Aspects of Piety 17
Other Aspects 02
Adams advocates the orderly piety that we associate with the Puritans. 'We must give the first hour of the day, the first work of our hands, the first words of our lips to the Lord'.
(Works 2, p 536)
'At night we must give account how we have spent our day; happy are we if we can make our reckoning even with God; a day misspent is lost. … I fear too many may say so of the whole day of their lives: I have lost my day.
'Time is precious; and howsoever our prise and lusts think it, God so highly prizeth it that he will punish the loss of a short time with a revenge beyond all times: the misspense of a temporal day with an eternal night. Every hour hath wings, and there is no moment passing from us but it flies up to the Maker of time, and bears him true tidings how we have used it. There I no usury tolerable but of two things, grace and time; and it is only blessed wealth that is gotten by improving them to the best. We brought with us into the world sin enough to repent of all our short day. There is no minute flies over our head without new addition to our sins and therefore brings new reason for our sorrows. We little think that every moment we misspend is a record against us in heaven, or that every idle hour is entered into God’s registry and stands there in capital letters till our repentant tears wash it out. …'. (Works 2, p 88).
He urges self-examination, another typically Puritan activity. He calls for a natural, moral and spiritual self-contemplation, remembering our souls and spirits, considering our frequent sins and searching our hearts so that we sound ‘the lowest depths of conscience’ and spy ‘blemishes in the face of whitest innocence'. (Works 2, p 384).
In his sermon on England’s sickness, Adams commends moderation, labouring in our callings, and abstinence. (Works 1, pp 426, 427). On the second of those subjects he says ‘Let the shoemaker look to his boot, the fisher to his boat, the scholar to his book’. (Works 1, p 383).
'At night we must give account how we have spent our day; happy are we if we can make our reckoning even with God; a day misspent is lost. … I fear too many may say so of the whole day of their lives: I have lost my day.
'Time is precious; and howsoever our prise and lusts think it, God so highly prizeth it that he will punish the loss of a short time with a revenge beyond all times: the misspense of a temporal day with an eternal night. Every hour hath wings, and there is no moment passing from us but it flies up to the Maker of time, and bears him true tidings how we have used it. There I no usury tolerable but of two things, grace and time; and it is only blessed wealth that is gotten by improving them to the best. We brought with us into the world sin enough to repent of all our short day. There is no minute flies over our head without new addition to our sins and therefore brings new reason for our sorrows. We little think that every moment we misspend is a record against us in heaven, or that every idle hour is entered into God’s registry and stands there in capital letters till our repentant tears wash it out. …'. (Works 2, p 88).
He urges self-examination, another typically Puritan activity. He calls for a natural, moral and spiritual self-contemplation, remembering our souls and spirits, considering our frequent sins and searching our hearts so that we sound ‘the lowest depths of conscience’ and spy ‘blemishes in the face of whitest innocence'. (Works 2, p 384).
In his sermon on England’s sickness, Adams commends moderation, labouring in our callings, and abstinence. (Works 1, pp 426, 427). On the second of those subjects he says ‘Let the shoemaker look to his boot, the fisher to his boat, the scholar to his book’. (Works 1, p 383).
Finally, hear him on death.
'All are like actors on a stage, some have one part and some another, death is still busy amongst us; here drops one of the players, we bury him with sorrow, and to our scene again: then falls another, yea all, one after another, till death be left upon the stage. Death is that damp which puts out all the dim lights of vanity. Yet man is easier to believe that all the world shall die, than to suspect himself.' (Puritan Golden Treasury, p 69).
'Death is ready at hand about us, we carry deaths enow within us. We know we shall die, we know not how soon; it can never prevent us, or come too early, if our souls be in the keeping of God.'
(Works 3, p 32).
For the believer it is ‘nothing else but a bridge over this tempestuous sea to paradise’. Though evil in itself it cannot ultimately harm the good, as it is the door to eternal life. He likens the believer’s death to a clock mender dismantling and cleaning a time-piece to make it ‘go more perfectly’.'
(Works 2, pp 227, 228)
'… though the soul is gotten when man is made, yet it is, as it were, born when he dies: his body being the womb, and death the midwife that delivers it to glorious perfection. The good man may then well say … ‘Death shall be my advantage’ … His happiest hour is when … he can say ‘Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my soul’.
'All are like actors on a stage, some have one part and some another, death is still busy amongst us; here drops one of the players, we bury him with sorrow, and to our scene again: then falls another, yea all, one after another, till death be left upon the stage. Death is that damp which puts out all the dim lights of vanity. Yet man is easier to believe that all the world shall die, than to suspect himself.' (Puritan Golden Treasury, p 69).
'Death is ready at hand about us, we carry deaths enow within us. We know we shall die, we know not how soon; it can never prevent us, or come too early, if our souls be in the keeping of God.'
(Works 3, p 32).
For the believer it is ‘nothing else but a bridge over this tempestuous sea to paradise’. Though evil in itself it cannot ultimately harm the good, as it is the door to eternal life. He likens the believer’s death to a clock mender dismantling and cleaning a time-piece to make it ‘go more perfectly’.'
(Works 2, pp 227, 228)
'… though the soul is gotten when man is made, yet it is, as it were, born when he dies: his body being the womb, and death the midwife that delivers it to glorious perfection. The good man may then well say … ‘Death shall be my advantage’ … His happiest hour is when … he can say ‘Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my soul’.
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