Book: A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline

Overview

A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, published posthumously in 1648, presents Thomas Hooker's systematic case for congregational church order and practice. Written in the heat of seventeenth-century controversies over polity and authority, the work blends pastoral concern with theological argument to define how a Christian congregation should be constituted, governed, and preserved. Hooker's aim is to describe a church that is both pure in doctrine and distinct in government, rooted in covenantal principles that shape membership, ministry, and discipline.

Church Governance and Covenant

Central to Hooker's argument is the notion of the church as a covenanted body of visible believers who voluntarily unite under Christ's rule. Authority in the congregation arises from the consent of its members and the responsibilities entrusted to chosen officers, rather than from a distant hierarchy or civil imposition. Elders, teachers, and deacons are given distinct roles: pastoral care, doctrinal oversight, and practical service, all exercised within the bounds of a mutual covenant that binds members to one another in faith and practice.

Discipline and Membership

Discipline functions as the means of maintaining the church's spiritual health and corporate witness. Hooker treats admonition, public rebuke, suspension from the sacraments, and excommunication as calibrated responses aimed at repentance and restoration rather than mere punishment. Membership is presented as both a privilege and a responsibility: admission requires credible profession of faith and evidence of repentance, while continued inclusion demands visible holiness and submission to communal correction. The goal of discipline is restorative reconciliation, with exclusion reserved for persistent unrepentance.

Sacraments and Worship

Baptism and the Lord's Supper are described as signs and seals of the covenant, administered by the church to confirm and nourish the faith of the covenant community. Hooker accepts infant baptism as the sign of God's covenanting promise to believing households, while insisting that participation in the Lord's Supper presupposes disciplined membership and a right understanding of the sacrament's spiritual significance. Worship, in his account, must be ordered, scripturally grounded, and carried out by those qualified to teach and lead, so that public ordinances build up rather than fracture the fellowship.

Church and State

Hooker draws careful distinctions between the spiritual jurisdiction of the church and the civil authority of the magistrate. The magistrate has duties to preserve public peace, enforce moral order, and protect the church's rights, but should not usurp spiritual censures or dictate doctrinal matters proper to the congregation. Conversely, the church should not wield temporal power or attempt to govern the magistrate's secular office. This balanced separation, while not modern toleration in the contemporary sense, aims to keep spiritual governance free from worldly coercion and to prevent the state from corrupting ecclesiastical purity.

Style and Influence

Written with scriptural appeals, practical examples, and attention to pastoral consequences, Hooker's Survey combines theological reasoning with clear procedural guidance. Its influence extended across the Atlantic into New England practice and into broader seventeenth-century debates over Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Congregational forms of church life. The work stands as a definitive statement of Congregationalist polity, articulating how voluntary covenant, disciplined membership, and ordered worship work together to sustain a faithful Christian community.