The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.
§ 3. The Admonition to Parliament
Hooker fully recognises this. To him, Calvin, the founder of the discipline of the church of Geneva, is “incomparably the wisest man that ever the French church did enjoy, since the hour it enjoyed him.” There is, however, a touch of malice in his next sentences, characteristic alike of the author and of the profound scholar’s attitude towards the learning of the man of affairs: “His bringing up was in the study of the civil law. Divine knowledge he gathered, not by hearing or reading so much, as by teaching others.” Hooker, however, in his preface to Ecclesiastical Polity, does ample justice to the attractiveness of the Calvinian system, which the puritan party advocated in their Admonition to Parliament. When this was first published (1572), the Elizabethan church system had had thirteen years of trial and had not yet proved a conspicuous success. At least, it had not united Englishmen in a single church. The Roman Catholics had left off attendance at the parish churches; the Independents had set up congregations; and the puritan faction, which had, from the first, regarded the established church polity as a temporary expedient, felt justified both in expressing its grievances and in suggesting a remedy. The pamphlet in which this was done, supposed to be the work of two ministers, John Field and Thomas Wilcox, styled the Admonition to Parliament, is a document of singular ability, both in lucidity of statement and in vigour of language. It sets forth what is called “a true platforme of a church reformed,” in order that all might behold “the great unlikeness betwixt it and this our English Church.”
The Admonition is brief, well arranged and extremely trenchant. After declaring that the notes of a true church are “preaching the word purely, ministering of the sacraments sincerely, and ecclesiastical discipline which consisteth in admonition and correction of faults severlie” it treats of these three points in detail. As regards the ministry of the word, the writers are of opinion that the old clergy, “King Henries priests, king Edward’s priests (omitted 2nd ed.), Queen Maries priests … (yf Gods worde were precisely followed) should … be utterly removed.” Parliament is exhorted to
The paragraph regarding the sacraments contrasts the practice of the primitive church with that of the time. Of the Lord’s Supper it says: