Adams' Style

In his 1955 essay in The Harvard Theological Review entitled Style and the Man: Thomas Adams, Prose Shakespeare of Puritan Divines, William Mulder wrote

The Spartan discipline of so many Puritan preachers, the plain style, seemed to Adams itself a danger. While intending that nothing should detract the mind from the truth being presented, the plain style might actually fail to do justice to an idea, or might even misrepresent it. To convey great or complex impressions required aids to the imagination; on the other hand, to convey things simple and common, platitudes for example, required a presentation that would shock the mind into attention lest their very familiarity breed indifference. To be sure, Adams had the Puritan distrust of the five senses, “the Cinque Ports where all the great traffic of the devil is taken in, ... the pores whereby Satan conveys in the stinking breath of temptation.” Yet with precaution, and for hallowed ends, God’s minister could appeal to them, “That you may Conceive things more spiritual and remote by passions nearer to sense.” It is thus less shocking to find in a Puritan collection a sermon titled “The Crucifix” for it is “a fair and lively crucifix, cut by the hand of a most exquisite carver - not to amaze our corporal lights with a piece of wood, brass, or stone, curiously engraven, to the increase of a carnal devotion but to present to the eye of the conscience the grievous passion, and gracious compassion of our Saviour”.