Treatises Devotional and Practical Author:Joseph Hall Subtitle: Viz. Hearen Upon Earth, the Christian, the Devout Soul, Select Thoughts, Meditation on the Love of Christ, and the Soul's Farewell to Earth General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1834 Original Publisher: J. Hatchard Subjects: Devotional literature Religion / Christian Life / Devotional Religion / Devo... more »tional Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE DEVOUT SOUL; OR, RULES OF HEAVENLY DEVOTION. 105 TO ALL CHRISTIAN READERS GRACE AND PEACE. That in a time when we hear no noise but of drums and trumpets, and talk of nothing but arras and sieges and battles, I should write of devotion, may seem to some of you strange and unseasonable: to me contrarily, it seems most fit and opportune : for, when can it be more proper to direct our address to the throne of grace, than when we are in the very jaws of death? or when should we go to seek the face of our God, rather than in the needful time of trouble ? Blessed be my God, who in the midst of these woeful tumults hath vouchsafed to give me these calm and holy thoughts, which I justly suppose he meant not to suggest that they should be smothered in the breast wherein they were conceived, but with a purpose to have the benefit communicated unto many. Who is there that needs not vehement excitations and helps to devotion ? and when more than now ? In a tempest the mariners themselves do not only cry every man to his God, but awaken Jonah, that is fast asleep under the hatches, and chide him to his prayers. Surely, had we not been failing in our devotions, we could not have been thus universally miserable. That duty, the neglect whereof is guilty of our calamity, must, in the effectual performance of it, be the means of our...« less