SOURCE: Marshall, John S. “Hooker's Philosophy of the Appropriate.” In Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, pp. 77-84. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1963.

In the following excerpt, Marshall considers Hooker's interpretation of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

Hooker accepts the sixteenth century Thomism of Cardinal Cajetan but he also simplifies it. As the Prayer Book simplifies the mediaeval services, so Hooker simplifies the Thomism of the great philosophers of the Roman Church. The dialectic of objections and replies disappears as the form of philosophical exposition. Thomism becomes less prolix and complex; it takes on a classic simplicity and beauty. This is the way in which Hooker reforms and modifies Thomism. This is a typical Anglican procedure, and it is the way in which the past is saved but is also revitalized and strengthened. This simplification takes even more genius than the...