Richard Hooker on Justification by Faith Alone

• Indeed, God doth liberally promise whatsoever appertaineth to a blessed life unto as many as sincerely keep his law, though they be not able exactly to keep it. Wherefore we acknowledge a dutiful necessity of doing well, but the meritorious dignity of well doing we utterly renounce. We see how far we are from the perfect righteousness of the law. The little fruit which we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and unsound: we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the world for it, we dare not call God to a reckoning, as if we had him in our debt-books. Our continual suit to him is, and must be, to bear with our infirmities, to pardon our offences.

Richard Hooker, Master of the Temple, 1585.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hooker/just.iv.html

While I'm no expert on Richard Hooker's theology, it seems apparent to me from his sermon on justification by faith alone that he is no Anglo-Catholic, despite his willingness to overlook the ignorance of those living in previous centuries who were still under wrong ideas and imperfect theology of the Romish and popish system. Anglo-Catholics can hardly appeal to Hooker as an incipient Anglo-Catholic.