ENGLISH AUTHORITIES.—All such periods of intense controversy and struggle upon themes of the highest concern to man, as that of the internal commotions in England immediately following and consequent upon the Reformation, leave behind them some memorial in literature of so conspicuous and rare an excellence as to insure perpetual freshness, and to acquire interest and attractions even beyond that of the particular subject with which it deals. When the Press in such periods is pouring its outflow of ephemeral tracts and books, vigorous, intense, effective, as they may be for a temporary end or for the circle of a sect or party, genius or scholarly culture, or a philosophical and comprehensive spirit, penetrating below the surface and rising above the details of a controversy, will engage itself upon the product of what we call an immortal work. Such a work[457] is that which came from the pen of “the judicious Hooker,”—Richard by baptismal name. His eight books constitute one of the richest classics of the English tongue. It finds delighted readers among those who care little, if at all, for the mere issues of the questions under controversy. Its generally rich and stately style, its logic and rhetoric, its wealth of learning, and its occasional play of satire or contempt, engage the interest of many a reader who would turn listlessly from most pages of polemics. There is so much in it of a manly, free courage and self-asserting spirit, that at times it is difficult to believe that it was written by one who, according to the quaint biography of him by Isaack Walton, was so cowed and subjugated by his domestic partner, the mother of his children. English Churchmen may well boast themselves on this majestic work, dealing with the nucleus of the whole Puritan controversy, the question of Church authority. Of course, its argument in its whole sum and detail, in its array and estimate of original vouchers, has been traversed and brought under dispute by champions on the other side. But it will always hold its supreme place while the cause which it upholds shall need a classic. Hallam[458] says that, “though the reasonings of Hooker won for him the surname of ‘the Judicious,’ they are not always safe or satisfactory, nor, perhaps, can they be reckoned wholly clear or consistent. His learning, though beyond that of most English writers in that age, is necessarily uncritical; and his fundamental theory, the mutability of ecclesiastical government, has as little pleased those for whom he wrote, as those whom he repelled by its means.” The same writer, in another work,[459] passes a high encomium upon Hooker’s _Polity_, as finding a basis for its argument in natural law.