Concerning Laws, and Their Several Kinds in General is the first book of Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a soaring defense of reason, tradition, and the consent of the governed written during the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century. While later books in Hooker’s masterpiece address specific church practices, Book I, Concerning Laws, and Their Several Kinds in General, stands alone as a foundational treatise on the nature of justice and the origins of government. Hooker categorizes the different types of law which govern the universe: eternal law, natural law, human law, and divine law. He argues that reason is a divine gift, allowing mankind to discern the laws of nature and build societies based on mutual consent rather than force. This Pilos Press edition makes Hooker’s dense Elizabethan prose accessible to the modern reader. It features: A complete, sentence-by-sentence paraphrase—a modern English rendering which preserves the full rigorous logic of the original. Modernized spelling and punctuation. Detailed annotations. An introduction to Hooker’s life, thought, and legacy. An appendix reviewing several influences upon Hooker. A bibliography. A definitive resource for students of political philosophy, theology, and the history of the Great Tradition.
