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“That posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream...” So opens Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, one of the great landmarks of Protestant theological literature, and indeed of English literature generally. Sadly, however, recent generations of church leaders and scholars have come perilously close to allowing his work to pass away as in a dream. Locked away in a rich and beautiful, but labyrinthine and archaic Elizabethan prose style, Hooker’s writings are scarcely read—and for many, scarcely readable—today. This new edition of Hooker’s Laws “translates” his prose into modern English for the first time, without sacrificing any of the theological depth or sparkling wit of the original.

The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity In Modern English, Vol. 1

Richard Hooker

“That posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream...”

So opens Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, one of the great landmarks of Protestant theological literature, and indeed of English literature generally. Sadly, however, recent generations of church leaders and scholars have come perilously close to allowing his work to pass away as in a dream. Locked away in a rich and beautiful, but labyrinthine and archaic Elizabethan prose style, Hooker’s writings are scarcely read—and for many, scarcely readable—today. This new edition of Hooker’s Laws “translates” his prose into modern English for the first time, without sacrificing any of the theological depth or sparkling wit of the original.

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