PREFACE.

THE Works of Bishop Hall have never, before the present undertaking, been completely collected. A great part of them were published during his life, in various sizes and forms, from quarto downwards: and nearly all those pieces were likewise collected, in two folio volumes; which are usually called the First and Second Volumes of his works. A third folio was also published by himself, consisting wholly of his Paraphrase on Hard Texts. After those works appeared, he continued to publish other pieces in various sizes: the chief of which were printed, after his death, in what is called the Third Folio: and this was followed by a collection of some posthumous pieces in a quarto volume, denominated "The Shaking of the Olive-Tree." These with the "Virgidemiarum," the "Mundus Alter et Idem," the "Meditatiunculæ Subitaneæ," the "Henochismus," and a few other treatises, constitute the whole of his published works, which the Editor has been able to discover. Some of his writings, which exist only in MS. or are to be gleaned from the works of his contemporaries, will appear in the Appendix to his Life, hereafter mentioned. Among these will be included his Latin Sermon before the Synod of Dordt, never published separately, but printed among the Acts of that Synod.

Besides this advantage of COMPLETENESS, the present edition will be found superior to any preceding, in Arrangement, Revision, and Illustration.

In respect to ARRANGEMENT, no order whatever has been

observed in preceding editions. In the present, the various works have been classed together according to their subjects. The Contemplations form the First and Second volumes: the Paraphrase on Hard Texts, occupies the Third and Fourth: and these, as the Expository part of the Bishop's writings, are placed first in order. The Sermons follow, in the Fifth volume; arranged according to chronological series, so far as that could be ascertained: which order has been also followed in the Devotional Works, forming the Sixth volume; and the Practical Works, contained in the Seventh and Eighth volumes. The Polemical Works are all brought together into the Ninth volume, and are arranged under three distinct heads: viz. 1. Those on the Questions between the Church of England and the Church of Rome 2. Those on the Questions between the Church of England and the Dissenters: and 3. Those on the Five Points and, under each of these divisions, the chronological order is observed, as nearly as it could be determined. The Miscellaneous Works close the whole, in the Tenth volume and in these, on account of the dissimilarity of the subjects, it was thought requisite to observe no other order than that of Prose and Poetry.

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In the REVISION of these admirable writings, the Editor has endeavoured to present them with every advantage of perspicuity, which modern taste and good sense have rendered so common in the exhibition of a writer's sentiments. In the preceding editions, the paragraphs are sometimes of enormous length, and comprehend a variety of distinct subjects; and, at other times, a single subject is divided into two or more paragraphs: great attention has been employed to remedy this defect throughout the whole work, by limiting every paragraph to a distinct subject. The punctuation also has been corrected throughout; and has been formed on rules, which appear to the Editor consonant to nature and to the turn of the Author's mind. The orthography has been conformed to modern practice, except in the Author's poetical pieces; where the old spelling is retained, both as a specimen of its nature, and be

cause it was often rendered necessary to complete either the measure or the rhime. In the Author's style no alteration whatever has been made; even in cases, where the change of public taste may now affix ideas of indelicacy or irreverence to expressions, which conveyed no such feelings in the Author's age: and this, because the Editor wished the reader to be fully satisfied that he was in possession of his author unaltered; and he felt it to be impracticable, if he altered at all, so to do it as not to incur the censure of doing it either too little or too much, according to the judgment and taste of the reader. The references to scripture throughout the whole work have been verified and the Scriptures added at the end of each Contemplation on the Old and New Testaments.

In further ILLUSTRATION of his Author, the Editor has given ample tables of contents; occasional notes, on some chronological and critical points; a very full glossary of the obsolete or unusual words which occur in these volumes; and a copious, and he believes, accurate inder to the whole series.

Translations of the Author's chief LATIN PIECES are given in this edition. Both the English and the Latin of the "Occasional Meditations" being his own, they are printed in parallel columns, by way of distinction from those treatises which were translated by others, the English of which is printed under the Latin. Of these, the Sermon entitled "Columba Noæ," was translated by his son Robert; as was his "Inurbanitati Pontificia Responsio :" but his admirable tract entitled "Henochismus" was given in a very loose and verbose English dress, by the Rev. Henry Brown, Vicar of Nether-Swell. This last treatise the Editor has revised throughout, and brought nearer to the original. The Editor once intended to give a translation of the "Mundus Alter et Idem;" taking as the ground-work a singular and humorous version of this piece by John Healey, a copy of which is now very rarely to be met with but he found the translator so often degenerating into ribaldry, and the original to require so much

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delicacy aud elucidation, that he abandoned the design; not without hopes that some person of leisure and ability may be induced to give this fine piece of Irony a suitable English dress. Of the other Latin pieces, viz. the treatise entitled "Pax Terris," and a few Letters among the Polemical Works, the Editor, not finding any translation already made, did not think them of such importance as to require one.

The Editor originally proposed to accompany this edition with a NEW LIFE OF THE AUTHOR: but, finding the materials for such a work accumulate very much in his hands, he has judged it best to limit this publication to the Bishop's own writings; and has, therefore, prefixed only such memoirs as the Author has left of himself; reserving whatever else he has been able to collect together for a separate volume, to be published hereafter, and to be independent of the present undertaking. He would only here add to what the Author has said of himself in the " Specialities" of his Life, his "Letter from the Tower," and his "Hard Measure," that he was gathered to his fathers in a good old age; dying at Higham, near Norwich, Sep. 8. 1656, aged eighty-two years: and was buried in the church-yard at that place.

GENERAL CONTENTS

OF THE

TEN VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

SOME Specialities in the Life of Bishop Hail.

Letter from the Tower.

Bishop Hall's Hard Measure.

CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT: Books i. to xviii.

VOL. II.

CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT: Books xix, xx, and xxi. CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE NEW TESTAMENT.