lectual and spiritual descendants. Hooker's bare opinion of men to the contrary must of liberalism deserves to fully appreciated, necessity stoop and give place. and we will accordingly give a few short passages from his writings which show how strong it was, and how directly it led to the well-known and more systematic liberalism of Chillingworth. Take, for instance, his appreciation of Aristotle: Much of course might be said against Hooker's theories, if we look at them in a critical spirit. His language is by no means exact, and it is a serious defect in his theory that he does not habitually feel, though he sometimes refers to, the distinction between a law and a moral principle. It is not quite unfair to say of him that it is hard to understand how, according to his principles, there can be such things as bad laws; but there are far more important things in the world than the gift of an accurate use of language, and Hooker ought rather to be valued for the richness and magnanimity of his thoughts than blamed for their occasional vagueness- -a vagueness perhaps inseparable from that love of the classics and revolt from scholasticism for which he was so remarkable. As was natural in a writer of that age, his view of logic was essentially scholastic and imperfect. He supposed that knowledge might be indefinitely increased When once [the soul of man] comprehendeth anything above [things of inferior quality] as the differences of time, affirmations, negations, and contradictions in speech, we then count it to have some use of natural reason; whereunto, if afterward there might be added the right helps of true art and learning, there would undoubtedly be almost as great difference in maturity of judgment between men therewith inured and that which now men are as between men that are now and innocents. Which speech if any condemn as being hyperbolical let them but consider this one thing; no art is at the first finding out so perfect as industry may after make it; yet the very first man that to any purpose knew the way we speak of and followed it hath surely performed more in very near all parts of natural knowledge than sithence in any one part thereof the whole be-by arguing from self-evident first principles. sides hath done. Or take these general principles: The mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most infallible certainty which the nature of things can yield. Where we cannot attain unto this, then what appeareth to be true by strong and invincible demonstration, such as wherein it is not by any way possible to be deceived, thereunto the mind doth necessarily assent, neither is it in the choice thereof to do otherwise. And in case these both do fail, then, which way greatest probability thither the mind doth evermore incline. Scripture being with Christian men received as the word of God, that for which we have probable, yea that for which we have necessary reason, yea that which we see with our eyes is not thought so sure as that which the Scripture of God teacheth. "In all parts of knowledge, rightly so termed, things most general are most strong. Thus it must be, inasmuch as the certainty of our persuasion touching particulars dependeth altogether upon the credit of those generalities out of which they grow." According to our modern views of the nature of knowledge, this was a mistake; but it was one which in Hooker's age was a mistake on the right side, inasmuch as it tended to strengthen men's belief in the powers of their own minds, in the fixed and immutable character of truth, and in the possibility of attaining to it by the efforts of reason. Hooker affords in this respect a splendid contrast to Montaigne and Pascal, and stands on similar ground with Bossuet, though his conclusions were sufficiently dissimilar, and in our opinion much more Now rational and consistent. It may not be it is not required, nor can be exacted, at our hands that we should yield unto anything other generally known that Hooker enunciates assent than such as doth answer the evidence in so many words a maxim much and justly quoted in our own times: - "No truth can contradict any other truth." which is to be had of that we assent unto. For men to be tied and led by authority, as it were, with a kind of captivity of judgment, and The second aspect of Hooker is his theothough there be reason to the contrary not to logical aspect. We shall say but little of listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first this, although the theological part of the in the herd, they know not nor care not whither, book is much the largest part of it. It fills this were brutish. Again, that authority of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and perhaps men should prevail with men either against or the seventh book (on Episcopacy). The above reason is no part of our belief. Com-third is by far the most interesting. panies of learned men, be they never so great It's ob and reverend, are to yield unto reason, the ject is to prove that there is no ground for weight whereof is no whit prejudiced by the the assumption that Scripture must of simplicity of the person which doth allege it; necessity prescribe a form of Church govbut being found to be sound and good, the ernment. The essence of the book is that Church government is a matter of expedi- that view; but upon the whole he rests the ency, like the government of the State, case, as against those who attack it, on that it belongs to that class of laws which historical and political grounds. The inare mutable, according to the circumstances to which they apply, and that we are to ascertain from past history, and from other general considerations, what laws are best suited to the circumstances of particular churches. The following sentences are as emphatic as any in the book: For preservation of Christianity there is not anything more needful than that such as are of the visible Church have mutual fellowship and society with each other. The Catholic Church is divided into a number of distinct societies, every one of which is termed a church within itself. A church is a number of men belonging unto some Christian fellow ship, the place and limits whereof are certain. The several societies of Christian men, unto every of which the name of a Church is given, must be endued with