laudable Practice

Joseph Hall (appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1627, translated to Norwich in 1641) appears early in Stephen Hampton's Grace and Conformity: The Reformed Conformist Tradition and the Early Stuart Church of England , as one of the "representative voices" of that tradition. Oddly missing from the book's bibliography, however, is Hall's 1623 sermon - when he was Dean of Worcester - to Convocation, ' Noah's Dove ', a statement of peaceable irenicism in a time of bitter theological controversy. The previous year, James VI/I had issued his 'Directions Concerning Preachers': That no preacher of what title soever under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation or of the universality, efficacity, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace. Three years after Hall's Convocation sermon, Charles I published ' A Proclamation ...

From the 1652 Whitsun sermon by Bishop Hall, moderate Calvinist and Dort delegate, an expression of Episcopalian piety - irenic, quiet, peaceable - with roots in Hooker and flowering in the Laudian Taylor and the Latitudinarian Tillotson : God's Spirit leads us Sweetly and Gently ... not in a blustering and hurrying violence, but by a leisurely and gracious inclination. So, in Elijah's vision, there was fire, wind, earthquake; but God was in none of them: these were fit preparatives for his appearance; but it was the still soft voice, wherein God would be revealed. Those, that are carried with a heady and furious impetuousness and vehemence of passion in all their proceedings, which are all rigour and extremity, are not led by that Good Spirit; which would be styled the Spirit of Meekness: who was pleased to descend, not in the form of an eagle, or any other fowl of prey; but in the form of a meek and innocent dove. We could easily imagine the words coming from Hooker or Tayl...