"
Certainly, in the remarkable paper on _Controversies in the Church_
(1589), Bacon had ceased to feel or to speak as a Puritan. The paper is
an attempt to compose the controversy by pointing out the mistakes in
judgment, in temper, and in method on both sides. It is entirely unlike
what a Puritan would have written: it is too moderate, too tolerant, too
neutral, though like most essays of conciliation it is open to the
rejoinder from both sides--certainly from the Puritan--that it begs the
question by assuming the unimportance of the matters about which each
contended with so much zeal. It is the confirmation, but also the
complement, and in some ways the correction of Hooker's contemporary
view of the quarrel which was threatening the life of the English
Church, and not even Hooker could be so comprehensive and so fair. For
Hooker had to defend much that was indefensible: he had to defend a
great traditional system, just convulsed by a most tremendous shock--a
shock and alteration, as Bacon says, "the greatest and most dangerous
that can be in a State," in which old clews and habits and rules were
confused and all but lost; in which a frightful amount of personal
incapacity and worthlessness had, from sheer want of men, risen to the
high places of the Church; and in which force and violence, sometimes of
the most hateful kind, had come to be accepted as ordinary instruments
in the government of souls.
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