That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth
moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and
measure, of working, the same we term a law.

See the essays on method, in the 'Friend'. [6] Hooker's words literally
and grammatically interpreted seem to assert the antecedence of the
thing to its kind, that is, to its essential characters;--and to its
force together with its form and measure of working, that is, to its
specific and distinctive characters; in short, the words assert the
pre-existence of the thing to all its constituent powers, qualities, and
properties.

Now this is either--first, equivalent to the assertion of a 'prima et
nuda materia', so happily ridiculed by the author of 'Hudibras', [7] and
which under any scheme of cosmogony is a mere phantom, having its whole
and sole substance in an impotent effort of the imagination or sensuous
fancy, but which is utterly precluded by the doctrine of creation which
it in like manner negatives:--or secondly, the words assert a
self-destroying absurdity, namely, the antecedence of a thing to itself;
as if having asserted that water consisted of hydrogen = 77, and oxygen
= 23, I should talk of water as existing before the creation of hydrogen
and oxygen.

All laws, indeed, are constitutive; and it would require a longer train
of argument than a note can contain, to shew what a thing is; but this
at least is quite certain, that in the order of thought it must be
posterior to the law that constitutes it. But such in fact was Hooker's
meaning, and the word, thing, is used 'proleptice' in favour of the
imagination, as appears from the sentences that follow, in which the
creative idea is declared to be the law of the things thereby created. A