[356] "If the natural strength of men's wit may by experience and study attain unto such ripeness in the knowledge of things human, that men in this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment; what reason have we to think but that even in matters divine, the like wits, furnished with necessary helps, exercised in scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow unto so much perfection of knowledge, that men shall have just cause, when anything pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more willingly to incline their minds towards that which the sentence of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound? For the controversy is of the weight of such men's judgment," etc. But Hooker's mistake was to exaggerate the weight of such men's judgment; and not to allow enough for their passions and infirmities, the imperfection of their knowledge, their connivance with power, their attachment to names and persons, and all the other drawbacks to ecclesiastical authority. It is well known that the preface to the _Ecclesiastical Polity_ was one of the two books to which James II. ascribed his return into the fold of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course of reasoning on the positions it contains this was effected. [357] In the life of Hooker prefixed to the edition I use, fol. 1671, I find an assertion of Dr. Barnard, chaplain to Usher, that he had seen a manuscript of the last books of Hooker, containing many things omitted in the printed volume. One passage is quoted, and seems in Hooker's style. But the question is rather with respect to interpolations than omissions. And of the former I see no evidence or likelihood. If it be true, as is alleged, that different manuscripts of the three last books did not agree, if even these disagreements were the result of fraud, why should we conclude that they were corrupted by the puritans rather than the church? In Zouch's edition of Walton's _Life of Hooker_, the reader will find a long and ill digested note on this subject, the result of which has been to convince me that there is no reason to believe any other than verbal changes to have been made in the loose draught which the author left, but that whatever changes were made, it does not appear that the manuscript was ever in the hands of the puritans. The strongest probability, however, of their authenticity is from internal evidence. A late writer has produced a somewhat ridiculous proof of the carelessness with which all editions of the _Ecclesiastical Polity_ have been printed; a sentence having slipped into the text of the seventh book, which makes nonsense, and which he very probably conjectures to have been a marginal memorandum of the author for his own use on revising the manuscript. M'Crie's _Life of Melvil_, vol. i. p. 471.