Joseph Hall
Joseph Hall
Joseph Hallwas an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth1 July 1574
humble men thinking
He is a very humble man, that thinks not himself better than some others.
christian mean men
No marvel if the worldling escape earthly afflictions. God corrects him not. He is base born and begot. God will not do him the favour to whip him. The world afflicts him not, because it loves him: for each man is indulgent to his own. God uses not the rod where He means to use the Word. The pillory or scourge is for those malefactors that shall escape execution.
christian meditation divine
It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian.
wind may pairs
As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works.
taken hands two
There is no word or action but may be taken with two hands,--either with the right hand of charitable construction, or the sinister interpretation of malice and suspicion; and all things do succeed as they are taken. To construe an evil, action well is but a pleasing and profitable deceit to myself; but to misconstrue a good thing is a treble wrong,--to myself, the action, and the author.
mind scythes dull
Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt,--as good no scythe as no edge.
sleep loss cities
Gospel ministers should not only be like dials on watches, or mile-stones upon the road, but like clocks and larums, to sound the alarm to sinners. Aaron wore bells as well as pomegranates, and the prophets were commanded to lift up their voice like a trumpet. A sleeping sentinel may be the loss of the city.
horse fall oxen
That which the French proverb hath of sickness is true of all evils, that they come on horseback, and go away on foot; we have often seen a sudden fall or one meal's surfeit hath stuck by many to their graves; whereas pleasures come like oxen, slow, and heavily, and go away like post-horses, upon the spur.
troops crowds sometimes
Virtues go ever in troops; they go so thick, that sometimes some are hid in the crowd; which yet are, but appear not.
christian men evil
Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.
ears mouths slander
There would not be so many open mouths if there were not so many open ears.
nice greatness contentment
Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite.
environmental world letters
How endless is that volume which God hath written of the world! Every creature is a letter, every day a new page.
laziness desperate dare
Those that dare lose a day, ate dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, are desperate.