Admired for his learning, his wit, and his genial temper, "the ever memorable" John Hales belonged to the philosophic circle of Great Tew. He was the oldest member of that group of thinkers and writers with whom Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, surrounded himself at his country estate near Oxford during the 1630s. Hales's devoted friends, especially Edward Hyde (later earl of Clarendon), William Chillingworth, Sidney Godolphin, Edmund Waller, and Cary, sought out his company and cherished his memory--the inalienable epithet expresses the extraordinary regard in which he was generally held. Hales deeply impressed and profoundly influenced most who knew him. But little of his work was published in his lifetime. The collected sermons, tracts, and letters represent a meager offering for one so highly honored, yet it is easy to detect in his writing something of the irenic spirit, the tough and determined intellect, and the felicitous...