[Read free, here.]
Every year, along with thousands of others, I pause to commemorate Anglicanism’s greatest theologian, Richard Hooker, on this his feast day.
It is not only his life devoted to Jesus Christ but also his writings that gained him an honored place in the Calendar of Saints.
You can read his magnum opus, On the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, here for free. Here is a sample:
Two opinions therefore there are concerning sufficiency of Holy Scripture, each extremely opposite unto the other and both repugnant to truth. The schools of Rome teach Scripture to be so unsufficient, as if, except traditions were added, it did not contain all revealed and supernatural truth, which absolutely is necessary for the children of men in this life to know that they may in the next be saved. Others justly condemning this opinion grow likewise into dangerous extremity, as if Scripture did not only contain all things in that kind necessary, *but all things simply*, and in such sort that to do any thing according to any other law were not only unnecessary but even opposite unto salvation, unlawful and sinful. …so we must likewise take great heed, lest in attributing unto Scripture more than it can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which indeed it hath most abundantly to be less reverently esteemed. (Laws of…
