Concerning Laws, and Their Several Kinds in General is the first book of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a soaring defense of reason, tradition, and the consent of the governed written during the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century. While later books in Hooker's masterpiece address specific church practices, Book I, Concerning Laws, and Their Several Kinds in General, stands alone as a foundational treatise on the nature of j...