December 14, 2022 Show with Roger Salter on “Joseph Hall: Master of Meditation”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 14th day of December 2022, and I am thrilled to have back on the program a frequently returning guest, although he has not been on for a while.

I'm so thrilled that he is back with us. His name should be immediately recognizable to anyone who listens to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with any regularity. His name is Roger Salter. He is Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a Reformed, confessional, Cranmerian, and historically Protestant congregation firmly committed to the inerrant holy scriptures and the 39 articles of religion.

Today we are going to be addressing Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend, Roger Salter.

It's grand to be on board with you again, Chris, and I'll follow your guidance closely, but as I say, it will be reconnecting.

Amen. I'm thrilled about it as well, and I've already given a fairly detailed description of St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama, but is there anything else you'd like to add to that, including your use of the Book of Common Prayer and so forth?

Well, you summed it up very well, Chris, but there has been a recent production, which a friend of mine alerted me to. There's a new edition of the 1662 with some extra material in it, and we're going over to that.

It's our manual of worship now, so it means that our worship will be even more Cranmerian. 1662 will be our major guide in our worship and our devotional thought.

And for those of you listening who are unfamiliar with that term, Cranmerian, that is a reference to Thomas Cranmer, who drafted the 39 articles of religion and was also a major part of the Book of Common Prayer and a great hero of the faith, who at one point when the Church of England swung back to Roman Catholicism and he had a threat of execution against him if he did not recant his Protestant faith, he caved in to that threat and renounced his Protestant faith, but later renounced his recantation.

His conscious could not bear it any longer, and he actually, when being executed, thrusted his hand that signed his Protestant recantation into the flames first before he was executed by burning. So that was quite a heroic way to depart this earth, refusing to maintain a denial of the true gospel.

Anything to add about Cranmer?

Just at that particular incident, his martyrdom, when he was declared guilty in the church where he was under extermination, and he declared his reformational faith again with such clarity, when he was going to the funeral pyre, he was far ahead of his persecutors.

That's how keen he was to emphasize his loyalty to the Word of God in his death. Amen.

If anybody wants to learn more about Thomas Cranmer, you can look up his name in the Iron Trippin's Iron Radio archive. I have had interviews, in particular one that focused in its entirety on Thomas Cranmer with Ashley Null, who is a Thomas Cranmer scholar, and he is quite a brilliant brother.

And so if you look that up, you could either type in Ashley Null's last name, N as in Nancy, U-L-L, or you could type in Thomas Cranmer, C-R-A-N as in Nancy, M as in Michael, E-R. Well, today you have chosen to discuss Joseph Hall, master of meditation.

Joseph Hall’s Life, Scholarship, and Puritan Convictions

If you could tell us, who was Joseph Hall?

Well, Joseph Hall, originally I came across him in a compilation of 17th century poetry, and he was included in the volume as a satirist. It was religious satire, but I was interested in reading one or two of his poems.

And then on reading Thomas Scott's history of the Synod of God, I noticed references to Joseph Hall. So I thought, this is someone of great interest, I must pursue my understanding of him. And the more I read of him, the more I began to admire this great man of God, one of the greatest of the Puritans of his era, a man of the Reformation undoubtedly, and one of my greatest finds, Chris, was when I was in Cambridge in England.

I went into a bookshop, not particularly looking for anything in particular, but as I was browsing through the secondhand books, I found a biography of Bishop Joseph Hall, a biographical and critical study by a scholar called Frank Livingston Huntley.

And I've got that book and I've read it four times since. I never tire of reading it, but it's a brilliant summary of his life, particularly as a literary person, because that's what Huntley was, but also as a Christian scholar, preacher, and meditator upon the scriptures and producing beautiful meditations for the edification of the people of God.

Now, when you refer to Hall as a Puritan, I know that he was a bishop in the Church of England. Was he actually, in a technical sense, a Puritan that was dispelled from the Church, as were many others, or was he one that maintained a Puritan theology and yet remained in the Church of England?

Absolutely. Like so many, he remained a minister of the Church of England, shared exactly the theology of the Puritans, but believed in Episcopal government and, of course, the use of the Book of Common Prayer.

So initially, at the outset of his ministry, he was hounded by the Archbishop William Lord for being too Puritan, but when the Puritans gained ascendancy in the Church towards the end of his life, he was removed from his cathedral at Norwich and punished for not being Puritan enough, but that was not to do with theology.

It was to do with Church polity.

And how was he specifically punished, other than being removed from his office?

He was removed. As a bishop, he would have had free accommodation, a fairly handsome salary or income. These were taken from him, and he and his wife moved to a tiny little cottage and lived not in absolute poverty, but on the brink, as it were, of a severe reduction of his comforts and basic needs in life.

