Radicalism: When Reform Becomes Revolution: The Preface to Hooker's Laws: A Modernization

by Richard Hooker

But be they women or be they men, if once they have drunk the cup of this persuasion, let anyone who thinks differently open his mouth to persuade them and they will close up their ears and refuse to consider his reasons. They have their answer rehearsed: “We are of God; he that knoweth God heareth us” (1 Jn. 4:6), and as for the rest, “Ye are of the world and speak of the world’s pomp and vanity, and the world, whose ye are, hears you!” This cloak fits just as snuggly on them as on the Anabaptists whenever anybody confronts them with the dignity, authority, and honor of the magistrate. Show these eager men their inability to judge in such difficult matters, and they answer, “God chose the foolish things of this world” (1 Cor. 1:27)! Convince them of folly so plainly that even children rebuke them, they have their retort: ‘Christ’s own Apostle was thought mad (Acts 26:24)!