Richard Hooker, priest & theologian, AD 1600

We are in the middle of All Saints' tide / All Souls and Remembrance Sunday will soon be here. Fr Richard Hooker was a pioneering Anglican theologian who came to the attention of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Queen Elizabeth I for his writings from a Catholic-Anglican standpoint. He married a puritan and later, as sub-dean at Salisbury Cathedral, came into conflict with other puritans. He stuck to his guns and wrote about 'Justification by Faith' and maintained that Christians would be saved by God and controversially he included Roman Catholics. He even said that it could also include others who were not Christian, i.e., by God's grace alone are we saved. The inclusion of RCs at that time caused a lot of trouble in Protestant England, which seems incredible nowadays. Richard Hooker, along with Cranmer and others, are seen as Fathers of Anglicanism as we know it today, following the Anglican Rule and maintaining a direct link with the Apostolic, Catholic Church, whilst at the same time remaining reformed from the RCs.