So he still remained faithful to his theology, wrote his beautiful meditations until he died, but it was a great comedown for somebody who'd been so influential in the nation. He was a friend of the king's son, he was a favorite of King James's son, and a great advisor to politicians and the great people of England in the day, but he was, when I say humiliated, I'm not talking about his own emotional response, but the downfall that was imposed upon him was quite severe.

What can you tell us about him before he ascended to the post of bishop? What can you tell us about, if you are familiar with his childhood, how he was raised religiously, and how he rose up in the ranks in the Church of England?

Well, I can read a paragraph from Joel Beattie's account of Joseph Hall in his book Meet the Puritans. It would probably sum up much of what I would personally want to say about him. He had a very eventful life.

He was a great scholar, a great investigator into every field of knowledge that he could pursue, but I'll see what Joel Beattie says in a brief paragraph. The respected English bishop, Joseph Hall, was born July the 1st, 1574 at Bristow Park in Leicestershire.

His father, John Hall, was the town agent for Henry Earl of Huntingdon. His mother, Winifred Bambridge, was a godly woman, comparable in Hall's mind to Augustine's mother, Monica. Hall was privately tutored for several years by William Pelset, rector of Marquette Bosworth, then sent to Emanuel College, Cambridge in 1589.

There, he gained a lifelong love for Puritan piety, though he supported Anglican rather than Presbyterian ecclesiology. In 1595, he became a fellow of the college. The following year, he earned a Master of Arts degree and was elected as a university lecturer in rhetoric.

During his time at Cambridge, Hall wrote a collection of sound thrashings. In 1597, a collection of satires in Latin verse. So that was criticizing the church at the time. In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked that Hall's satires be burned because they were licentious, but that order was soon reversed.

So he had a very full life up until his being appointed to various parishes in England, through those parishes, fairly tied in with the upper class, as it were. He gained a reputation. As I say, he became a very close friend and advisor of King James's son, and I got to know him very much as an intimate friend, and he was appointed chaplain.

So two years later, he received his doctorate in divinity. And in 1612, Lord Denny, later Earl of Norwich, gave Hall the curacy of Walton Holy Cross Essex. And from there on, he moved to rather distinguished parishes until King James made him a bishop originally, I think, in Exeter.

And then he moved on to his final diocese in Norwich.

Now, already you have won me over for him, noting that he was involved in satire. I love a Christian with a good sense of humor. Now, when he was labeled as being guilty of licentiousness in his satire, was that an accurate accusation?

Was it slander? Was his satire very earthy, like Luther's had a tendency to be?

No, it was simply slander directed towards him because he was very critical of the episcopacy and the poor state of the church and the negligence and lack of diligence among the clergy high and low. So that won him a lot of unpopularity.

And it was a means of preventing people from reading these valid criticisms of the church.

And when you said he was critical of the episcopacy, I'm assuming you don't mean that political form of government, that ecclesiology.

No, just the, yeah.

That you're talking about the people that held the post, the specific people who held the epistle.

Yes, absolutely. He was quite right in what he said, and that's what made the upper echelons in the church unfavorable towards him. And as I say, I think they wanted to quash these criticisms before too many gained access to his writings.

I'm assuming that he was a thoroughgoing Calvinist, because every time you have been on this program and highlighting a great man of history, they have always been Calvinists. Was this true of Joseph Hall?

Absolutely, it was. There were people, and I think some people still do that. I mean, some people have called Spurgeon Armenian, you know, because of certain tendencies to proclaim the gospel invitation.

Yeah, they don't understand what historic Calvinism is, so they assume since Spurgeon didn't fit their stereotype, they will call him an Armenian.

It's an aberration. I once saw an article on the internet years ago where this man was blacklisting all the people that he thought was not a Calvinist, and Spurgeon was one of them. He was not a Calvinist, according to this man.

I don't know who he was.

I have a feeling I know who he was, but if it's the same individual, he also condemned John Calvin to hell for not being a Calvinist.

Yes, yes, that's right. I saw that as well. Yes, yes. The last one of the two witnesses, Chris.

And were Hall's critics thoroughgoing Calvinists as well?

No, they weren't. And it was Archbishop Lord, of course, who hated him with quite a venomous approach. And he was, I don't know, there was an attempt to silence all of the reformed men at that time during the reign of Charles I.

And so many men, like John Davenant, the Bishop of, oh gosh, down there in Wiltshire, that well-known cathedral town of Salisbury, all of these men were commanded not to preach on election and predestination.

And John Davenant did in a sermon entitled The Love of God, and he was greatly embarrassed publicly. He was made to wear a penitence gown or cloak and was lectured and chastised by his senior clerics.

So it was a time when the Church was being, as it were, rid of the reformed men who dominated the Church from the time of Edward VI until the coming of Archbishop Lord and Charles I.

