Richard Hooker Day: 'the freer our minds are from all distempered affections, the sounder and better is our judgment'

To mark Richard Hooker Day, words from the Lawes (III.9.2). Amidst the violent bitterness of Reformation controversies, Hooker- who opened and concluded the Preface to the Lawes by invoking "the God of peace" - called the ecclesia Anglicana from "distempered affections" which distorted reflection, discernment, and judgement. In our own time of angry, embittered, divisive ecclesial and civic culture wars, with their hyper-partisanship, Hooker's call has a new resonance:

at such times as we are to deliberate for ourselves, the freer our minds are from all distempered affections, the sounder and better is our judgment. When we are in a fretting mood at the church of Rome, and with that angry disposition enter into any cogitation of the orders and rites of our church; taking particular survey of them, we are sure to have always one eye fixed upon the countenance of our enemies, and according to the blithe or heavy aspect thereof, our other eye sheweth some other suitable token either of dislike or approbation towards our own orders. For the rule of our judgment in such case being only that of Homer, “This is the thing which our enemies would have;” what they seem contented with, even for that very cause we reject: and there is nothing but it pleaseth us much the better if we espy that it galleth them. Miserable were the state and condition of that church, the weighty affairs whereof should be ordered by those deliberations wherein such a humour as this were predominant. We have most heartily to thank God therefore, that they amongst us to whom the first consultations of causes of this kind fell, were men which aiming at another mark, namely the glory of God and the good of this his church, took that which they judged thereunto necessary, not rejecting any good or convenient thing only because the church of Rome might perhaps like it. If we have that which is meet and right, although they be glad, we are not to envy them this their solace; we do not think it a duty of ours to be in every such thing their tormentors.

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