John Brown on Adams

This is from John Brown's book Puritan preaching in England; a study of past and present by John Brown (1830-1922). Having spoken of William Perkins and Henry Smith he moves on to Adams

Alongside of Henry Smith, and to be accounted even greater than he as a Puritan preacher, must be placed that Thomas Adams who has been called the Shakespeare of the Puritans. Southey seems to have been the one to start the comparison when he pronounced him to be the "prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians, scarcely inferior to Fuller in wit or to Taylor in fancy." This judgement of Southey's may be qualified and at the same time extended by saying that while Adams is not so sustained as Jeremy Taylor nor so continuously sparkling as Thomas Fuller, he is surpassingly eloquent and much more thought-laden than either. He is like Shakespeare in one thing at least; while we have his works we know extremely little about the man himself. In 1612 he was a ''preacher of God's Word at Willington," a village in Bedfordshire, four miles from Bedford town. And it may be noted by the way that a walk of twenty minutes from his vicarage door would have brought this Puritan Shakespeare to Cardington village, where, in the previous century, George Gascoigne, our earliest English satirist, was born, and that if he had extended his walk some fifteen minutes more he might have looked in at the cottage in Elstow parish where sixteen years later John Bunyan, our greatest English allegorist, first saw the light.

Adams was afterwards vicar of Wingrave in Buckinghamshire and then preacher in one or two London churches, and when we have said this we have said nearly all that can be said to purpose about the man himself. It is with his work as ''a preacher of God's Word," as he styles himself, rather than with his own personal history we are now concerned. As such we may describe him as one of the doctrinal Puritans, though he differed widely from many of the Puritans on the ecclesiastical and political questions of the time. Many of his sermons, like others of the period, were sermons on manners rather than on doctrine and lead us to think of him as a divine moralist rather than as a theologian. Yet a theologian he was, his theology being Calvinistic and Evangelical. He has a great belief that God will make that sure which we cannot make sure. He was not far wrong there, though we may not always be able to accept his way of stating this conviction of his as when he says that the Church is a number of men whom God hath set apart by an eternal decree. Still, he tempers even this when on the other side we find him saying:

"It was not one for one that Christ died, not one for many: but one for all ... and this one must needs be of infinite price."

"Some affirm," says he, "that I have made the gate of heaven too narrow, and they hope to find it wider; God and the Scriptures are more merciful. True it is that heaven-gate is in itself wide enough and the narrowness is in respect of the man who enters; and though thy sins cannot make that too little to receive thee, yet they make thee too gross and unfit to get in."

As for the preacher himself, he would have him consecrate to the service all gifts and the ripest scholarship: "Learning," says he, "as well as office, is requisite for a minister. An unlearned scribe, without his treasure of old and new, is unfit to interpret God's oracles. The priest's lips shall preserve knowledge, is no less a precept to the minister than a promise to the people."

Then, too, the life must correspond to the teaching:

"He that preaches well in his pulpit but lives disorderly out of it, is like a young scribbler: what he writes fair with his hand, his sleeve comes after and blots."

He who serves Christ must not be too eager after the applause of man:

"I do not call thee aside to ask with what applause this sermon passeth, but (it is all I would have and hear) with what benefit ? I had rather convert one soul than have a hundred praise me."

In a sermon on the Fatal Banquet to which Satan invites his guests, he has, he says, many bidders to his feast. Take a short muster of these inviters, these bidders to this banquet of vanity: they have all their several stands. In the Court he hath set Ambition to watch for base minds, that would stoop to any villainy for preferment, and to bring them to this feast. This is a principal bidder. In the Law Courts he sets inviters that beckon contention to them, and fill the world with broils. I mean the libels of the law, pettifoggers, Satan's firebrands which he casteth abroad to make himself sport, and wlio do more hurt among the barley, the commons of this land, than Samson's foxes with the fire at their tails. "Oh," says he, "that they were shipped out for Virginia, for they cannot live without making broils " - which is a little hard upon Virginia, as we cannot but think. Pride is another bidder, and keeps a shop in the city. You shall find a description of her shop and take an inventory of her wares from the prophet - "the tinkling ornaments, the cauls, and the moontires." "She sits upon the stall, and courts the passengers with a What lack ye?"

"Making a corner " in the market seems not to have been so modern an invention as we had supposed, for Adams tells us that Engrossing is another of Satan's inviters and hath a large walk; sometimes he watcheth the landing of a ship; sometimes he turns whole loads of corn besides the market. This bidder prevails with many a citizen, gentleman, farmer, and brings in infinite guests. Bribery too is an officious fellow, and a special bidder to this feast. He invites both forward and freward: the forward and yielding, by promises of good cheer, that they shall have a fair day of it; the backward honest man, by terrors and menaces that his cause shall else go westward. This kind of talk from Puritan books is now three centuries old, but I think you will feel with me there is a very modern ring about it and that it would not be much out of place even in some of the pulpits of to-day.

