Judicious Hooker's Illustrations of Holy Scripture

1. (James 2:1) Let not the faith which you have in our Lord Jesus Christ be blemished with partiality, regard not who it is which speaks, but weigh only what is spoken. Think not that you read the words of one who bends himself as an adversary against the truth which you have already embraced; but the words of one, who desires even to embrace together with you the self same truth, if it be the truth. S. 1.

2. (Romans 14:5) Whatever we do, if our own secret judgment consent not to it as fit and good to be done, the doing of it to us is sin, although the thing itself be allowable. Saint Paul's rule therefore generally is, Let every man in his own mind be fully persuaded of that thing which he either allows or does. S. 3.

3. (Matthew 2:7) If the understanding power or faculty of the soul be, like to bodily sight, not of equal sharpness in all, what can be more convenient than that even as the dark-sighted man is directed by the clear about thing visible; so likewise in matters of deeper discourse, the wise in heart do show the simple where his way lies? In our doubtful cases of law, what man is there who sees not how requisite it is, that professors of skill in that faculty be our directors? So it is in all other kinds of knowledge. And even in divine likewise, the Lord has himself appointed, that the priests lips should preserve knowledge, and that other men should seek the truth at his mouth, because he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts. S. 3.

4. (1 John 4:1) Dearly beloved, Give not credit to every spirit. There are but two ways whereby the Spirit leads men into all truth: the one extraordinary, the other common: the one belonging but to some few, the other extending itself to all that are of God: the one that which we call by special divine excellency Revelation, the other Reason. S. 3.

5. (Philippians 4:12) Were it for the glory of God, and the good of his Church indeed that the clergy should be left even as bare as the apostles when they had neither staff nor scrip; that God, which should lay upon them the condition of his apostles, would I hope endow them with the self same affection which was in that holy Apostle, whose words concerning his own right virtuous contentment of heart, As well how to want, as how to abound, are a most fit Episcopal [reconstructed: Impresa].

6. (Romans 3:17) The way of peace they have not known. Ways of peaceable conclusion there are but these two certain: the one, a sentence of judicial division, given by authority appointed within ourselves; the other, the like kind of sentence given by a more universal authority. The former of which two ways God himself in the law prescribes (Deuteronomy 17:8) and his Spirit it was which directed the very first Christian churches in the world to use the latter (Acts 15). S. 6.

7. (Job 39:37) Among so many, so huge volumes as the infinite pains of Saint Augustine has brought forth, what one has gotten him greater love, commendation, and honor, than the book wherein he carefully collects his own oversights, and sincerely condemns them? Many speeches there are of Job's, whereby his wisdom and other virtues may appear; but the glory of an ingenuous mind he has purchased by these words only. Behold I will lay mine hand on my mouth: I have spoken once, yet will I not therefore maintain an argument, yea twice, howbeit for that cause farther I will not proceed. S. 9.

FINIS.