Adams on the wise men

The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendour, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.

Adams on sinful silence

In the Three divine sisters Adams says this

This one office of love is almost forgotten in the world. Our eyes and ears are conscious of many horrid sins, whereof we make also our souls guilty by our silence. Like chameleons, we turn to the colour of our company. Oppressions, that draw blood of the commonwealth, move us not. Oaths, that totter the battlements of heaven, wake us not. Oh, where is our kindness! Whilst we do not reprove, we approve these iniquities. He is conscious of secret guiltiness that forbeareth to resist open iniquity. Thou sayest it is for love's sake thou sparest reprehension. Why, if thou love thy friend never so dearly, yet thou oughtest to love truth more dearly. Let not, then, the truth of love prejudice the love of truth.

Want of a nail

This is a well known nursery rhyme

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
for want of a horse the knight was lost,
for want of a knight the battle was lost.
So it was a kingdom was lost – all for want of a nail.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes gives as the oldest version the words of Adams in his complete sermons of 1629

“The want of a nail loseth the shoe, the loss of a shoe troubles the horse, the horse endangereth the rider, the rider breaking his rank molests the company so far as to hazard the whole army.”

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!"

Google books Update

We notice that besides the Commentary on 2 Peter and another sermon collection a volume from the Works is also now available on Google books.

See here

Adams' Popularity

In her thesis Moira P Baker comments on Adams's popularity. She observes that

In his popular compendium of contemporary eloquence, Things Old and New (1658), John Spencer includes more than sixty excerpts from the works of Adams. William London, in addition, lists Adams’ Workes and his Commentary upon the Second Epistle of St. Peter in his Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England. To his contemporaries, then, Adams was a respected preacher and writer.

Spencer's work has as its full title Kaina kai palaia Things new and old, or, A store-house of similies, sentences, allegories, apophthegms, adagies, apologues, divine, morall, politicall, &c. : with their severall applications / collected and observed from the writings and sayings of the learned in all ages to this present by John Spencer.

Adams on Psalm 141:2 & 147:3

141:2 As the evening sacrifice. This should be our daily service, as a lamb was offered up morning and evening for a sacrifice. But, alas! how dull and dead are our devotions! Like Pharaoh's chariots, they drive on heavily. Some, like Balaam's ass, scarce ever open their mouths twice.

147:13 He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates. Blessed is the city whose gates God barreth up with his power, and openeth again with his mercy. There is nothing can defend where his justice will strike; and there is nothing can offend where his goodness will preserve.

As quoted in Spurgeon's Treasury of David