We remember how Shakespeare makes Hamlet exclaim, "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!" Here is an exclamation by this other Shakespeare - this Shakespeare among the Puritans, not unworthy to stand beside it. "Oh, how goodly this building of man appears when it is clothed with beauty and honour! A face full of majesty, the throne of comeliness wherein the whiteness of the lily contends with the sanguine of the rose; an active hand, an erected countenance, an eye sparkling out lustre, a smooth complexion arising from an excellent temperature and composition. Oh, what a workman was this, that could raise such a fabric out of the earth, and lay such orient colours upon dust!"

Yet on the other hand this same preacher has to pour forth his sorrowful lament that a being so nobly formed as man should yet spiritually be so insensible. "Isaiah," he says, "had not more cause for Israel than we for England to cry - 'We have laboured in vain, and spent our strength for nought.' We give God the worst of all things that hath given us the best of all things. We give God measure for measure, but after an ill manner. For His blessings 'heapen and shaken and thrust together,' our iniquities 'pressed down and yet running over.'" With his pleading words we will close our words to-day: "Come, then, beloved to Jesus Christ, come freely, come betimes. The flesh calls, we come ; vanity calls, we flock; the world calls, we fly; let Christ call early and late. He has yet to say: ' Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.'"

1909 Spectator Review of Sermon Collection

DR. JOHN BROWN has just published a delightful little book of selections from the writings of Thomas Adams, according to Southey "the Shakespeare of Puritan theologians " ("The Sermons of Thomas Adams," Cambridge University Press, ls. 6d. net).

Very little is known of Adams personally; nothing, indeed, save that he was a country parson in the reign of James I. who published sermons, and was the "inward friend" of some of the foremost men of his day, - of William, Earl of Pembroke, and of Sir Thomas Egerton.

Whether or no we agree with Southey (to the mind of the present writer, no man whose didacticism constantly interferes with his sympathy could be called Shakespearean), Thomas Adams's sermons show him to have been a man of genius, and at the same time a man of extraordinarily robust mind; and Dr. Brown has done a service to the public in bringing him once more before their notice.

His disposition was English in a pre-eminent degree. He accepted the Reformed theology, and preached it as the best possible vehicle for the expression of a very real devotion and the only sanction for a common-sense morality.

In secular matters he accepted the status quo as inevitable, if not divinely ordained. He hated rebellion, as he hated oppression. "The common people, like a dead sea," he said, "would be quiet enough" if no man stirred them, "if these blustering winds did not put them in tumult."

The oppressor, however, finds no mercy. Such a one shall "run full butt against the gates of hell and break his neck, and he that at the bars of temporal judgments cried out for nothing but justice, justice, and had it, shall now cry louder for mercy, mercy, and go without it."

He made dogma always the handmaid of morality. He could forgive a dissolute man, but not a hypocrite; a spendthrift, but not a miser. He could see some good in a man of opposite opinions, but none in one of uncertain mind. He regarded abstract speculation as sheer waste of force, the deliberate springing of a leak in the seaworthy ship of conviction.

The great attraction of his sermons lies in their power to express the Englishman's normal way of thinking in the best English of the best period, and to draw satiric portraits of immortal types.

Take first of all the picture of the man who suffers from "the spiritual staggers," - a cruel name, we all feel to-day, for a very sad complaint. All the same, the contempt expressed by Adams is still the sentiment of the majority:-

"Opinion is his sail : he resolves not to resolve. He knows not what he doth hold. He opens his mind to receive motions, as one opens his palm to take a handful of water - he hath very much, if he could hold it. He is sure to die, but not what religion to die in; he demurs like a posed lawyer, as if delay could remove some impediments. He is drunk when he riseth, and reels in a morning fasting. He knows not whether he should say his Pater noster in Latin or English, and so leaves it and his prayers unsaid."

Such a man can find no place of rest in a period of transition, whether he live in the time of Elizabeth or Edward VII. "To-day he goes to the quay to be shipped for Rome, but before the tide come, his tide is turned. Even his published utterance pins him to no conclusion. The child of his own brains within a week he is ready to judge a bastard."

Many a man born in England of English parents has, in Adams's eyes, no right to the name, but is a "semi-atheistical cosmopolite."

"He receives many judgments, retains none, embracing so many faiths that he is little better than an infidel. Thus his breast is full of secret combats, contradictions, affirmations, negatives; and, whiles he refuseth to join with others, he is divided in himself."

Our preacher regards the Bible, in theory, as an absolute authority, but when the New Testament puzzles him be has not much hesitation in setting it aside. A stick, he tells us, is a better protection than the Gospel against a dog who is going to bite.

