The Creed and the Church Author:Edgar Sanderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FIFTH BOOK HOOKEE'S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. This book contains an examination of the objections made by the Puritans against the Book of Common Prayer a... more »nd administration of the Sacraments. It must be premised that there are occasional differences between our present authorized Version of the Bible and the quotations in Hooker: the "Ecclesiastical Polity" was published in 1594—97. Sections 1—3. Preliminary. Section I.—True Religion is the root of all true virtues and the stay of all well-ordered commonwealths. I. Our endeavour is to yield them with whom we contend just and reasonable causes of those things which heretofore they misconceived, (a) accusing laws for men's oversights, (b) imputing evils grown through personal defects to that which is not evil, (c) (1) framing unto some sores unwholesome plasters, and (2) applying other some vhere no sore is. II. Pure Religion ought to be the highest of all cares belonging to public government, as well (a) for the aid and protection afforded by God to them who faithfully serve Him, as (b) for the efficacy of Religion in making all sorts of men the more serviceable in public affairs. All things religiously taken in hand are prosperously ended : because whether men in the end have what Religion allowed them to desire, or what it teaches them contentedly to suffer, they are not unfortunate. III. Heathens, Turks, and Infidels impute to Religion a great part of the same effects which we do : the bitter disputes concerning Religion show that God has imprinted in men's minds a general persuasion that the true Religion ought to be embraced : as to man's immortal state, then, the false Religion of heathens and heretics can only be injurious to them. But as all religious error has been mixed with some truths, these h...« less