Description

Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is one of the great landmarks of Protestant theological literature, and indeed of English literature generally, but is scarcely read today on account of its difficult and archaic style. The time has come to translate it into modern English so that Hooker may teach a new generation of churchmen and Christian leaders about law, reason, Scripture, church, and politics.

In this fifth volume of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present key sections from Book V of Hooker’s Laws, in which Hooker thoroughly yet succinctly lays out the Reformed perspectives on both Christology and the sacraments. Long regarded as both the theological and rhetorical high point of the Laws, Hooker surveys the church’s historic teaching on the person of Christ and makes an irenic yet firm case for the Reformed views of baptism and the eucharist being the true guardians of this theology, over against the Catholic, Lutheran, and memorialist alternatives. Yet this is no dry theological tract: Hooker’s descriptions of Christ, baptism, and especially the eucharist are among the most stirring passages penned during the English Reformation. Book V of the Laws is as valuable today as it was when first written for the edification of the church, the sharpening of the mind, and the enrichment of the soul.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction i

Editorial Approach xxix

I. (50) What Are Sacraments?

II. (51) The Divinity of the Incarnate Son 

III. (52) Christological Heresies

IV. (53) Christ’s Two Natures

V. (54) The Glorification of Christ’s Humanity

VI. (55) Is the Incarnate Christ Omnipotent?

VII. (56) Christ’s Mystical Union with the Church

VIII. (57) The Necessity of Sacraments

IX. (58) The Rite of Baptism

X. (59) Is Baptism Necessary?

XI. (60) Christ Commands Baptism

XII. (66) The Rite of Confirmation

XIII. (67) The Eucharist