Ruskin, prompted by his Oxford tutor, the Revd Osborne Gordon, read Richard Hooker 's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie (1593-7) as preparation for his arguments in Modern Painters II (1846). Michael Wheeler notes that at the time of Ruskin's research for this second volume, 'debate was raging in Oxford and throughout the country on questions such as the Church of England's historic identity as part of the 'holy Catholick Church', and the meaning of the 'real presence' of Christ in the eucharist'. Hooker, Wheeler argues, 'represented safe middle ground' and that his Laws were a 'classic of the via media' ( Wheeler, Ruskin's God, p.55; see also pp.56-8).