Hooker on Sola Scriptura

Hooker writes in Book I, Section 13 of Ecclesiastical Polity:

When the question therefore is, whether we be now to seek of any revealed law of God otherwhere than only in the sacred Scripture; whether we do now stand bound in the sight of God to yield to traditions urged by the Church of Rome the same obedience and reverence we do to his written law, honouring equally and adoring both as divine: our answer is, No. They that so earnestly plead for the authority of tradition, as if nothing were more safely condescendeth by relation of former generations unto the ages that succeed, are not all of them (surely a miracle it were if they should be) so simple as thus to persuade themselves; howsoever, if the simple were so persuaded, they could be content perhaps very well to enjoy the benefit, as they account it, of that common error. What hazard the truth is in when it passeth through the hands of report, how maimed and deformed it becometh, they are not, they cannot possibly be ignorant. Let them that are indeed of this mind consider but only that little of things divine, which the heathen have in such sort received. How miserable had the state of the Church of God been long ere this, if wanting the sacred Scripture we had no record of his laws, but only the memory of man receiving the same by report and relation from his predecessors?

As an a priori proof of Sola Scriptura, this argument is weak for two reasons. First, whether or not it be true generally that oral tradition is easily corrupted, the Roman Catholic will of course point out that in the special case of divine tradition God would prevent this from happening. Secondly, the argument backfires on the Sola Scripturist, since there are examples of secular texts being "maimed and deformed" as they are copied and recopied throughout succeeding generations. If, as the Sola Scripturist will have to allow, God intervenes to prevent this process of degradation from occurring in the case of Scripture, it is obviously plausible that similar protection would be accorded to divine oral tradition.

In Section XIV Hooker deals with a classic RC argument:

Oftentimes it hath been in very solemn manner disputed, whether all things necessary unto salvation be necessarily set down in the Holy Scriptures or no...it may be notwithstanding and oftentimes hath been demanded, how the books of Holy Scripture contain in them all necessary things, when of things necessary the very chiefest is to know what books we are bound to esteem holy; which point is confessed impossible for the Scripture itself to teach.

Whereunto we may answer with truth, that there is not in the world any art or science, which proposing unto itself an end (as every one doth some end or other) hath been therefore thought defective, if it have not delivered simply whatsoever is needful to the same end; but all kinds of knowledge have their certain bounds and limits; each of them presupposeth many necessary things learned in other sciences and known beforehand. He that should take upon him to teach men how to be eloquent in pleading causes, must needs deliver unto them whatsoever precepts are requisite unto that end; otherwise he doth not the thing which he taketh upon him. Seeing then no man can plead eloquently unless he be able first to speak; it followeth that ability of speech is in this case a thing most necessary. Notwithstanding every man would think it ridiculous, that he which undertaketh by writing to instruct an orator should therefore deliver all the precepts of grammar; because his profession is to deliver precepts necessary unto eloquent speech, yet so that they which are to receive them be taught beforehand so much of that which is thereunto necessary, as comprehendeth the skill of speaking. In like sort, albeit Scripture do prefess to contain in it all things that are necessary unto salvation; yet the meaning cannot be simply of all things which are necessary, but all things that are necessary in some certain kind or form; as all things which are necessary, and either could not at all or could not easily be known by the light of natural discourse; all things which are necessary to be known that we may be saved; but known with presupposal of knowledge concering certain principles whereof it receiveth us already persuaded, and then instructeth us in all the residue that are necessary. In the number of these principles one is the sacred authority of Scripture. Being therefore persuaded by other means that these Scriptures are the oracles of God, themselves do then teach us the rest, and lay before us all the duties which God requireth at our hands as necessary unto salvation.

I think the analogy is pertinent, but the crucial question is what these "other means" are by which the present canon is known to be authoritative. And on this point, unfortunately, Hooker is (so far in the book, at least) silent. The Roman Catholic will argue that any arguments for the canon which do not at some point appeal to the decree of the Church are uncertain--an argument that wields some force given the fact that the canon was unsettled in the early church until definitive conciliar pronouncements were made. My response is to accept the Lutheran concept of the New Testament "canon within a canon": i.e. grounding doctrine only on those books which were never seriously doubted in the early church, i.e. the Gospels and the major Pauline epistles.