Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie

…where he wrote his masterpiece, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. The Politie was the final chapter of the so-called admonition controversy: in June 1572 the London clerics John Field and Thomas Wilcox had issued from a secret press An Admonition to Parliament, which demanded that Queen Elizabeth I restore…

…an Anglican divine who wrote Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (1593–97), reconciled Thomist doctrines of transcendent and natural law, binding on all human beings, with the authority of the Elizabethan Church of England, which he defended against the Puritan appeal to conscience. Society, he argued, is itself the fulfillment…

defense culminated in Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (eight books, 1593–1662), the first English classic of serious prose. Hooker’s is a monumental work, structured in massive and complex paragraphs brilliantly re-creating the orotund style of Cicero. His air of maturity and detachment has recommended him to modern…