Adams Quotes 06

The following quotations were found here. "Some have a true zeal of a false religion, and some a false zeal of a true religion." Thomas Adams in Heaven made sure "It is one thing for thee to possess sin, another thing for sin to possess thee." Thomas Adams in The Black Saint or The Apostate "Will you trust your five senses above the four Gospels?" Thomas Adams in The Victory of Patience "Nothing but eternity can make either joy or sorrow absolute." Thomas Adams in The Victory of Patience "His goodness without His greatness might fail us; His greatness without His goodness would terrify us." Thomas Adams in The Sacrifice of Thankfulness These are from The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (Martin H Manser) The Law - The law, though it have no power to condemn us, hath power to command us. Marriage - As God by creation made two of one, so again by marriage He made one of two.

Mercy - He that demands mercy and shows none ruins the bridge over which he himself is to pass.

Satan - If thou wilt fly from God, the devil will lend thee both spurs and a horse. Trinity - It is rashness to search, godliness to believe, safeness to preach, and eternal blessedness to know the Trinity.

Also note Heresy - Heresy is - Humano sensu electa, Scripturae sacrae contraria, palam docta, pertinaciter, defensa, - begot of a man’s brain, contrary to the Holy Scriptures, openly taught, and peremptorily defended.

Humility - In Spiritual graces let us study to be great, and not to know it. Satan - Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands; but Satan his millions. Sin, death - Sin is the strength of death and the death of strength.

On death

Ps 82:6,7 Ye are gods; there he considered their pomp and dignity: But ye shall die like men; there he minds their end, that with the change of his note they might also change countenance. He tells them their honour, but withal their lot. In power, wealth, train, titles, friends, they differ from others; in death they differ not from others. They are cold when winter comes, withered with age, weak with sickness, and melt away with death, as the meanest: all to ashes. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower, 1 Pe 1:24: the glory, that is, the best of it, but a flower. No 

great difference, the flower shows fairer, the grass stands longer, one scythe cuts down both. Beasts fat and lean, fed in one pasture, killed in one slaughter. The prince in his lofty palace, the beggar in his lowly cottage, have double difference, local and ceremonial height and lowness; yet meet at the grave, and are mingled in ashes. We walk in this world as a man in a field of snow; all the way appears smooth, yet cannot we be sure of any step. 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.

Adams Quotes 01

The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall.
- [Ambition]

Ahab cast a covetous eye at Naboth's vineyard, David a lustful eye at Bathsheba. The eye is the pulse of the soul; as physicians judge of the heart by the pulse, so we by the eye; a rolling eye, a roving heart. The good eye keeps minute time, and strikes when it should; the lustful, crochet-time, and so puts all out of tune.
- [Eyes]

Conscience is God's deputy in the soul.
- [Conscience]

The covetous man is like a camel with a great hunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made Higher and broader, or he will hardly get in.
- [Covetousness]

The covetous man pines in plenty, like Tantalus up to the chin in water, and yet thirsty.
- [Covetousness]

Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face.
- [Death]

His father was no man's friend but his owne, and he (saith the prouerbe) is no man's for else.
- Diseases of the Soul (p 53) [Enemies]

He who sends the storm steers the vessel.
- [Providence]

Source: GIGA

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).

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’.