Garvie on Adams

In his 1921 book Christian preaching A E Garvie has a place for Adams in his history. He puts him between Henry Smith and Thomas Goodwin and says Even greater as a Puritan preacher than Henry Smith was Thomas Adams (died after 1630), "the Shakespeare of the Puritans."

"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." While doctrine of the Calvinistic Evangelical type had a large place in his preaching, he did not overlook morals and manners. He insists on both learning and piety in the preacher, and warns him against seeking the applause of men. In a sermon on the Fatal Banquet he anticipates Bunyan in describing the vanity of human desires and efforts.

The following sentences explain why he was likened to Shakespeare:

"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!"

Aware of man's dignity, he is moved by the tragedy of man's sin and refusal of God's grace.

"Come then, beloved, to Jesus Christ; 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 you might have life!"

Spurgeon quoting Adams

In his Lectures to My Students Spurgeon has a chapter of Anecdotes from the pulpit (Chapter 25). Here is his section on Adams:

Thomas Adams the Conforming Puritan whose sermons are full of rugged force and profound meaning, never hesitated to insert a story when be felt that it would enforce his teaching. His starting-point is ever some Biblical sentence or scriptural history; and this he works out with much much elaboration bringing to it all the treasures of his mind. As Stowe says, ‘Fables, anecdotes, classical poetry, gems from the fathers and other old writers are scattered over almost every page”. His anecdotes are usually rough-and-ready ones, and might be compared to those of Latimer, only they are not so genial; their humour is generally grim and caustic. The following may serve as fair specimens:

THE HUSBAND AND HIS WITTY WIFE
The husband told his wife that he had one ill quality, he was given to be angry without cause. She replied, she would keep him from that fault, for she would give him cause enough. It is the folly of some that they will be offended without cause, to whom the world promises that they shall have cause enough. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.”

THE SERVANT AND THE SERMON
It is ordinary with many to commend the lecture to others’ ears, but few commend it to their own hearts. It is morally true what the Christian Tell-truth relates: A servant coming from church, praiseth the sermon to his master. He asks him what was the text. Nay, quoth the servant, it was begun before I came in. What then was his conclusion? He answered, I came out before it was done. But what said he in the midst? Indeed I was asleep in the midst. Many crowd to get into the church, but make no room for the sermon to get into them.

THE PICTURE OF A HORSE
One charged a painter to draw him equum volitantem, a trotting or prancing horse; and he (mistaking the word) drew him equum volutantem, a wallowing or tumbling horse, with his heels upward. Being brought home, and the bespeaker blaming his error; I would have him prancing and you have made him tumbling. If that be all, quoth the painter, it is but turning the picture wrong side uppermost, and you have your desire. Thus in their quodlibetical discounts they can but turn the lineaments, and the matter is as they would have it. I speak not this to disgrace all their learning, but their fruitless, needless disputes and arguments, who find themselves a tongue, where the Scripture allows them none.

THE PIRATE
As when the desperate pirate, ransacking and rifling a bottom, was told by the master that though no law could touch him for the present he should answer it at the day of judgement; replied, Nay, if I may stay so long ere I come to it, I will take thee and thy vessel too. A conceit wherewith too many land-thieves, oppressors, flatter themselves in their hearts, though they dare not utter it with their lips.

Adams' Style Again

This is again by Mulder

His sermons for the most part follow a scheme inherited from classical and medieval rhetoric: a logical ordering of the ideas explicit in the text arranged by the nicest ingenuities of balance and antithesis. Occasionally he frees himself from this rigid, traditional framework to follow the method, more popular by his time, which clarified the text, raised the doctrine, followed it with the reasons or proofs, and concluded with the uses — evidence that he was a transitional figure working in both old and new ordering, sometimes logical, sometimes purely verbal. Scholastic and Euphuist join talents.

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”.

