I stood at that font, I had, too, a strong sense of that abiding presence, not just because of the size and proportions of Pugin’s design, but because of the sanctity of the building and its atmosphere. Visitors would come and go, individual members of the Body of Christ vary from one generation to another, but this church building would go on and on – or at least for as long as we could keep it up!
The third image is repentance – ‘repent, and believe in the gospel’ (Mark 1:15). For many people, repentance is a big word that might mean saying sorry. But it means much more than that. At so many baptism services down the ages, the candidate or the sponsors have been asked, ‘Do you repent of your sins?’ The word ‘repent’ was often accompanied by a dramatic physical gesture which symbolized exactly what the word originally meant. In ancient times, candidates for baptism would often face west and renounce the deeds of darkness, and then turn through 180 degrees to the east to profess their faith in Christ. To repent is to undergo a change of mind – not in the intellectual sense, but in the sense of the whole person going through that turning round, that realignment, that re-focusing, that renewal, which is itself a work of God, not our own. So many times when I stood at that font, I looked west through the huge space under the tower, and imagined the wealthy Hanseatic merchants who built the place and the kind of world they inhabited. Then I turned east, and looked up through the even vaster spaces of the nave towards the altar, and had in my mind’s eye the Lord Christ, accepting that repentance, daily, weekly, yearly, by the century.
Right at the end of the life-time of the New Testament, one of the writers expresses all these truths in the rich theological expression – ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet.1:4). And of all the writers in the seventeenth century, this approach to sacraments in general and baptism in particular is most strongly exemplified by Richard Hooker.1
From a literary and theological point of view, the contrast between Perkins and Hooker could not be greater. Perkins’ prose is plain and ordinary, whereas Hooker’s is more literary in style, and less easily accessible. Perkins’ career was primarily as a preacher, whereas Hooker forsook the Temple Church in London, where he was locked in controversy with his Puritan colleague Walter Travers,2 in order to become a country parish priest, where he could write.
Hooker was an Elizabethan in every sense of the word. He was born just four years before the accession of Elizabeth and died on 2 November 1600, just a few years before her death. Before his time at the Temple Church in London, he had been an aspiring scholar at Oxford, where he befriended Edwin Sandys, son of the Bishop of London, and George Cranmer, nephew of the former Archbishop. It was John Whitgift, now Archbishop of Canterbury, who ensured his appointment as Master of the Temple in 1585, and it is likely that Hooker had been identified as a rising star. But he soon tired of being centre-stage in London, with a colleague like Walter Travers who was so different in every way. The last two posts he held were as Sub-Dean of Salisbury and Rector of Boscombe in 1591, and from there he moved only four years later to Bishopsbourne in Kent in the Canterbury diocese. His great work The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity flowed from his pen during these last years. The first four books appeared in 1593, while he was still at Salisbury, and the fifth, by far the longest, was published in 1597. (The remaining books appeared much later: the sixth and eighth in 1648, and the seventh in 1661. While it is clear that they represented Hooker’s completed thought, they may have been prepared for publication from a semi-completed text.)
Sharing in the life of God is perhaps one of the dominant motifs of Hooker’s writings, for near the beginning of Book I of the Laws, we come across the following statement:
No good is infinite, but only God: therefore he our felicity and bliss. Moreover desire leadeth unto union with what it desireth. If then in him we are blessed, it is by force of participation and conjunction with him. Again it is not possession of any good thing that can make them happy which have it, unless they enjoy the thing wherewith they are possessed. Then are we happy therefore when fully we enjoy God, even as an object wherein the powers of our soul are satisfied, even with everlasting delight; so that although we be men, yet being unto God united we live as it were the life of God.3
This is a fundamental statement of the nature of humanity’s yearning for God, and God’s response to humanity. We desire God for he is our fulfilment. And desire draws us into ‘participation and conjunction with him’, in other words to share with him and to be joined with him. But this sharing and being joined to him is more than a psychological uplift or assent to attractive ideas. It is a deep connection between ourselves and God which is made by Christ, through the Spirit, and effected in the public worship of the Church, above all in the sacraments. The soul’s ultimate satisfaction, therefore, is to be united with God, and that union is a way of sharing in God’s life itself.
As John Booty remarks, ‘the straightforward interpretation of Book V is to view it as a defence of the Book of Common Prayer against the objection of the Puritans who contended that it was full of superstitious practices’.4 The opening chapters tackle head-on the Admonitions to Parliament of 1572, that Puritan manifesto for the reform of the Church of England, in which Thomas Cartwright was a leader, and for which he was nearly arrested before he fled the country.
The structure of Laws V in its published form of 1597 is a sheer delight. Hooker begins by dealing with superstition, the general principles for the use of a set liturgy, and the use of church buildings, and then goes on to discuss the need for public prayer, with some discussion of the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer.
Chapters 50–68 are the sacramental heart of the book. The remainder deals with the liturgical year, the pastoral offices, and questions of ordination and the discipline of the clergy. In this central portion, Hooker discusses the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation, and sacraments in general. He moves on to baptism in chapters 58–65, confirmation in the following chapter, and in chapters 67–8, the Eucharist. It is as if he were moving carefully along an awkward road, watching the condition of the track, and determined to reach his destination by covering every flank!5 His discussion of sacraments links closely with what he said at the beginning of Laws I, for he states, ‘participation is that mutual inward hold which Christ hath of us and we of him’.6
How does this ‘participation and conjunction’ operate in baptism? Perhaps Hooker answers this question in the following words much later on: ‘whether we preach, pray, baptize, communicate, condemn, give absolution, or whatsoever, as disposers of God’s mysteries, our words, judgements, acts and deeds are not ours but the Holy Ghost’s.’7 Baptism in Hooker has been little discussed, because much of the attention of various writers and commentators has been taken up either with the general principles with which the book opens, or with the section on the Eucharist and ministry.8 Moreover, the way Hooker approaches, arranges and discusses his material on baptism is an object-lesson in method. The topics covered in these chapters can be identified as follows:
Chapter 58: the meaning of baptism, its objective character, and the concluding reference to ‘things accessory’.
Chapter 59: a discussion of John 3:5 in relation to baptism.
Chapter 60: the necessity of baptism and its availability for all.
Chapter 61: no scriptural evidence for set times or set places for baptism.
Chapter 62: baptism by women – a thorny issue because practised in some places by midwives.
Chapter 63: the profession of Christian faith at baptism.
Chapter 64: the questions to godparents.
Chapter 65: the sign of the cross.
Chapter 66: confirmation.
John