Persecution revolts Adams. At the same time, be has an instinctive dread of "singularity." It is easy to think too much, he is convinced. Because a man is thoughtful he is not to regard every province of thought as his own:-

"There is a generation of men that are too laborious: curious statesmen in foreign commonwealths, busy bishops in others' dioceses, scalding their lips in their neighbour's pottage. This is an ambitious age of meddlers; there are almost as many minds as men, sects as cities, gospels as gossips : as if they laboured the reducing of the old chaos and first informity of things again."

But if Adams has a poor opinion of the men whose convictions are dissolved by much thinking, he has still less of those whose action is hampered by want of courage:-

"He conceives what is good to be done, but fancies difficulties and dangers, like to knots in a bulrush, or rubs in a smooth way. He would bowl well at the mark of integrity, if he durst venture it. He bath no journey to go, but either there are bugs, or he imagines them. Had he a pardon for his brother (being in danger of death,) and a hare should cross him in the way, he would no further, though his brother hanged for it. He owes God some good-will, but he dares not show it. When a poor plaintiff calls him for a witness, he dares not reveal the truth, lest he offend the great adversary."

Worse than all, "he calls his trembling by the name of conscience." With one terrible sentence our author finishes his condemnation. "His religion is primarily his prince's, subordinately his landlord's." While, however, the preacher reprehends those who fear the great, he has a good deal of belief in race and no quarrel with money. "For us, beloved," he says,  we teach you not to cast away the bag, but covetousness." The rich, he assures his audience, have no monopoly of any fault, not even of pride. "Not seldom a russet coat shrouds as high a heart as a silken garment"

Money made by oppression must, he is certain, bring a curse, and a few doles cannot cover the sin. "Perhaps, you think to make amends for all, for you will increase the Stipend of the vicar." God is not deceived because the oppressor bestows  a little whiting " upon a church, or "a wainscot seat for his own worship," nor even by his founding "a little almshouse" to "give twelve pence a-piece a-week to six poor people."

"Riches be God's blessings, (not only in themselves, so they are always good, but to us,) when they are gotten honestly, disposed justly, lost patiently. As much happily might be said, secondly, for honour, wherein I will briefly consider how and when it is of God."

In this "second" matter Adams is peculiarly frank. He says what a very great number of persons still think, but what no one dare say in the pulpit to-day. "That is then only true honour where dignity and desert, blood and virtue meet together; the greatness whereof is from blood, the goodness from virtue. Among fools dignity is enough without desert; among wise men desert without dignity. If they must be separated, desert is infinitely better. Greatness without virtue is commended by others' tongues, condemned in thy own heart. Virtue, though without promotion, is More comforted in thy own content than disheartened by others' contempt. It is a happy composition when they are united." 

In all this little book there is not a suggestion of unction. Adams bathes the hypocrite who has "plenty of divinity," but no humanity "to offer to the suffering. Faithfulness and kindness and patriotism he pleads with all his might. Perhaps the most eloquent passage in all his eloquent sermons describes how "the habit of sin takes away the sense of sin." He supposes that in the beginning Conscience says to a man, "Master, look to thyself." "But he stops her mouth with a violent hand. Yet she would fain speak to him, like the importunate widow, to do her justice. He cannot well be rid of her, therefore he sets her a day of hearing, and when it is come faileth her. She cries yet louder for audience ; and when all his corrupt and bribed affections cannot charm her silence, he drowns her complaints at a tavern, or laughs her out of countenance at a theatre. But if the pulse beats not, the body is most dangerously sick; if the conscience prick not, there is a dying soul."

To illustrate his kindness, let any one who is interested in his writings read his exhortation to the masters of apprentices. Not only does he warn the cruel in terms that must, one hopes, have made a few of these child-persecutors tremble, but he counsels the well-meaning but injudicious to avoid "harsh language, uncomfortable checks, and the discouragement of continual snibs."

As to his patriotism, there is a sermon preached before a company of soldiers (Dr. Brown does not quote it) in which the case for "a nation in arms" is put as surely it has never been put since. What a fine character! - if one may judge of a man by his sermons - convinced, law-abiding, conservative, kindly, and courageous: a true Englishman!

His religion was of a very sincere and very common type. He rested assured that Christ died to save his soul and God lived to preserve his country, that every man knew right from wrong, and if he did not the Scriptures were at hand to explain the difference. As to that higher teaching, those words which were spoken on the Mount of Olives and seemed likely to turn the world upside down, perhaps the man with the "staggers" knew as much about that as he did. Like most of us, he put it aside reverentially as something redounding to the eternal glory of its Author, not to be brought down to the common level of a necessarily faulty practice.