Hall’s Meditation as Contemplation of God in Scripture and Creation

Now, the specific area of Joseph Hall's life, legacy, and character that you wanted to highlight is a word that can send chills up reformed people's spines today because it can have scary connotations.

It's the word meditation. And many people, when they hear those, when they hear people who are involved in meditation, promoting meditation, are well-known for meditation, they fear that this may be a reference to Catholic mysticism, even Eastern mysticism.

And today, you have all kinds of bizarre New Age understandings of meditation where the mind is emptied and we become just a sponge for whatever the spirit realm has in store for us to flood our minds as we have emptied it.

And it could be, of course, the people involved in this never admit that this may be the case, but it could be the flooding of satanic ideas and thoughts that flood the emptied mind. So why don't you explain what you mean by Joseph Hall being a master of meditation?

Okay, Chris. Could I just read a couple of commendations of Hall? Because some years ago, I was fortunate to get a book published by Tentmaker. I don't think they're in business any longer.

I think Mike Gadosh has picked up their publications. I'm almost certain of it.

Has he?

Yes, for Solid Ground Christian Books.

They have a mammoth edition of Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the Old and New Testaments by Joseph Hall. And on the back of the cover, they've got three or four really reliable commendations because when we talk about meditation and thinking of the Davidic meditation in the Psalms in Holy Scripture, he shows how, for example, Psalm 19 works on the basis that he didn't have a formula.

It wasn't organized. It was just contemplating in the presence of God, quietly, everything that we could see as evidence of his work as creator, the governor of providence, the one who initiated the plan of salvation and carried it through in Jesus Christ.

But I'll just give a couple of really good commendations on the back of this wonderful book, Chris. It's hard to manipulate. It's heavy. It's a large size. But on the back, it says, from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, need I commend Bishop Hall's contemplations to your affectionate attention?

What a 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...

Continue, brother.

It would become one of the most costly books extant. George Whitfield, though weak, I have 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 to peace and comfort and increase of the love of God, and a contemporary, Peter Masters, at Spurgeon's tabernacle, I don't know if he's still there or even still alive, but he wrote, to read Hall is to read the narrative passages of the Bible through 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 sacred record, and to hear his reflections and responses of his own heart. Seldom did anyone combine such easy prose with so many profound comments.

So he's well recommended by the Reformed constituency, Chris. And without reading Psalm 19, he points out the three bases. Again, as I say, it's not a set formula. It's not organized. It's just people looking around and seeing what invites you to gaze upon God, God as creator, God as redeemer.

And because he has created everything, everything can be a spur to thinking about him. You know, for instance, if you see something made of wood, what does wood remind you of? You think of all the trees mentioned, their significance in the Bible, but the one I go to readily is the wood of the cradle in which he was nurtured as an infant, the wood of the cross in which he died in our stead.

He says anything, anything in all creation can trigger thoughts about God. And he sees this in Psalm 19, where he talks about the language of creation, the language of the word of God, God speaking as well as acting, and then the Spirit's work, sanctifying us within and cultivating our thoughts and elevating them to that sort of high and sublime level of the heavenly thoughts that guide God.

It grounds to us through our meditation on him as God, creator and redeemer and governor. So it's very flexible. It's not something that is in any way difficult. You don't need to be a specialist. You just look around and whatever you see prompts you to think of God.

By the way, I do want to let our audience know that they can rest at ease. Dr. Peter Masters is still with us. He is still the pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England. I'm assuming that he hasn't gone home to be with the Lord after this past Sunday when he preached there, according to their website.

So I just thought I'd sort of make that clarification.

Thank you, Chris.

We are going to our first break right now, and when we return, brother, if you could just pick up where you left off, if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question on our subject today, Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation, or if they just have a general question on Anglicanism, and specifically Reformed Anglicanism, Confessional Anglicanism, Historic Anglicanism, or any topic related to the scriptures that involves Anglicanism, we would love to hear from you.

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We are now back with my friend, Roger Salter. We are discussing Joseph Hall, Master of Meditation. And if you could pick up where we left off, Roger, we were comparing and contrasting Joseph Hall's method of meditation as opposed to the heretical idea that many of us immediately have pop into our heads when we hear the word because of the fact that we have all kinds of bizarre religious practices that involve meditation that are very foreign to the scriptures.

So if you could pick up where you left off.

Certainly, Chris. Before I elaborate a little on his recommendation of meditation, which I would say is just contemplation or gazing upon God as prompted by what we see, what we read and hear in scripture, and what the Holy Spirit suggests to us in the process of sanctification and illumination in our own hearts.

It was not a technique. It wasn't anything mysterious or strange, as you've indicated in other theological and spiritual tendencies. But just to reassure folk about the reliability of Hall's theology and thought, could I just give a couple of brief quotes?