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Forgiveness ‘God is glorious’ Adams observes ‘in all of his works, but most glorious in his works of mercy’. He suggests that this may be why Paul refers to the glorious gospel in 1 Ti 1:11. (Works 1, p 51). It is in forgiving men’s sins that God shows his greatest glory. In his sermon Mystical Bedlam (Works 1, pp 254-293, see pp 267, 268) he says that the heart needs, emptying, cleansing and replenishing. 'If you welcome repentance, knocking at your door from God, it shall knock at God’s door of mercy for you. It asks of you amendment, of God forgiveness.' He goes on

The heart thus emptied of that inveterate corruption, should fitly be washed before it be replenished. The old poison sticks so fast in the grain of it, that there is only one thing of validity to make it clean - the blood of Jesus Christ. It is this that hath bathed all hearts that ever were, or shall be, received into God’s house of glory. This ‘blood cleanseth us from all sin,’ 1 John 1:1. … In vain were all repentance without this: no tears can wash the heart clean but those bloody ones which the side of Christ and other parts wept, when the spear and nails gave them eyes, whiles the Son of eternal joy became a mourner for his brethren. Could we mourn like doves, howl like dragons, and lament beyond the wailings in the valley of Hadadrimmon, quid prosunt lachrymae - what boots it to weep where there is no mercy? And how can there be mercy without the blood of Christ? This is that ever-running fountain, that sacred ‘pool of Bethesda,’ which, without the mediation of angels, stands perpetually unforbidden to all faithful visitants. Were our leprosy worse than Naaman’s, here is the true water of Jordan, or pool of Siloam ‘Wash, and be clean.’ Bring your hearts to this bath, ye corrupted sons of men. Hath God given you so precious a layer, and will you be unclean still? Pray, entreat, beseech, send up to heaven the cries of your tongues and hearts for this blood; call upon the ‘preserver of men,’ not only to distil some drops, but to wash, bathe, soak your hearts in this blood. Behold, the Son of God himself, that shed this blood, doth entreat God for you; the whole choir of all the angels and saints in heaven are not wanting. Let the meditation of Christ’s mediation for you give you encouragement and comfort. Happy son of man, for whom the Son of God supplicates and intercedes! What can he request and not have! He doth not only pray for you, but even to you, ye sons of men. Behold him with the eyes of a Christian, faith and hope, standing on the battlements of heaven, having that for his pavement which is our ceiling, offering his blood to wash your hearts, which he willingly lost for your hearts; denying it to none but wolves, bears, and goats, and such reprobate, excommunicate, apostate spirits that tread it under their profane and luxurious feet, esteeming that an ‘unholy thing wherewith they might have been sanctified’ Heb. x. 29. Come we then, come we, though sinners, if believers, and have our hearts washed. By his death Christ the Lamb has provided nourishment, covering and cleansing for all who trust in him. His flesh is meat indeed … the fleece of his imputed righteousness keeps us warm, clothes our nakedness, hides out uncleanness. … His blood hath recovered our life, our health, and washed us as white as the snow in Salmon. (Works 2, p 114)

On the fullness of forgiveness he says that ‘Sins are so remitted as if they had never been committed’ (Puritan Golden Treasury, p 110). Of course, without faith all that Christ has done is useless to us. Adams urges 'The blood of Christ runs fresh; but where is thy pipe of faith to derive it from his side to thy conscience? Say it should shower mercy, yet if thou wantest faith, all would fall beside thee. There would be no more favour for thee than if there was no Saviour.' (Works 2, p 276).

