Aspects of Piety 01

Introduction

During recent studies in the Puritans I produced an essay on Adams and his piety. It appeared in the journal Foundations in modified form. This is how it began:

But when the gospel came to us in Queen Elizabeth’s days, of so blessed memory, we also had much peace. We had with Gloria in ex celsis Deo, sung also Pax in terris. The iron gates of war were shut up, and the long tossed ark of our church had an olive-branch of flourishing peace bestowed upon it. The fury of an adversary was not known, but ‘righteousness and peace kissed each other.’ Yet was not this peace without great fires:
1. There was a great fire of Anabaptism: a gross, perverse, and sottish sect, that had washed off their font-water as unclean, and thought it not enough to run out of Babylon, unless they ran also out of themselves, out of their wits. …
2. There was a great fire of Brownism: an ignis fatuus, fastening on abundance of crude and squalid matter, that could not easily be extinguished. It was blown up with the bellows of pride; and because it might not have its own swing, it fell to direct railing. They say the church of England may be their mother, but is none of God’s wife. Why do they not call her plain ‘whore?’ for such is a mother that hath children, and no husband. But these the whiles are brave sons, who care not to prove themselves bastards, that their mother may be noted for a harlot. But the shame be their own, integrity hers; who hath not defiled her bed, though they have shamed her womb. …
3. There was a raging fire of the Papists; who to maintain their spiritual fire of superstition, made use of material fire to set a whole land in combustion. How unspeakable were their treasons against that gracious princess! which yet if we gather up into one volume, we shall find their last equalling all: which should have been a fire, a fire indeed, such a one as hell itself could only belch out. But bless we our God, that with sweet showers of mercy rained it out.
These fires have been kindled in a land of peace, though many tears have been showered upon them, and earnest prayers sent up to heaven for their quenching. Yea, and will be still, so long as that crown-shorn generation can transport their burning quills into England; and their great Antichrist, the successor not of Peter, but of Romulus, sits on that fiery chair. …
{See Works of Thomas Adams 2, p 152}

These words were preached in 1623 at ‘the open air pulpit in the church yard of St Paul’s Cathedral’ known as Paul’s Cross. (For a note on Paul's cross see here). They were preached by one Thomas Adams, a man ranked above ‘silver-tongued’ Henry Smith by John Brown (See preface to his 1909 collection of sermons here. Smith, 1560-1591, was a popular Puritan lecturer at St Clement Danes, London; short lived, his works remain in print) and who has been described as ‘one of the most gifted preachers’ of his day (W K Jordan, The development of religious toleration in England 1603-1640, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard UP, 1936, p 155) and the ‘greatest of all early Puritan divines’ (W Fraser Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson: A Study of its Literary Aspects, New York, Russell and Russell, 1932 [reprint 1962]; quoted by Baker).
With well over a million words in print, (besides the sermons in the collected Works there is a massive Commentary on the Second Epistle General of Peter) he is a bright star in a veritable galaxy of 17th Century divines whose reputation today rests chiefly in their literary output. In his own day, Adams was often quoted in commonplace books. (Works 3, p x. Referring to the Library of William Bentley, preserved in Alleghenny College, Edwin Wolf says interestingly ‘He did own, as did most colonial Americans who had a shelf of folios, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the works of Thomas Adams, … the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes’. See here.) Today he is largely forgotten but his works are still available and are still quoted. In the book by I D E Thomas, A Puritan Golden Treasury (Edinburgh, Banner of Truth Trust, 1977) of 145 Puritans quoted, Adams is cited more than most. Only the later eminently quotable William Gurnall (1617-1679) and Thomas Watson (c1620-1686) appear to have provided more material.