The Elizabethan World Picture

Hooker’s version is of course avowedly theological and it is more explicit, but the order it describes is Elyot’s and [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]’s. His name for it is law, law in its general sense. Above all cosmic or earthly orders or laws there is Law in general, ‘that Law which giveth life unto all the rest which are commendable just and good, namely the Law whereby the Eternal himself doth work’.

God created his own law both because he willed it and because it was right. Through voluntary it was not arbitrary, but based on reason. That divine reason is beyond our understanding; yet we know it is there. God’s law is eternal, ‘being that order which God before ages hath set down with himself, for himself to do all things by’. God chose to work in finitude in some sort to show his glory; and having so chosen he expressed the abundance of his glory in variety. The sense of full life given by [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]]’s ‘degree’ speech is a close poetical parallel to this theological doctrine of variety.

‘Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows.’ (Hooker)