correspondent general properties belonging unto them as they are public Christian societies. And of such properties common with all societies Christian, it may not be denied that one of the very chiefest is ecclesiastical polity. After an elaborate refutation of the opinion that a system of Church government must necessarily be revealed in Scripture, there follows an argument to show how laws for the "regiment" of the Church may be made by the "advice of men following therein the light of reason," but that these laws, though entitled to obedience whilst they last, are not unchangeable. The next four books are devoted to the justification of the laws actually made for the Church of England. The fourth book is a defence of the Church of England ceremonies against the charge of being Popish; and the fifth, which is far the largest of the whole eight, contains an elaborate vindication of the Church of England on all the points attacked by the Puritans. This is now of little interest to those who content themselves with a general view of such subjects; and the same remark applies to the sixth book, which relates to the Presbyterian "platform" (as it was even then called) of Church government, and to the doctrine and practice of Confession and Absolution. The seventh book, about Bishops, is much more interesting. Its general effect may be shortly described by saying that Hooker carries the dignity and importance of Bishops to the very highest point. He says nothing inconsistent with the belief that their power was of diyine institution, and much which rather favours stitution is very old and venerable, perhaps it is of divine origin; at all events," prelacy must needs be acknowledged exceedingly beneficial in the Church." Such being the case, bishops are entitled to the highest possible honour; Church property is God's property; ecclesiastical persons are receivers of God's rents, and the honour of prelates is to be thereof his chief receivers, not without liberty from him granted of converting the same unto their own use even in large manner," says the marginal note of section 23. It would be sacrilege to divert these endowments from them and their successors, even if they are unworthy. There is a curious passage at the end of the book which throws some light on the condition of Church property in Hooker's time. After speaking of the diminution of ecclesiastical revenues, he says: Doth the residue seem yet excessive? The ways whereby temporal men provide for themselves and their families are foreclosed to us. All that we have to sustain our miserable life with is but a remnant of God's own treasure, so far already diminished and clipped that if there were any sense of common humanity left in this hard-hearted world, the impoverished state of the clergy of God would at the length even of very commiseration be spared. mean gentleman that hath but a hundred-pound land to live on would not be hasty to change his worldly estate and condition with many of these so over-abounding prelates, a common artisan or tradesman of the city with ordinary pastors of the Church. The On the whole, Hooker's theological attitude is eminently characteristic. He rests everything ultimately on reason and conscience, informed by history and antiquity, but the verdict which in his view is given by history and antiquity is orthodox in the extreme. No one can take more exalted views of the Bible, of the great theological doctrines such as the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the importance of Church government and the dignity of Church officers, though, when carefully examined, the foundations of his theory appear to be capable of supporting quite a different superstructure. The last aspect in which Hooker is to be regarded is that of a politician. His eighth book is an explanation and vindication of the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy. What he thought upon this subject is not quite so familiar to the world as it ought to be. He begins by going into the origin | passages in which Hooker seizes the true of legislative power, as to which he lays distinction between law and counsel:down principles of astonishing boldness and vigour. He asserts in express words that the consent of the people at large is the foundation of all lawful authority: Unto me it seemeth almost out of doubt and controversy that every independent multitude before any certain form of regiment established hath, under God, supreme authority, full dominion over itself, even as a man not tied with the band of subjection as yet unto any other hath over himself the like power. God creating mankind did endue it naturally with power to guide itself in what kind of society soever he should choose to live. In matters of God, to set down a form of prayer, a solemn confession of the articles of the Christian faith, and ceremonies meet for the exercise of religion, it were unnatural not to think the pastors and bishops of our souls a great deal more fit than men of secular trades dom of all sorts can do is done for the devising and callings; howbeit, when all which the wisof all that giveth them the form and vigour of of laws in the Church, it is the general consent the laws, without which they could be no more to us than the counsel of physicians to the sick. Well might they serve as wholesome admonitions and instructions; but laws could they never be, without the consent of the whole Church to be guided by them; whereunto both nature A form of government being established, and the practice of the Church of God set those who are governors are so by divine down in Scripture is found every way so fully right, but they must recollect that "all consonant that God himself would not impose kings have not an equal latitude." What- his own laws upon his people by the hand of ever kings by conquest may do," touching Moses without their free and open consent. kings which were first instituted by agree-He proceeds in a strain of noble freedom ment and composition made with them over whom they reign, and how far their to point out that the supremacy of the power may extend, the articles of compact be- King himself in the "case of making laws tween them are to show "; nor need this resteth principally in a negative voice"; compact be express, or made" at the first and after showing