This volume is designed to offer the most direct access possible to the argument and sources of a classic of English political and religious thought which has recently become a subject of critical controversy. There are difficulties. Hooker's sentences are long and his chapter-length paragraphs very long. His sources, tersely cited as a rule, are unfamiliar. The solutions to these problems chosen by the great nineteenth-century editor of his works, John Keble, were to segment Hooker's text – by heavy punctuation of sentences and the division of chapters into numbered sections – and vastly augment his notes. These measures had their point, but they are sometimes intrusive. In this edition, spelling has been modernized, but Hooker's punctuation and paragraph indivisions have been left alone for the Preface and Book I (which were published in his lifetime), and only a few changes have been made in the posthumously published Book VIII (the surviving manuscripts of which have paragraph divisions, one indication among others that our version of the book is not a finished one). The lack of paragraphs in the earlier parts of the work may seem a hardship at first, but if the reader will think of immersion rather than quick processing as the right approach to Hooker's prose, the result will be rewarding.