episcopal order and doctrine of the Church of England, appealing to natural law as
well as the Bible. His closely reasoned moderation is suggested in this passage:
The best and safest way for you therefore, my dear brethren, is to call your deeds past to
a new reckoning, to re-examine the cause ye have taken in hand, and to try it even point
by point, argument by argument, with all the diligent exactness ye can; to lay aside the
gall of that bitterness wherein your minds have hitherto over-abounded, and with
meekness to search the truth ....Hooker’s treatise and Ralegh’s Historyare major works of a new English discursive
prose.
nFurther reading
Braunmuller, A. R. and M. Hattaway (eds),The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance
Drama(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Jones, E. (ed.),New Oxford Book of Sixteenth-Century Verse(Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992). A fresh and generous selection.
Kraye, J. (ed.),The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Humanism(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Lewis, C. S.,Poetry and Prose in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1954). A clear, bold, provocative introduction.
FURTHER READING 107