After a pathetic request for a fair hearing "of the words of one who desireth even to embrace together with you the self-same truth, if it be the truth," he gave a history of the discipline as introduced by Calvin at Geneva. Calvin, he said, by "sifting the very utmost sentence and syllable" of the New Testament found that certain passages seemed to him to enjoin that congregations should have elders with power of excommunication (with fearful civil consequences) but Calvin had "never proved that Scripture doth necessarily enforce these things"; or enforce any other thing in which the Puritans differed from the Church established. Manifestly an opponent would blow away this argument with any isolated scriptural text, whatever its original application, which as he thought backed his opinion.
Hooker analysed Puritan demagogic methods, spiritual pretensions, and habit of leading women captive. "But, be they women or be they men, if once they have tasted of that cup, let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to persuade them, they close up their ears, his reasons they weigh not at all, all is answered with the words of John, 'We are of God, he that knoweth God heareth us.'"
All this was, in fact, the case; it was superfluous to write a long book, with quotations about the Angels from the pre-Christian Greek Orphic poems, for the purpose of converting people who closed their ears. When Hooker, wrote, some Puritan writers had already threatened civil war; their martyrs, in fact, lay in Newgate, and their blood was up. What they desired was not to be tolerated, but to dominate the consciences of others. One text both parties could use, "Compel them to come in."
The style of Hooker is somewhat rich in Latinized components. He is remote from euphuistic conceits; and does not rise into eloquence except when his subject elevates his mind and style. A celebrated example is his defence of Church music.
"Touching musical harmony whether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is or hath in it harmony. A thing which delighteth all ages and beseemeth all states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them, that whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by the other. In harmony the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves." Magnificent as is the harmony of these sentences, and severe as is the logical thought which they express, the modern reader finds that he cannot get at the sense of them by merely running his eye over them. The sentences must be carefully construed, and such writing cannot possibly be popular; as, in some degree, some writings of Bacon still remain.
The posthumously published books of Hooker were supposed to have been tampered with by the Editors. Hooker did not publish his sermons, of which several were put forth after his death. Even his Puritan adversaries could not with decency have complained that they are too short. In one sermon he speaks freely of the Pope as "The Man of Sin".
"Martin Marprelate."
We cannot here do more than mention the masters of the fierce controversial prose; indeed their names, often, can only be guessed. They fought like wild cats, with the yells of these animals when enraged, in the wordy war of "Martin Marprelate," or "Bishop's bane". Archbishop Whitgift (1586) obtained a decree from the Star Chamber for the suppression of pamphlets that attacked the usages of the Established Church. Till 1593 the battle of books lasted; and then Parliament silenced the Puritans—for a while. The authors, taking the name of "Martin Marprelate," entered the fray, on the Puritan side, with the weapon of satire, banter, and Billingsgate, in autumn, 1588. Martin, whoever he or they may have been, employed a secret press, owned by one Waldegrave, that was set up now in one place, now in another. The history of the secret presses, of Waldegrave and of his successors, is curious. The learned Udall, John Penry ("the Father of Welsh Dissent") and other combatants, were imprisoned; Penry was hanged.
There remain seven tracts by Marprelate, in a style of variegated abuse, banter, and "gag": Bishop Cooper found that his name yielded gross palpable quips and puns to the Puritan wags who wrote for "the man in the street". Martin was no Pascal, his weapons were not the small sword but the jester's bladder on a stick, and the bully's bludgeon. The Anti-Martinists answered with the same weapons, as Nash and Lyly were responsible for certain pamphlets; Greene took a hand in the fray, and it faded out in a literary and personal squabble with Gabriel Harvey.
The Martin Marprelate tracts were revolutionary, and afford a singular instance in which the wit exhibited itself on the Puritan side.