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Some Examples 2
5. The points themselves are fleshed out with quotations, sayings, classical allusions, illustrations, stories and fables, similes, metaphors and similar devices. Adams argues ‘God has given us … liberty … not only to nakedly lay down the truth, but with the helps of invention, wit, art, to prevent the loathing his manna. … But … all our hopes can scarce help one soul to heaven.’ (Works 1, p 335).
He often uses Latin and, rarely, Greek, but this is nearly always translated. Often he quotes the Latin to show an alliterative connection not found in English. His favourite ecclesiastical authors are early church fathers such as Augustine, Ambrose and Chrysostom and Bernard of Clairvaux. He also quotes from secular classical authors, Reformers and near contemporaries.
One can get the flavour from these quotations, chosen almost at random,
It is not a sufficient commendation of a prince to govern peaceable and loyal subjects, but to subdue or subvert rebels. It is the praise of a Christian to order refractory and wild affections, more than to manage yielding and pliable ones (Works 1, p 265).
He runs about the seats like a pick-purse; and if he sees a roving eye he presents objects of lust; if a drowsy head, he rocks him asleep, and gives him a nap just the length of the sermon; if he spies a covetous man, he transports his soul to his counting house; and leaves nothing before the preacher but a mindless trunk (Works 2, p 39).
… which way soever a wicked man uses his tongue, he cannot use it well. … He bites by detraction, licks by flattery; … All the parts of his mouth are instruments of wickedness .… lips, teeth, throat, tongue. The psalmographer on every one of these has set a brand of wickedness … This is a monstrous and fearful mouth; where the porter, the porch, the entertainer, the receiver, are all vicious. The lips are the porter, and that is fraud; the porch, the teeth, and there is malice; the entertainer, the tongue, and there is lying; the receiver, the throat, and there is devouring (Works 3, p 21).
6. The love of brief and pithy, often alliterative sayings is a characteristic of his work. Examples abound. Again we choose at random
… many go to hell with the water of baptism on their faces and the assurance of salvation in their mouths.
Generation lost us; it must be regeneration that recovers us.
If men were God’s friends, they would frequent God’s house: there is little friendship to God where there is no respect of his presence, nor affection for his company.
Worldly friends are but like hot water, that when cold weather comes, are soonest frozen.
If we open the doors of our hearts to his Spirit, he will open the doors of heaven to our spirit. If we feast him with a ‘supper’ of grace, Rev 3:20, he will feast us with a supper of glory.
(Works 1, pp 62, 256; Works 2, pp 83, 138; Works 3, p 37)
7. The scriptural hermeneutic is generally sound, though some expositions are rather idiosyncratic. Sometimes individual words are taken up and expounded in a surprising but generally profitable way. Scripture serves both as a source book for illustrations and supporting arguments.
8. Another feature is the way Adams will often take up a minor point and expand on it. Because Pro 14:9 speaks of fools in the plural Adams distinguishes the sad, glad, haughty and naughty fool. In A contemplation of the herbs it is the one word herbs from Heb 6:7 that leads to his consideration of some 13 herbs or flowers, to each of which he attaches a virtue, which he then expounds.
Adams’ method means that almost every line is rich with spiritual teaching. One cannot read very far in his sermons without finding something spiritually striking and wholesome.

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Some Examples 1 It is perhaps the superior homiletical and literary quality of his work that stands out in Adams. It is one of the things that makes him notable. In these areas he shows strength at every point. 1. There are the very titles of some sermons (Baker says that ‘the many provocative titles of Adams’ sermons’ suggest that ‘he appealed to the popular taste for the sensational evident in the drama of his time.’) The works contain nearly 60 different ones. Many are striking. For example, A generation of serpents; Mystical Bedlam; The sinner’s passing bell; England’s sickness; The Black Saint; Majesty in misery; The White Devil; Spiritual Eye-salve; Love’s copy. Giving good titles to sermons is perhaps a dying art in some quarters that could be usefully revived. 2. He often has good introductions. For example A true Christian’s life is one day of three meals, and every meal hath in it two courses. His first meal is … to be born a sinner, and to be new born a saint. … His second meal is … to do well, and to suffer ill. … His third meal is, … to die a temporal death, to live an eternal life. Or The great bishop of our souls now being at the ordination of his ministers, having first instructed them in via Domini, doth here discipline them in vita discipuli; ...

