then he talks history; and his language has behind it, in my opinion,
facts which make the latitudinarianism of our Broad Churchmen quite
illusory. Certainly, culture will never make us think it an
essential of religion whether we have in our Church discipline "a
popular authority of elders," as Hooker calls [xxxvii] it, or whether
we have Episcopal jurisdiction. Certainly, Hooker himself did not
think it an essential; for in the dedication of his Ecclesiastical
Polity, speaking of these questions of Church discipline which gave
occasion to his great work, he says they are "in truth, for the
greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them
hard to be disputed of in serious manner." Hooker's great work
against the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of
England was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who
read it), not because Episcopalianism is essential, but because its
impugners maintained that Presbyterianism is essential, and that
Episcopalianism is sinful. Neither the one nor the other is either
essential or sinful, and much may be said on behalf of both. But
what is important to be remarked is that both were in the Church of
England at the Reformation, and that Presbyterianism was only
extruded gradually. We have mentioned Hooker, and nothing better
illustrates what has just been asserted than the following incident
in Hooker's own career, which every one has read, for it is related
in Isaac Walton's Life of Hooker, but of which, [xxxviii] probably,
the significance has been fully grasped by not one-half of those who
have read it.

Hooker was through the influence of Archbishop Whitgift appointed, in
1585, Master of the Temple; but a great effort had just been made to
obtain the place for a Mr. Walter Travers, well known in that day,
though now it is Hooker's name which alone preserves his. This