The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Book V part I - I- XLII (ACI)

Chapters one through five function as a kind of chunk here, and there are some preliminary principles.

Really, this whole section, chapters one through 10, is kind of one part of this larger book.

And chapters one through 10 are going to be the foundational principles that Richard Hooker is going to use in his defense of particular ceremonies.

So in, uh, book five, we're going to see him get really granular.

I think this is, like, 66 chapters or something like that.

Uh, so he's going to start from this foundation to then g- work one by one to defend the principles for the ceremonies that, uh, have been critiqued by the Puritans.

Now, in chapters one through five, he lays out these great principles, and this is something I really love about Richard Hooker is that he lays out these great principles and then works to particulars.

So here he's repeating that method, and he argues that the true use of religion in a body politic, so in the polis, is the fostering of inward virtue from which justice truly proceeds.

So ideally, our magistrates, our political leaders should function to rule the society in accordance with true justice.

That's the ideal.

That's what we want them to do.

Uh, but they obviously don't always do that.

And so the sort of means and rituals that we appoint in a body politic should foster the sort of inward virtue from which a flourishing society can rightly emerge.

And the inferior laws, like the, uh, laws that regulate external rights, are for ordering a body politic to the superior laws of virtue.

So for instance, if you think about, uh, laws respecting how we drive on the road, right? Uh, that we've appointed certain symbols, certain colored driving symbols in order to garner certain, uh, actions.

So a red light means stop, and the role ideally of these rights is to foster a conscientious driving community.

The external sort of visible symbols that we appoint to regulate the road are to encourage and foster the virtue of conscientiousness, driving with a sort of view to the good of the others that are around you.

Now, that doesn't always happen.

People sometimes just obey the laws so that they, you know, don't get a ticket [chuckles] or something like this.

But the laws are meant to conduce towards true virtue.

The charge of the Puritans, as Hooker represents it, is that the Church of England has not adequately ordered by her inferior laws, these laws regarding external rights, her people towards the higher duties of virtue.

That, in fact, she's left intact certain external rights that denigrate the virtue of the ecclesiastical body politic.

Now, Hooker is then going to start to address that charge.

So in chapter six, he lays out a kind of foundational principle that addresses the sort of charge that the Puritans are going to, uh, raise.

And the quote I've selected here goes as follows.