Macmillan's Reading Books Author:Macmillan General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1875 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: HOOKER. Eichaed Hooker. Born 1553; died 1600. Contemporary with Spenser, and about ten years older than Shakespeare. His chief work is his treatise Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, published between 1592 and 1597. In the Ecclesiastical disputes of the time the part which he bears is that of defender of the Church of England as then established. His style is formed upon a Latin model, and at first sight is a little obscure; but it developed powers in our language which, up to his time, had been untried. The Law Of Eeason. Laws of reason have these marks to be known by. Such as keep them resemble most lively in their voluntary actions that very manner of working which nature herself doth necessarily observe in the course of the whole world. The works of nature are all be- hoveful, beautiful, without superfluity or defect; even so theirs, if they be framed according to that which the law of reason teacheth. Secondly, those laws are investigable by reason, without the help of revelation supernatural and divine. Finally, in such sort they are inveetigable, that the knowledge of them is general, the world hath always been acquainted with them; according to that which one in Sophocles observeth concerning a branch of this law, It is no child of to-day's or yesterday's birth, but hath been no man Jcnoweth how long tsithence. It is not agreed upon by one, or two, or few, Lut by all: which we may not so understand, as ifevery particular man in the whole world did know and confess whatsoever the law of reason doth contain; but this law is such that being proposed no man can reject it as being unreasonab...« less