(Works 3, p 22; Works 2, p 109) 3. Angus commends the choice of texts, each of which is for him a sermon in itself. ‘Have we rightly appreciated in the modern pulpit’ he asks ‘the importance of a good text?' (p xxv)’ Sometimes the texts are carefully placed in their context; often they are not. The printed sermons range from Genesis to Revelation. Some 27 are from Old Testament texts. Over 60% of these are, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the wisdom books. (John H Primus, Richard Greenham: Portrait of an Elizabethan Pastor, Macon, Georgia, Mercer UP, 1998 notes that Greenham had a similar preference for Psalms and Proverbs). Of the 38 New Testament texts, over 30% are from the Gospels and nearly half from Paul and Hebrews. In some instances we have brief consecutive series of sermons (Series of consecutive sermons are found on Ge 25:27 (2); Ps 66:12, 13 (3); God’s bounty Pr 3:16 (2); The fatal banquet Pr 9:17, 18 (4); Je 8:22 (4); Mt 2:11, 12 (2); Ep 5:2 (3); Heb 6:7, 8 (5) 4. The structure of the sermons is not the later Puritan pattern of exposition, then doctrine then uses or application. Among stranger approaches include The Gallants Burden which includes sketches, in the tradition of the medieval descriptio, of four ‘scorners’ who destroy the commonwealth - atheists, epicures, libertines and ‘common profane’ clergy; the way The White Devil includes a series of 12 characters modelled on Joseph Hall and, most unusually, the examination of the nature, cause, symptoms and cure of 19 bodily diseases with an allegorical scrutiny of parallel vices that plague the soul, in Diseases of the Soul from 1616. Other examples are the figure of the hunt in Politic Hunting (1629) where he structures his characters of the powerful who prey on the weak by picturing the depopulator as a wild boar, the cheater as a crafty fox, the usurer as a wolf, the grain engrosser as a badger. We have mentioned his approach in A Generation of Serpents (1629), he uses a similar one in his references to thorns, briars and brambles rending the flesh of the commonwealth in A Forest of Thorns, 1616. In Eirenopolis he allegorises London’s gates in an appeal for peace amid the growing factionalism of the time. Even when his sermon structure is formally typical, Adams often transcends it with striking ways of presenting the material. On Heb 13:8 he has three points but speaks, most engagingly, of a centre, a circumference and a mediate line. The immovable centre is Jesus Christ. The circumference, that runs around about him here, is eternity …. The mediate line referring them is, ó aùtos, the same: … In one particularly striking example, on Ecc 9:3, he takes the phrases in order The heart of the sons so men is full of evil, then and madness is in their heart while they live:, finally and after that they go to the dead. His powerful imagination is so active that he comes up with no less than six conceits in which to couch his three points. Grammar - man’s comma, colon, period; journey – setting forth, peregrination, journey’s end; arrow – born from the bow, wild flight, into the grave; argument – harsh and unpromising proposition, wickedness; hopeless proposition, madness; inevitable conclusion, death; race - man’s beginning full of evil, the further he goes the worse it is, in frantic flight he falls into the pit; stairs – a three step descent.

Aspects of Piety 07

Style 1a The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says that Adams' 'numerous works display great learning, classical and patristic, and are unique in their abundance of stories, anecdotes, aphorisms and puns.' It argues that his printed sermons ‘placed him beyond all comparison in the van of the preachers of England’. It also quotes Robert Southey’s oft-repeated suggestion that he be considered ‘the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians’.

Britannica itself suggests he ‘had something to do with shaping John Bunyan’ and, following Southey, draws favourable comparisons with Thomas Fuller, for wit, and Jeremy Taylor, for imagination. Southey's actual statement is that Adams was ‘scarcely inferior to Fuller in wit or Taylor in fancy’ (see New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia here). Stowell (p xvi) speaks of ‘the poetic splendour of the imagery’ in Taylor and Adams.

Note: Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) was a historian and preacher and one of the 17th Century’s most witty and prolific authors. (Left above). Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) a theological and devotional writer, was a distinguished preacher and author of many noted works. He was made a bishop after the Restoration. (Right above). Along with Adams’ known friendship with Donne, it is no surprise that he, like Bunyan and some few others, has attracted the attention of University English departments as well as historians and evangelical believers. See Moira Baker's essay here.

(Note: she lists 5 dissertations – her own The Homiletic Satires of Thomas Adams, Notre Dame, 1982; Cabell V Flanagan, A Survey of the Life and Works of Thomas Adams, Pennsylvania, 1954; David Mills Harralson, The Sermons of Thomas Adams, Kent State, 1969; Laurence Hedges, Thomas Adams and the Ministry of Moderation, California Riverside, 1974; Francis Xavier Prior, Animal Analogy in the Writings of Thomas Adams, St Johns, 1969.) Adams has been spoken of as being ‘weighty in thought and vigorous in style’. (See Schaff-Herzog on preaching). Walsham refers to him as ‘That most poetical of Jacobean preachers’ (p 281).

