The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1 Quotes

“In this present age, zeal has conquered charity, and rhetoric has drowned meekness.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Doctrines such as the unity of God, the trinity of Persons, salvation in Christ, the resurrection of the body, eternal life, the judgment to come, and so forth have all existed since the beginning of the Church, and must be believed to the end.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“the papists should not be considered equivalent to pagans.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“The different ways in which God may do good to His Church are more numerous than we can imagine, and we cannot presume to judge which is best until, having first seen what He has in fact done, we may know it to be the best. If we do otherwise, surely we go too far and forget our place.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“we find plainly both in Scripture and in all ecclesiastical records, that other ministers of word and sacrament were subordinate in this way, first to the apostles, and then later to the bishops.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“I find that wise divines have always taught that articles of faith and duties necessary to salvation are either explicitly taught in Scripture or easily deduced from it,”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“It is not consistent with the duty we owe our heavenly Father to disobey the ordinances of our mother the Church. 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.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“human laws must be made according to the general laws of nature and without contradicting any positive law in Scripture. Otherwise they are ill made.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“The main principle on which we base our belief in Scripture is that the Scriptures are the oracles of God Himself.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“no sound theologian has ever denied that the will of God is partially revealed to us by the light of nature, rather than by Scripture alone.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Even if we know and profess the Christian faith, thus far we are only beginning to enter, and have not yet fully entered the visible church, until we go through the door of baptism.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“There are two opinions concerning the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, each opposite to the other, but both repugnant to the truth. Rome teaches Scripture to be so insufficient that, without adding traditions, it would not contain all revealed and supernatural truth necessary for salvation. Others, rightly condemning this view, fall into the opposite ditch—just as dangerous—thinking that Scripture contains not only all things necessary for salvation, but indeed simply all things, such that to do anything according to any other law is not only unnecessary to salvation but unlawful, sinful, and downright damnable.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“The testimonies of God are true, the testimonies of God are perfect, the testimonies of God are sufficient to the purpose for which they were given.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“even if ten thousand church councils offered the same judgment on any point of religion whatsoever, still a single irrefutable proof from reason, or a single unambiguous testimony from Scripture, would outweigh them all. It is possible for councils to err, but it is quite impossible for demonstrative reason or divine testimony to err.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“There are as many ways to do well as there are voluntary actions, so whenever we do something well when we might have done it badly, we demonstrate wisdom.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“It is much easier to teach men by law what they should do, than to teach them how to rightly think of the law. Everyone must do the former, while none but the wisest and most judicious of men can do the latter.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“His ceasing to speak to the world since the proclamation and writing down of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a sign that the way of salvation is sufficiently proclaimed and that nothing else is needed for our full instruction than what God has already given us.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“man is not content either with mere physical continuance, or with such things as win the praise of men. He longs, even hungers and thirsts for a food which cannot sustain the body or satisfy the senses, something even beyond the capacity of his reason. He seeks something divine and heavenly, which he can more guess at than conceive. He seeks for it, and although he does not know exactly what it is, yet his desire is so great that he sets aside all other delights and pleasures to find what he merely dreams of. If man’s soul only served to give him physical life, then he would be satisfied with those things that sustain his life, as are other creatures who seek nothing further and have no greater purpose.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Man seeks a threefold perfection: first, he seeks a physical satisfaction, pursuing things which are necessary for life itself, and such things which merely adorn or enhance it; second, an intellectual satisfaction, pursuing things that creatures lower than him cannot understand or experience at all; and third, a spiritual and divine satisfaction, consisting of the things which we seek by supernatural grace, but cannot fully attain in this life.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Political laws, established for the sake of public order, are never properly devised unless they presume that man’s will is obstinate, rebellious, and completely opposed to obeying the sacred laws of his nature. In other words, laws are not sound unless they assume that man in his depravity is little better than a beast, and they moderate his actions to prevent any hindrance to the common good.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“The soul of man at first is like a book in which nothing is written, but in which anything might be.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Although it is life to know Him and joy to mention His name, our surest knowledge is that we do not know Him as He truly is, nor can we; our safest eloquence is our silence, confessing without confession that His glory is inexplicable and His greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we are on earth; therefore let our words be wary and few.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“If the true Church is the one that suffers and does not inflict persecution, let them ask the Apostle which church Sarah symbolized when she persecuted her serving girl.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“This is the very point for which I write: my purpose is to show that when the minds of men are once erroneously persuaded that it is the will of God for them to do those things they fancy, their opinions are as thorns in their sides, not allowing them to rest until they have put their speculations into practice. Their restless desire to remove anything in their way leads them by the hand into increasingly dangerous opinions, sometimes quite contrary to their original intentions. Whenever people hide their own errors under the cloak of divine authority, it is impossible for anyone to imagine what will come of it, until time has revealed the fruits; therefore it is only wisdom to fear what may come of it, even beyond any apparent cause for fear.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Second, they attribute all the trouble in the world to the established church government. So just as they became known for virtue by their relentless criticism of the authorities, so also they become known for their brilliance since they claim to have uncovered the cause of all the world’s ills. They might with equal justice condemn the laws of ancient Israel (established by God Himself) for the many failures which the prophets condemned in their days, as they would condemn our English church government (which God Himself has also established in a way) for every stain and blemish found in the church today. These spring from the roots of human frailty and corruption, and thus not only are, but always have been, and for all I know always will be complained of, until the end of the world, whatever form of government prevails. (8.) Third, having captured men’s imaginations, they put forward their own form of church government as the only comprehensive solution to all these problems, and sing its praises to the sky.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“If Hooker were merely an also-ran among the theological polemicists who wore out the printing presses of Elizabethan England, a third-rate thinker of merely antiquarian interest, this growing language barrier need not trouble us so much. But there is a good case to be made that he ranks third only to Luther and Calvin in both intellectual stature and historical significance among Protestant theologians, and surpasses both in his treatment of matters of law and liturgy.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“It is dangerous for the feeble mind of man to wade too far into the doings of the Most High. Although it is life to know Him and joy to mention His name, our surest knowledge is that we do not know Him as He truly is, nor can we; our safest eloquence is our silence, confessing without confession that His glory is inexplicable and His greatness above our capacity and reach.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“They saw that to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery. This made them write laws in which men might know what their duties were beforehand, as well as the penalties for failing to fulfill them. In the case of things either obviously good or evil, about which everyone agrees, there is no need for new laws. Therefore, the first sort of law concerns things that are naturally good or evil, but are not readily discerned by every man’s judgment without deeper consideration. Since it is possible to make a mistake in such considerations, many men would remain ignorant of their duties, or else pretend ignorance, which they cannot do once their duties have been defined by law.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“we need only note those operations that begin and continue by the voluntary choice of God who has eternally decreed when and how they should be, and that this eternal decree is what we call an eternal law.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

“Therefore, we define a Law as that which determines what kind of work each thing should do, how its power should be restrained, and what form its work should take. No end could ever be reached unless the means by which it was reached were regular; that is to say, unless the means were suitable, fitting, and appropriate to their end according to a principle, rule, or law. This is true in the first place even of the workings of God Himself.”
― Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1