book, to which was added, at the instigation of Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, more contentious material to answer specifically the objections in the Puritan Admonitions to Parliament. On his reckoning, the only part which belongs to the original draft on baptism is Chapter 58.9
Booty’s theory is based on stylistic grounds and it makes a great deal of sense. For example, if we apply his theory to Hooker’s discussion of the Eucharist, chapter 67 is a discussion of eucharistic theology, which could indeed stand on its own, whereas chapter 68 – which Booty makes part of the additions to the book – deals with specific Puritan objections, for example, the words of distribution for each communicant, kneeling, and debarring from communion. If this view is correct, then we can expect that chapter 58 can also stand on its own in irenic splendour apart from the remaining chapters, which deal with disputed areas in as polemical a style as Hooker could manage. Let us look at each chapter on baptism in turn, starting with the one which may have been intended to say it all.
In chapter 58, Hooker discusses the relationship between the outward and the inward from two points of view. ‘Grace intended by sacraments was a cause of the choice, and there is a reason for the fitness of the elements themselves’.10 In other words water is used at baptism because of water’s properties in creating and sustaining life. (We shall come across this anthropological approach in other writers.) Secondly, he asserts that a sacrament needs three features: the grace which is offered, the element which signifies that grace, and the word which expresses what is done by the element. We are far from Perkins’ view of sacrament as a ‘prop to faith’ and well into a world where sacraments retain their objectivity. Moreover, he trusts what he refers to as ‘the known intent of the church generally’ to say what baptism is. And he recognizes that in the baptism liturgy there are certain matters which are ‘but things accessory, which the wisdom of the church of Christ is to order according to the exigence of that which is principal’.11
That is the point at which the discussion might end. If Booty is correct, all that follows was added by Hooker under pressure from his friends, in order to answer controversial matters in a specific sequence and in a sharper style.
The beginning of chapter 59 marks a change of gear, for it sets out to answer those who would deny the necessity of baptism. Here, Hooker relies on the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, that no-one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven without being born again of water and the Spirit (John 3:5). Not all Hooker’s contemporaries agreed with the medieval Catholic view of the absolute necessity of baptism. His championing of the text from St John that to be thus born again is a consequence of baptism certainly set him apart from Puritans like Cartwright and Perkins. He ends this chapter with a characteristically pithy assertion:
If on us he accomplish likewise the heavenly work of our new birth not with the Spirit alone but with water thereunto adjoined, sith [since] the faithfullest expanders of words are his own deeds, let that which his hand has manifestly wrought declare what his speech did doubtfully utter.12
Chapter 60 carries on the discussion of the necessity of baptism and insists on the unity of the inward and outward, at some variance with Perkins:
And, if regeneration were not in this very sense a thing necessary to eternal life, would Christ himself talk to Nicodemus that to see the Kingdom of God is impossible, saving only for those men which are born from above?13
. . . baptism is a sacrament which God hath instituted in his church, to the end that they which receive the same may thereby be incorporated into Christ, and so through his most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness, as also that infused divine virtue of the Holy Ghost, which giveth to the powers of the soul their first disposition towards future newness of life.14
The inward and outward meet in the sacrament, but the element of human response is not denied at all. The work of Christ imputes righteousness to the faithful believer, but there is also an infused righteousness which enables human beings to stand before God as redeemed, and therefore able to worship and serve him.15 Hooker’s understanding of grace is more traditional than the more severe view of the Puritans. It is all of a piece with participating in the life of God.
Hooker does not believe that infants who die unbaptized are damned, because ‘grace is not absolutely tied unto the sacraments’.16 On the other hand, he is against the Church ‘through her superfluous scrupulosity’ placing ‘lets and impediments of less regard’ in the way of those who want to be baptized; ‘baptism therefore even in the meaning of the law of Christ belongeth unto infants capable thereof from the very instant of the birth’.17
Chapter 61 concerns set times and places for baptism. Hooker finds no New Testament evidence for either but he knows that in the Patristic period Easter and Pentecost were often set aside for this. He does find evidence for private baptism, and in so doing clearly has in mind those who are prepared to turn people away from baptism in order to assert the public character of the celebration. Hooker’s tone at this point is less than sublime: ‘Oh Sir, you that would spurn thus at such as in case of so dreadful an extremity should lie prostrate before your feet, you that would turn away your face from them at the hour of their most need . . .’18 Many Puritans would not approve of what would be called emergency baptism.
Chapter 62 tackles the thorny issue of baptism by women, midwives. This leads on logically from private baptism, particularly in an age that knew high infant mortality. Many of the Puritans regarded baptism by a midwife as no sacrament at all but an ordinary washing, which meant that the infant should be baptized again. Hooker, to the contrary, finds ancient evidence for such baptisms, and he goes on to assert that ‘they that iterate baptism are driven under some pretence or other to make the former baptism void’.19 This enables Hooker to emphasize yet again the objective nature of baptism: ‘baptism is an action in part moral, and in part ecclesiastical, and in part mystical; moral, as being a duty which men perform towards God; ecclesiastical, in that it belongeth to God’s church as a public duty; finally mystical, if we respect what God thereby intend to work.’20 Hooker’s overall approach to theology is apparent here. Baptism is moral: it is about lifestyle. Baptism is ecclesiastical: it takes the form of a church liturgy. Baptism is mystical: it brings us into the life of God himself. These three aspects are not separate: they are inextricably bound together, as nature becomes the sacramental vehicle of God’s grace in the lives of Christ’s disciples.
This discussion leads him to distinguish between those who are old enough to answer for themselves, and infants. Here he uses for the first time the covenant language which Perkins used more fundamentally, and which we shall meet later on in the writings of Baxter, Taylor, Patrick and Thorndike. ‘The fruit of baptism dependeth only upon the covenant which God hath made; that God by covenant requireth in the elder sort faith in baptism, in children the sacrament of baptism alone . . . that infants therefore, which have received baptism complete as touching the mystical perfection thereof are by virtue of his own covenant and promise cleansed from all sin . . .’21 He sums this up in a glorious nugget: ‘the grace of baptism cometh by donation of God alone.’22
Chapter 63 deals with a corollary of infant baptism, the profession of Christian faith by godparents. Here, Hooker is firmly traditional. ‘The first thing required of him that standeth for admission into Christ’s family is belief. Which belief consisteth not so much in knowledge as in acknowledgement of all things that heavenly wisdom revealeth; the affection of faith is above her reach, her love to Godward above the comprehension of God.’23 He expresses the nature of this profession by quoting the sixth-century writer Isidore of Seville, who spells out in covenant terms the renunciation of evil and profession of Christian faith. ‘Two covenants there are which Christian men do make in baptism, the one concerning relinquishment of Satan, the other touching obedience to the faith of God.’ (Covenant imagery was known among the Fathers, and was not just a biblical motif that lay
