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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Style 1c

There is evidence that Adams had read the works of several of his predecessors and contemporaries and he has been compared with nearly all the writers we have named. His scholarship reminds the reader of that ‘great gulf of learning’ Bishop Andrewes. (Though Adams is often compared with Taylor, Andrewes and Donne [see pic], a scholar like Seaver is still clear on the difference between ‘a witty sermon preached by Lancelot Andrewes or John Donne’ and ‘one in the plain style of Richard Sibbes or Thomas Adams’. Cf Seaver, p 181).

In sketching a character he is not inferior to Overbury or Earle. In fearless denunciations of sin, in pungency and pathos, he is sometimes equal to Latimer (1485-1555, Protestant Reformer and martyr. See pic of him preaching.) or to Richard Baxter. For fancy, we may, after Southey, compare him for imagination, with Taylor; for wit, with Fuller. In one sermon at least, that on the Temple, there is an occasional grandeur that brings to memory the kindred treatise of Howe. Joseph Hall is probably the writer he most resembles in richness of scriptural illustration and in fervour of feeling; in soundness of doctrine he is certainly equal; in learning, and power, and thought, he is superior. (Angus, xxi)
To the names mentioned here perhaps we could add those of the early Puritans Greenham and Smith. (Henry Smith was a disciple of Richard Greenham (1531-1591) who laboured for 20 years in the village of Dry Drayton and became famous for his counselling work). William Haller writes of the characteristic of Greenham and Smith’s sermons as being ‘plain and perspicuous’ in that they are composed in straightforward lucid sentences not without wit but avoiding preciosity and the ostentation of erudition.
They were also influenced by the mediaeval tradition of making war on wickedness ‘by attacking its several varieties’, leading to ‘more or less realistic description of actual manners and morals’, the creation of ‘characters’ and the portrayal of social types. Haller goes on to say that these traits in Greenham and Smith are also found, in varying degrees, in other Calvinists and Puritans of the time. Alluding to Southey’s statement, he cites Adams as 'No Shakespeare but a late and extreme though brilliant example of the persistence of these traditions'. (William Haller, Rise of Puritanism, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972, pp 30, 31).

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Style 1b

Angus assembles a host of names from the worlds of literature and divinity that have been linked with Adams. In his youth he was the contemporary of the race that adorned the reign of Elizabeth, – Spenser, Shakespeare and Jonson, Bacon and Raleigh.

Note: Edmund Spenser (1552/3-1559) wrote the long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene. William Shakespeare (1564-1615) and Ben Jonson (1572-1637) were the chief dramatists of their day and accomplished poets. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) lawyer, statesman, philosopher and master of the English tongue, served as Lord Chancellor 1618-21. He is remembered both for his literary and his political skills. Walter Raleigh (1554?-1618) was the enigmatic adventurer and writer and favourite of Elizabeth later accused of treason and executed in James’ reign.

Among the men of his own age were Bishops Hall and Andrewes, Sibbes, author of the Bruised Reed and the Soul’s Conflict, Fuller the historian, and now in the church and now out of it, Hildersham and Byfield and Cartwright.

Note: Joseph Hall (1574-1656) [pic 1] was at the Synod of Dort, 1618, and a bishop by the early 1640s. A moral philosopher and satirist, remarkable for his literary versatility and innovation. He wrote the first English satire successfully based on Latin models and emulated ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus with Characters upon Vertues and Vices 1608. Adams calls him ‘our worthy divine and best characterer’. Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) [pic 2] was a theologian and master of rhetoric. He earned a reputation as an eloquent and learned court preacher, seeking to defend and advance Anglicanism. Both were influenced by Puritanism in early life. Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) celebrated in Dever’s book, mentioned elsewhere on this site, Arthur Hildersham (1563-1631), Nicholas Byfield (1579-1622) and Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603) – all popular Puritan authors.

Earle was busy writing and publishing the Microcosmography and Overbury had already issued his Characters. A little before him flourished Arminius and Whitgift, Hooker and Reynolds; and a little after him Hammond and Baxter, Taylor and Barrow, Leighton and Howe.

Note: John Earle (1601?-1665) Bishop of Salisbury in his final years, wrote Microcosmography, a collection of witty characterisations, his best known work, 1628. Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) was an enormously popular poet and essayist. His sketch in verse, A Wife (1614), outlines his idea of the perfect wife. To it he appended over 80 character sketches, ‘a collection marked by its extravagant fancy, pungent wit, and flippant mockery of social folly’ according to Baker. She says ‘One of the most striking literary features of Adams’ sermons is his ubiquitous use of the satiric prose character, a form introduced into English prose by Joseph Hall. … Drawing upon both Hall and the Overburians, Adams shapes characters appropriate to his preaching of conversion.’

Controversial theology professor Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609); Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift (1530-1604); architect of Anglicanism, Richard Hooker (1554?-1600) are well known figures. Westminster divine Edward Reynolds (1599-1676) became Bishop of Norwich. Henry Hammond (1605-1660) a Royalist scholar and preacher. Oratory admired by Charles I. Richard Baxter (1615-1691) prolific Puritan writer and activist. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) mathematician, chaplain to Charles II, controversial writer of weight, chiefly against the papacy. Adams ‘may be fitly compared to Barrow in the thoroughness which exhausts his subjects’ (sic) says Stowell (p xvi). Presbyterian Robert Leighton (1611-1684) celebrated for his commentary on 1 and 2 Peter, was cruelly persecuted for attacking the bishops. John Howe (1630-1705) chaplain to Cromwell, was ejected 1662.

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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).