“It was the general received persuasion of the ancient Christian world, that _Ecclesia est in Episcopo_, ‘the outward being of a Church consisteth in the having of a Bishop.’ That where colleges of presbyters were, there was at the first, equality amongst them, St. Jerome thinketh it a matter clear: but when the rest were thus equal, so that no one of them could command any other as inferior unto him, they all were controllable by the Apostles, who had that Episcopal authority abiding at the first in themselves, which they afterwards derived unto others. The cause wherefore they under themselves appointed such Bishops as were not every where at the first, is said to have been those strifes and contentions, for remedy whereof, whether the Apostles alone did conclude of such a regiment, or else they together with the whole Church judging it a fit and a needful policy, did agree to receive it for a custom; no doubt but being established by them on whom the Holy Ghost was poured in so abundant measure for the ordering of Christ’s Church, it had either Divine appointment beforehand, or Divine approbation afterwards, and is in that respect to be acknowledged the ordinance of God, no less than that ancient Jewish regiment, whereof though Jethro were the deviser, yet after that God had allowed it, all men were subject unto it, as to the polity of God, and not of Jethro.” In the course of the entire argument respecting Episcopacy, Hooker changes his standing again and again; sometimes taking higher, and sometimes lower ground; now insisting upon the Divine origin of Diocesan Bishops, and then, supposing their origin not to be immediately Divine, attempting to show the inherent authority of the Church to determine its own frame of government, and to establish the sufficiency of such evidence as may be drawn from patristic sources. [Sidenote: HOOKER’S WORKS.] The eighth book treats of the Royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and is intended as a reply to certain Puritan objections brought against the form of that supremacy as established by the laws of the land. It is a curious circumstance that one chapter contains a vindication of the title, “Supreme Head of the Church;”[449] although this did not remain the parliamentary title of the sovereign, according to the statute of supremacy in the first year of Elizabeth’s reign: and such being the fact, it may be inferred, that Hooker used the title as an equivalent to the statutable appellation of “Supreme Governor in all spiritual and ecclesiastical causes.”