he treats, or concludes matters of State, in his Princes name, his tongue is not his owne, but his Masters ...

Neither do I lesse marvell at the opinions of those Divines, which holding Episcopacy thus to stand Jure Apostolico, in the first institution, yet hold it may be changed in the sequel. For me I have learned to yeild this honour to these inspired men, that I dare not but think these their ordinances, which they intended to succession; immutable.

Laud's defence of episcopacy, therefore, was part of the broader, long-standing Conformist understanding, embracing both Calvinists and non-Calvinists, Laudians and anti-Laudians, in the face of a concerted campaign over decades to undo the episcopal nature of the reformed Church of England.  Laud was no innovator when it came to defending episcopacy as a divine institution.  He was was, rather, articulating a well-established, consensual understanding which underpinned the life and ministry of the Church of England.

What is more, this understanding had been given definitive expression by Richard Hooker in his Lawes: 

if any thing in the Churches Government, surely the first institution of Bishops was from Heaven, was even of God, the Holy Ghost was the Author of it ... the Apostles who began this order of Regiment by Bishops, did it not but by divine instinct - LEP VII.5.10.

As Dominiak says of this:

Hooker defends episcopal orders, then, as the contingent and historic development of church polity that also received divine approbation (if not actually divine appointment) since God is the author of 'all good things'.

Using the "grammar of participation", Hooker thus "simultaneously humanizes and sacralizes the reformed Church of England".  We see something of this in Laud holding together the divine institution of episcopacy with the historically contingent need for appointment by the Crown, mindful, of course, that theological opponents of episcopacy were also opposed to the Royal Supremacy for giving authority over the Church to a lay magistrate.   Laud's Hookerian vision - the "Divine Apostolical Right" of episcopacy alongside the need for a mandate from the Crown for episcopal order to be exercised in England - offered a richer "participatory order" (to again quote Dominiak) than the Biblicism of the "radical puritan claim" which "deflates the whole participatory order" by which the Elizabethan Settlement had rightly discerned, through theology, law, and custom, how to fittingly order the Church.

Laud's understanding of episcopacy as divine institution was no innovation.  It was at one with the routine defence of episcopacy offered by Calvinist Episcopalians in the Jacobean and Caroline Church. This defence of the divine institution of the order of bishops was thoroughly Hookerian, dependent upon and giving expression to Hooker's "architecture of participation". Laud, then, was a defender of the Hookerian vision against those whom Hooker had also stood against.