Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie. Eight Bookes.

Hooker, Richard. (1554?-1600) Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie. Eight Bookes. London: by Richard Bishop and are to be sold by George Lathum, 1638. Folio, 11.4 x 7.6 in. Seventh edition. Fourth complete edition. A-Z6, Aa-Zz6, Aaa-Hhh6, Iii8. This copy is bound in modern full calf.

Richard Hooker:

"The adventures of this text [The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity] are among the strangest in literary history. The first four books were published in March 1593. The fifth followed in December 1597. In 1604 Dr. Spenser, President of Corpus Christi, Oxford, in a new edition of the Polity, stated that Hooker had finished the three further books he intended: that certain persons had rifled Hooker's study after his death, abstracted the fair copies and left only 'unperfect and mangled draughts;' from which draughts, nevertheless, 'there is a purpose' of publishing the best text now possible. After this, nearly forty years of silence. Then in 1648 we have an edition containing Books VI and VIII. In 1662 Bishop Gauden, a man suspect to the High Church party, brought out an edition which for the first time included VII; its matter, unsatisfactory to high-flying Episcopalians. In 1666 we have an edition which... [discredits] the three last books."

"Though Hooker is not writing to defend the freedom of the individual, he is certainly writing to defend the freedom of Man from what he believes to be a false conception of supernatural authority.

"The style is, for its purpose, perhaps the most perfect in English. In general it is far removed from the colloquial, yet it does not strike one as a decorated style. [...] He has plenty of humor, almost a mischievous humor, but not of the kind that could appear in quotation: the point depends not on the verbal but on the argumentative context. Indeed very few of Hooker's beauties can be picked like flowers and taken home: you must enjoy them where they grow- as you enjoy a twenty acre field of ripe wheat. Always an artist, he is never merely an artist. [...] And always, drawn in by the very genius of his philosophy, there is a sense of 'the beautiful variety of all things." (from C.S. Lewis' English Literature in the Sixteenth Century). STC 13719b. Tear top partial page, repaired, Gg3 hole affecting 2 words; Mm1 small hole, 2 letters.