Of course.

Yeah, this is from Huntley's biography of Joseph Hall, and they're quite brief. He was chosen as one of the four delegates from the English church to represent English Christianity at the Synod of Dort.

We know that King James wanted a refutation of Arminianism, and he chose the best possible men, their character and their understanding and spirituality to represent the Church of England. So I'll just read two or three brief passages, Chris.

It says, so well, in fact, did Joseph Hall get along with royalty and the Calvinists that the king appointed his loyal, obedient and learned servant of the church to be one of his four representatives at the Synod of Dort held at Dortrecht, Holland from November 1618 to May 1619.

There had been a long and passionate demonstration of the position that King James would have his delegates take in that famous debate. And so one of the men he chose was Bishop Hall. And over the next page, he says, the king to represent him at the Synod of Dort.

King James chose, besides Dean Joseph Hall of Worcester, the newly appointed Bishop George Carden of Clandaff, John Davenant, the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and Dr. Samuel Ward, Master of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge.

These are all devout and stout-hearted reformational men. That's me, not Huntley. But he says, according to Thomas Fuller, who was the church historian of the day, the king called these men to Newmarket, well in advance in order to instruct them.

Practice your Latin, agree among yourselves, and speak for moderation. But it is clear that the purpose of sending an English delegation to Dort was to condemn Arminianism and other hellish doctrines emanating from the University of Leyden.

In keeping with this persistent bad luck when traveling, Hall, with the rest of the party, unaccountably missed the Dutch man of war especially sent for them, the ship. And he had to leave the Synod early on account of another serious intestinal infection.

But here it is, after the Synod of Dort, and John Davenant is again regarded as one of the great Anglican Puritans, Puritan in theology, if not in ecclesiastical convictions. It says here, though the English delegates of Dort knew better than most Englishmen, except perhaps the king, that Arminianism and Socinian gangrene were not identical, nevertheless they had to side with the Calvinist majority because of their ordination vows to uphold the 39 articles of the Church of England.

Writing on this question to Bishop Davenant, Hall said, and this is what I wish, yes, it's an extreme statement, but I wish all those ordained to Anglican ministry would note this, our confessional basis.

I do confidently avow, this is Bishop Hall, that those other opinions of Arminius cannot stand with the doctrine of the Church of England, which Davenant replied, I know that no man can embrace Arminianism in the doctrines of predestination and grace, but he must desert the articles agreed upon by the Church of England.

So really there's a sense in which Dort is in the background of Anglican thinking. We've got our articles to confirm our belief in reformational truth, we've got our homilies which are left to us to establish our doctrinal stance.

The other thing that's rather amusing and appealing about Joseph Hall, although he had to leave the synod early because of an infection, he was given a beautiful medal of solid gold. The other delegates received silver replicas almost three inches in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick.

Hall wore this medal as a pectoral ornament to the end of his days. He was so pleased with that medal that he received from Dort that he wouldn't part with it. He wore it daily. So I think that advertises quite clearly what his theological convictions were.

Well, we have a question for you from Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania. Joseph says, those outside of Anglicanism do not typically know or take advantage of and benefit from many of the great minds of Anglicanism from the past.

Typically, the only two names that would come to mind by a reformed non-Anglican would be John Owen and J .C. Ryle. Why is it that you think this is the case and is John Hall the... Is John Hall... I'm sorry, I think our listener has a typo.

Is Joseph Hall well known amongst Anglicans even though he is not amongst the non-Anglican Christians?

Well, first of all, I must mention that John Owen was not an Anglican. He was Congregationalist, independent and one of the frames of the Savoy Confession of Faith. So he was not Anglican. He had a very important post at one of the universities, of course.

I'm not sure... I didn't bring that name up, so I'm not sure why you're referring to him.

No, no. I just wanted to be... So many other Puritans were Anglican and it's not to set a distinction between them. They were all Puritan, even John Dunn, the poet. A lot of his biographers do not recognise the fact that his soteriological thought about the way of salvation was thoroughly Puritan, as Puritan as Calvin and Augustine.

He was called the English Augustine. But Hall is known to some extent outside the boundaries of the Reformational Anglican movement because of his godliness, his piety and his comments on scripture. So many of them probably wouldn't recognise that he was, as he happened to be, a distinctly Reformational man.

But as I say, the majority of Anglicans and there are all kinds of approaches in Anglicanism that are confusing so many tribes within the movement. But the fact is that most of them have a detestation of Reformational doctrine.

Although predestination is at the heart of our movement, Calvin... Sorry, Cranmer was wanting to construct his whole notion of the Church and how it should operate on the doctrine of predestination. Very few people recognise that and it's why the majority of churchmen into, you know, the following generations and centuries even despised Cranmer.