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.
care vain burden
He that taketh his own cares upon himself loads himself in vain with an uneasy burden. I will cast all my cares on God; He hath bidden me; they cannot burden Him.
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.
procrastination purpose deathbed
Our good purposes foreslowed are become our tormentors upon our deathbed.
hate calling holiness
How apt nature is, even in those who profess an eminence in holiness, to raise and maintain animosities against those whose calling or person they pretend to find cause to dislike!
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.
running weed men
The best ground untilled, soonest runs out into rank weeds. A man of knowledge that is negligent or uncorrected, cannot but grow wild and godless.
death hypocrite men
Death did not first strike Adam, the first sinful man, nor Cain, the first hypocrite, but Abel, the innocent and righteous. The first soul that met with death, overcame death; the first soul that parted from earth went to heaven. Death argues not displeasure, because he whom God loved best dies first, and the murderer is punished with living.
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.
giving shows dies
Those who give not till they die show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer.