Note 356 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
"If the natural strength of men's wit may by experience and study attain unto such ripeness in the knowledge of things human, that men in this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment; what reason have we to think but that even in matters divine, the like wits, furnished with necessary helps, exercised in scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow unto so much perfection of knowledge, that men shall have just cause, when anything pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more willingly to incline their minds towards that which the sentence of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound? For the controversy is of the weight of such men's judgment," etc. But Hooker's mistake was to exaggerate the weight of such men's judgment; and not to allow enough for their passions and infirmities, the imperfection of their knowledge, their connivance with power, their attachment to names and persons, and all the other drawbacks to ecclesiastical authority.
It is well known that the preface to the Ecclesiastical Polity was one of the two books to which James II. ascribed his return into the fold of Rome; and it is not difficult to perceive by what course of reasoning on the positions it contains this was effected.