Aspects of Piety 05

Latter days It is difficult to explain the abrupt disappearance from public view that follows. Much of Adams’ preaching would have been distasteful to Laud, Bishop of London by 1628, and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633. He increasingly worked to silence any suspected of Puritan leanings. It may be significant that Adams’ friend and patron, metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631), died in 1631. Donne had been Dean of St Paul’s since 1621. His removal may have diminished Adams’ standing.
[Donne, ‘England’s greatest love poet’ and leader of the metaphysical school, is also noted for his religious verse, treatises and sermons. Adams dedicated The Barren Tree, preached at Paul’s Cross, 1623, to Donne. Daniel Doerksen (‘Milton and the Jacobean Church of England’, Early Modern Literary Studies 1.1, 1995) helpfully points out how in the 1620s ‘ … there was no great divide between moderate conformists like John Donne and moderate or even fully conforming puritans.’ He notes that Donne was not only Adams’ friend but had been able to ‘satisfy the benchers at Lincoln’s Inn, where his predecessor and successor as reader in divinity were the moderate puritans Thomas Gataker and John Preston.’ He says ‘There is good evidence to show that … Donne … was not essentially a Laudian, but identified strongly with the rather Calvinist Jacobean Church.’]

At the same time, Adams’ staunch defence of the monarchy and ecclesiastical hierarchy must have counted for something. Perhaps it was his strong Calvinism, his view that matters of ceremony were ‘indifferent’, his fierce criticism of the popish ‘idolatry’ that threatened to creep back in and his popularity, that combined to bring about his disappearance from public view.
For evidence of Adams' Calvinism see Angus, Works 3, pp xxvii, xxviii. In a piece of unwarranted hyperbole, Angus says ‘Adams is as fair a representative of Calvinistic doctrine as Calvin himself.’!

Thinking on the Jacobean church has altered greatly since the 19th Century. It is no longer acceptable to posit the idea that Anglicans and Puritans were distinct and coherent groups, with no middle ground. It is incorrect to suppose that there were no moderate or non-separatist Puritans or that only Puritans were Calvinists and interested in doctrine and preaching. Doerksen says that Milton’s high esteem for Calvin was probably shared by most leaders of the Jacobean church. Anti-popish sentiments abound in Adams. To complaints of excess he answers ‘I can often pass his door and not call in; but if he meets me full in the face and affronts me, for good manners’ sake, … I must change a word with him.’ (Works 1, p 203).
Ironically, he had few friends on the Puritan side and their rise to power in the 1640s would not have helped him either. Phrases such as this could have been seized upon ‘The unicorn – that is, the hypocrite – the foul-breasted, fair-crested, factious Puritan hath but one horn; but therewith he doth no small mischief,’ ‘And there be bawling curs, rural ignorants; that blaspheme all godliness under the name of Puritanism.’ (Works 2, pp 118, 119). He was denounced in a 1647 Puritan tract as ‘a known profane pot-companion, ... and otherwise a loose liver, a temporising ceremony monger, and malignant against the parliament.’ (Cf Baker, Dictionary of Literary Biography)
His loyalty to the king, tolerance of ceremony and support for episcopalian church government would have made him objectionable to many. Unable to escape the political vicissitudes of his times, Adams, may well have been sequestered as were many clergy unsympathetic to the Parliamentarian cause. (Cf Angus, relying on Newcourt’s Repertorium, Works 3, pp ix, xiii). Angus is sceptical and suggests that other factors may have brought the living to an end. By 1642 he was probably no longer Rector of St Benet’s, though probably remaining in the rectory.
Stowell and Angus helpfully speak of Adams as a ‘Doctrinal Puritan’ in order to emphasise that although he was Calvinistic, Anti-papist and a preacher of the Word, he did not make a stand on issues of rites, forms and ceremonies from the church’s Roman past. ( Cf Angus, Works 3, p xiii; Stowell, p xiv). Adams prized unity and often railed against the schismatic tendencies of some in the Puritan party. (He speaks of Anglican efforts to deal with Roman ceremonies by reducing them ‘for their number to paucity, for their nature to purity, for their use to significancy’. ‘Separate we not then from the church’ he says ‘because the church cannot separate from all imperfection’. Works 2, p 156.)