how the existence of a beginning," for such articles "are for the superior legislative power or dignity is most part clean worn out of knowledge or quite consistent with respect to the office else known to very few." The articles may with admirable courage, that the King is and functions of the clergy, he concludes, be "by silent allowance famously notified by custom." These "articles," in the case not our lawgiver, the clergy are not our of English kings, are to be found in our has the right of deciding what are God's lawgivers; the nation itself and it alone ancient laws. The axioms of our regal laws, and of attaching to them a legal government are these: - Lex facit regem ; the king's grant of any favour made contrary to law is void, "Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure potest." After this he goes on to show where, by our English institutions, the power of legislation in all matters temporal and spiritual resides—namely, in Parliament. The Church and State, he says, are one and the same body regarded from different points of view, and its legislature is as competent to make laws on matters spiritual as on matters temporal : — The Parliament of England, together with the Convocation annexed thereunto, is that whereupon the very essence of all government within this kingdom doth depend; it consisteth of the King, and of all that within the land are subject unto him. The Parliament is a court, not so merely temporal as if it might meddle with nothing but only leather and wool. Bishops and other spiritual persons ought no doubt to be advised with, but nothing but the nation at large can make their resolutions into laws; for this is one of the sanction: of us so taken or interpreted as if they did reLaws being made amongst us are not by any ceive their force from power which the prince doth communicate unto the Parliament, or unto any Court under him, but from power which, the whole body of the realm being naturally possessed with, hath, by free and deliberate assent, derived unto him that ruleth over them so far forth as hath been declared. This is a higher strain of thought and feeling than most people would he prepared for under Queen Elizabeth. These are to us most memorable passages. They show what the Reformation really was, and in what sense and to what a very great extent it is true that the English nation, even at that time, was radically free. Nothing since Hooker's time has been written more soberly and wisely on the origin of government and the general theory of legislation than the passages which we have quoted. We have indeed lost something of their significance, and may need before long to relearn part of the truth which they contain. We must not, however, lengthen out, by discussing such a subject, an article which is already too long, and we will therefore here close our slight sketch of the first great book in English ecclesiastical literature by saying that, after an interval of 260 years, it still remains very nearly the greatest of them all. From the Spectator 8th Sept. PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND THE PHILA DELPHIA CONVENTION. THE admiration with which the policy of President Johnson is contemplated in the greater part of this country is due no doubt to many causes, to defective knowledge and the consistent misrepresentations of the Times, to the careful suppression in the same journal of the President's own fierce and illiterate orations, the vulgar egotism and turbid rage of which, in their strange contrast to Abraham Lincoln's imperturbable, calm, and lucid impartiality, would alone be sufficient to undermine the confidence of Englishmen, - finally, no doubt, to the violence and scurrility of one or two among the leaders of the great Free-Soil party, whose fanatical outbursts are as carefully registered by the great pro-slavery organ of this country, as the similar violences and vulgarities of the President are carefully suppressed. The consequence is that, according to the almost universal view here, the policy of the President is that wise, that humane, that generous, that magnanimous policy which, as is now believed, the success ful meeting of the just separated Philadelphia Convention in support of the President's view promises to carry victoriously through the whole Union. We hold, on the other hand, on grounds which we believe to be as sure as the political principle for which we fought throughout the war, that President Johnson, in alliance, first, with all the warmest partizans of slavery both Southern and Nothern, and next, with all that ignoble party among the Northern Republicans, headed by Mr. Seward, Mr. Raymond, and Mr. Thurlow Weed, who would cheerfully ignore either slavery, or the systematic cruelty which has supplanted slavery in the South, for the sake of conciliating the Southern whites to the Union, is endeavouring to "plaster up," as Mr. Johnson himself happily expresses it, a wound which by the processes he adopts he can never heal, and that instead of assimilating the Southern to the Northern society by radically extinguishing the evil institution on which the fundamental difference between the two social systems rests, he is doing all in his power to vindicate for the ex-slave-holders the full right to keep as much of the poison of slavery as is consistent with the mere abolition of the name. And not only so; he is doing his best, in conjunction with his unworthy allies, to destroy all the faith placed by those negro soldiers who turned the balance of success in favour of the North, in the honour and the power of the great Republic for which they fought. He is handing them over, bound hand and foot, to the very enemies against whom they fought, who are massacring them day after day without any shadow of excuse but personal hatred and the violence of the mean white class. And when Congress, by virtue of that clause in the Constitutional Amendment, now part of the United States law, which secured itself power to carry out the abolition of slavery "by appropriate legislation," offers the President power to prevent this treachery and wrong, and to secure for a sufficient time to the negroes of every State proper protection and full civil rights, he thrusts it aside with coarse jokes, laughs at the great expense which Congress proposes