Hall took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Cambridge in 1592, when about nineteen years of age. He soon afterwards became Fellow of his college (Emanuel;) and, in 1596, was made a Master of Arts. His first preferment was the rectory of Halsted, in Suffolk, in the gift of Sir Robert Drury, the patron also of Donne; shortly after his presentation to which, he married. In 1605, being invited by Sir Edmund Bacon, grandson of the celebrated Lord Bacon, to accompany him on a journey into the Low Countries, he embraced the opportunity with the view of making himself thoroughly acquainted with the actual state of the Roman Catholic church. The principal incident relative to this journey, which he has recorded in the slight sketch left by him of his life, is a somewhat amusing conference with Coster, famous Jesuit; an old man, more testy than subtle, and more able to wrangle than satisfy."

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In his humble benefice at Halsted, this accomplished divine, already favourably known to the public as an author, would have been content to pass his life, had not his patron, in refusing to give up a trifling annual sum, his lawful due, and indispensable to his support, obliged him to seek a competency elsewhere. Hall had little reason to regret a change thus forced on him; nevertheless, he took leave of Sir Robert and his lady with many affectionate expressions of pastoral feel

ing. In his farewell letter, he thus writes to them: "With how unwilling a heart I leave you, He knows that searches the heart. You are dear to me as a charge to a pastor: if my pains to you have not proved it, suspect me. Yet I leave you. God calls me to a greater work. I must follow him. It were more easy to me to live secretly hidden in that quiet obscurity, than to be drawn out to the eye of the world. In this point, if I seem to neglect you, blame me not: I must neglect and forget myself. I can but labour, wheresoever I am. God knows how willingly I do that, whether there or here. I shall dig, and delve, and plant, in what ground soever my Master sets me. If he take me to a larger field, complain you not of the loss, while the church may gain." This observation proved happily prophetical.

To the circumstances of his emerging from his retirement in Suffolk, to commence his more public career in the church, a just prominency is assigned by Hall among those recorded events which he calls "specialties of Providence" towards himself. He was in London, endeavouring to obtain from Sir Robert Drury an engagement no longer to withhold any portion of the income of the living at Halsted, when he was recommended to an opportunity of preaching before the interesting and virtuous Henry, Prince of Wales, son to James I. The prince had read and much admired Hall's

"Meditations;" the first eleven books of which were already published; and, being no less pleased with him in the pulpit, immediately appointed him one of his chaplains. He was now presented, by Lord Denny, afterwards Earl of Norwich, with the donative of Waltham Cross, and by Prince Henry to a prebend in the collegiate church of Wolverhampton. An estate belonging to this church, illegally detained from it by Sir Walter Leveson, Hall succeeded in recovering to the establishment, and in restoring the neglected service.

At Waltham he remained more than twenty years, (although frequently solicited by his royal patron to take up his residence at court,) regularly preaching, as he had previously done at Halsted, three sermons in each week. During this long period, however, he was several times taken from home on public employment in his profession. In the year 1616, he accompanied the splendid embassy of Lord Hay to the court of Henry the Fourth of France. In March following he was among the clergymen chosen by King James to attend him into Scotland, when that sovereign revisited his native country, with a design to assimilate the religion of that portion of his dominions to the forms of the Anglican church. His third employment of a public nature was his mission to the great Protestant council, the synod of Dort, with Davenant and other English divines; from this charge, however,

he was compelled by ill health to retire, but not till he had done honour to the church he represented, by his learning and moderation. Although the object of this mission was to support the party opposed to the Arminian doctrines, yet that Hall was not strictly a Calvinist, (to make use of a term about that time first brought into vogue,) that his opinions in regard to the celebrated five points, which were discussed in that assembly, were moderated by practical wisdom and benevolence, appears both from his conduct there, and from the course he pursued on his return. He now found the same controversy raging violently in England; in order to the composing of which quarrels, he tells us, he wrote his prospect of pacification, (entitled, "Via Media: the way of Peace in the Five busy Articles," &c.) wherein he endeavoured to point out a safe middle way for moderate Christians between the two extremes. "These," he adds, "I made bold to present to his excellent majesty, together with an humble motion of a peaceable silence to be enjoined to both parts, in those other collateral and needless disquisitions."

Scarcely had Dr. Hall--he had received the degree of B. D. in 1603, and that of D.D. in 1612completed this well-meant, but, as it proved, unavailing service to the church, when he found himself engaged in a dispute with her more ancient enemies.

Predestination;-the Extent of the Efficacy of Christ's Death;-Freewill;-Conversion ;-Perseverance.

Of his share in the Popish controversies of that agitated period, he gives the following account:"Some insolent Romanists, Jesuits especially, in their bold disputations pressed nothing so much as a catalogue of the professors of our religion to be deduced from the primitive times; and, with the peremptory challenge of the impossibility of this pedigree, dazzled the eyes of the simple; while some of our learned men, undertaking to satisfy so needless and unjust a demand, gave, as I conceived, great advantage to the adversary. In a just indignation to see us thus wronged, by mistaking the question betwixt us; as if we, yielding ourselves of another church, originally and fundamentally different, should make good our own erection upon the ruins, yea, the nullity, of theirs; and, well considering the infinite and great inconveniencies that must needs follow upon this defence, I adventured to set my pen on work; desiring to rectify the opinions of those men, whom an ignorant zeal had transported, to the prejudice of our holy cause: laying forth the corruptions of the Romish Church, yet making our game of the outward visibility thereof; and, by this means, putting them to the probation of those newly obtruded corruptions, which are truly guilty of the breach betwixt us. The drift whereof not being well conceived, by some spirits that were not so wise as fervent, I was suddenly exposed to the rash cenIn "The Old Religion."