Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the OT & NT by Bishop Joseph Hall

Joseph Hall (1574-1656), one of the most venerable of the Puritans, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and became rector at Halsted, where he wrote his renowned Contemplations. Afterwards he served as rector of Waltham. In 1618 he was delegated to the Synod of Dort. In 1627 he was appointed Bishop of Exeter and in 1641 Bishop of Norwich. He retired to Norfolk after facing severe persecution and died at the ripe age of eighty-one.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
“Need I commend Bishop Hall’s Contemplations to your affectionate attention? What wit! What sound sense! What concealed learning! His style is as pithy and witty as that of Thomas Fuller, and it has a sacred unction about it to which Fuller has no pretension.”
“The work can be readily procured; but if its price were raised in proportion to its real value, it would become one of the most costly books extant.”

George Whitefield:
“Though weak, I often spent two hours in my evening retirements and prayed over my Greek Testament and Bishop Hall’s most excellent Contemplations.”

Richard Baxter:
Recommends Hall’s Contemplations for “for peace, and comfort, and increase of the love of God.”

Thomas Fuller:
“He was commonly called our English Seneca, for the pureness, plainness, and fulness of his style. Not unhappy at Controversies, more happy at Comments, very good in his Characters, better in his Sermons, best of all in his Meditations.”

Peter Masters:
“To read Hall is to read the narrative passages of the Bible through the eyes of a delightful saint and veteran Puritan pastor. It is to accompany the great man on a walk through the lanes and byways of all the events in the sacred record, and to hear his reflections, and the responses of his own heart. Seldom did anyone combine such easy prose with so many profound comments.”