to lavish on so insignificant an object as keeping faith with four millions of people- the only truly loyal population in the South- and speaks of the unconditional right of the late rebels to representation in Congress, though that unconditional right means the unconditional right of the lately rebellious whites to deny the negro loyalists all such representation, or rather to seize on that representation in their name, while advocating everything which the negroes most fear and hate. Nor do we believe that the late Philadelphia Convention will secure for the President that triumph which he, flushed with its compliments to himself, evidently counted on in the vulgar and violent speech which he made to the Deputies of the Convention on the 22nd of August. We admit that its resolutions, like all those which Mr. Thurlow Weed and Mr. Raymond draw, are exceedingly skilful. They do not betray the real aim of the party. They are bad in principle only in asserting as an unconditional right the demand of the Southern States not only to be represented in Congress, but to be represented by persons chosen by the disloyal section of the population, and by that alone, whereas Congress in the recent acknowledge and pay the interest on the Federal debt, confess its obligation to the Union soldiery (including of course the negro armies), and promise to support the patriotic soldiers who have lost health and strength in the great cause of conquering the South. Constitutional Amendment had expressly its principles, its memories, everything, on gained the right to prescribe such conditions condition only that it shall have full power as would secure practical freedom to the to tax, fine, imprison, massacre its own negroes. For the rest, the resolutions are negro population just as it pleases without unquestionably skilful enough. They sup- any impediment from Congress. If allowed press all the real issues. They speak of the to do this, it must in return such is the war as over, of the debt incurred for the fact-express gratitude for the safety of rebellion as for ever forfeited, of the debt the Union, repudiate the Confederate debt, incurred by the Federal Government as an inviolable obligation, of the gratitude of the Union to the soldiers of the Northern army, and of the confidence of the new party in President Johnson. And if all these sentiments were really felt by all who sent delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, by the fierce Secessionists of Mississippi and Ala- Are they willing to do this? So far from bama, by the Copperheads who elected Val- it, that already all the more important landigham and Fernando Wood, as well as by Southern papers are with one voice repudithe trimmers who sent Mr. Thurlow Weed, ating the acts of the delegates to the ConMr. Raymond, and Senator Doolittle to the vention, crying out that the resolutions Convention, we should indeed deem this passed were not unanimous, that so far as coalition of the powers of evil a formidable they were assented to by the delegates of one. But how stands the case really? the South it was against the true feeling There were three powerful sections in the of their constituency, and in short positiveConvention the Secessionist section, rep-ly raging against the artificial and temresented by Governor Orr, General Dick Taylor, and generally the ex-Secessionist statesmen and warriors; the Northern Disunionist or Copperhead section, which has throughout the war favoured the South, represented by Mr. Fernando Wood and Mr. Vallandigham; and lastly, the Renegade Unionist section, who managed the whole alliance, that of the Unionists who wished to keep slavery as well as union as long as possible, and now wish to salve over the wound by conceding to the Southern fire eaters, that as they cannot keep their slaves as slaves any longer they shall do absolutely what they please with them, so long as they no longer call them slaves. Now, what is remarkable about the Philadelphia Convention is that the first two sections were absolutely silenced, and the whole business conducted by the third. Secessionist statesmeni and generals who admit indeed that they are beaten, but still hold fast by all the ideas of the Southern Confederation, were persuaded to hold their tongues, and not say a word, lest they should spoil all. The Copperheads or Northern sympathizers with the Slaveholders' war were in like manner by immense exertions persuaded to leave the Convention. Mr. Fernando Wood and Mr. Vallandigham were both cajoled, bribed, or spirited away, and, as we said, the only words uttered were uttered by the renegade Unionists. Now, it is clear that the new party is nothing except so far as it is willing to act on the programme of the Convention, - and unless the South is willing to give up porary alliance which, by the acuteness of one or two wirepullers, seemed to be formed at Philadelphia. Thus, the Richmond Enquirer says of the resolutions of the Convention, "We protest, in the name of our people, they be considered no unanimous vote." The Richmond Examiner protests against the whole proceedings, and asserts that once more "the South has been left out in the cold," the Charlottesville Chronicle ironically remarks that Virginia appears quite willing to thank the Northern soldiers for shooting her children, and striking her to the ground;" even the New York Daily News speaks of the Convention as “the slave of expediency," and says "the South should have sent its women, whose courage never failed." The Augusta Constitutionalist declares the whole Convention" a fraud and a sham," and so one organ after another of true Southern sentiment repudiates with disgust this compromise with the wirepullers of the Northern party. The alliance is as flimsy and as useless for any permanent political purpose as all alliances between men who sacrifice their innermost principles for the sake of a momentary combination against a still more hated foe. The South cannot return candidates to Congress capable of acting on the principles of the Philadelphia Convention, ; not even for the bribe offered them, in itself no doubt a very heavy that if they do they shall be left uncontrolled by any laws except their own, to lynch and oppress the emancipated negroes as they please. The evil league cannot last. one, - |