SOURCE: Tourney, Leonard D. “The Taxonomy of Morals.” In Joseph Hall, pp. 43-65. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979.

In this essay, Tourney surveys Hall's polemical writings in the period between the satires of his early career and his later tracts on ecclesiastical policy. Discussing Heaven Upon Earth, Characters of Vertues and Vices, Epistles and Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practical Cases of Conscience, Tourney finds Hall to be in the mainstream of moral philosophy for his time.

Established at Hawstead, Hall turned moralist, a role for which he was well prepared by education and temperament. Yet his decision to give up the flail for the ferule was neither sudden nor radical. The satirist is always a moralist after a fashion; his business, too, is the critique of values, and although his methods are crude and caustic he shares the moralist's concern for the ethical betterment of his race. The truth...