This extract is from W Fraser Mitchell's English Pulpit Oratory From Andrewes to Tillotson published by SPCK in 1932. See pp 214-216
Adams’ sermons are particularly rich in topical allusion and, … he drew upon contemporary deposit of strange and curious learning secured at one and the same time an edifying moral rhetorical effect. One feature of his work, however, calls for special remark - his great familiarity with the Classics and his almost instinctive habit of quoting from them. Not after his first college-addresses as a young don do we find allusion to the Classics in Andrewes (see pic), and even in case of the Puritan archbishop Abbot, whose ‘Exposition upon the Prophet Jonah’’ contains numerous quotations from the Classics, it must be remembered that such quotations occur in university discourses. With Adams, on other hand, preaching at times, it is true, before distinguished patrons but, for the most part, to a City auditory, classic allusions are constant, and classical quotations so numerous that it is difficult to open his works at random without lighting on some reference to the stories of Aesop or the Metamorphoses, or finding a quotation from Juvenal, Horace, Martial, or, most frequently of all, Seneca. This feature of his work links him up closely with Joseph Hall, and together they point forward to what was to be a distinguishing characteristic of Tillotson. Adams’ habit, however, translating his quotations, when they are in verse, in doggerel couplets - a device familiar to readers of Florio’s Montaigne and other translations of the period - was unique and is proof of the early date of his work.
Another feature of Adams’ sermons, in this case connect with their publication, which is of more than passing interest, is the strange and arresting titles under which they appeared. Burton’s well-known gibe about men rushing to print with sermons to which they gave titles likely to attract public attention, although principally directed against those who sought to impress by pointing to distinguished auditories before whom they had preached, might equally well have been directed against those who endeavoured to give to their printed discourses the advantages enjoyed at the present day by the novel but then confined to the pamphlet and the play; and, in an age of alluring sermon titles Adams’, it may certainly be claimed, secured a high place. Two of his titles, moreover, The Sovles Sicknesse and Mysticall Bedlam, serve not only as striking advertisements for printed sermons, but also usher in collections of characters written round a leading idea. We are not surprised, therefore, for this and other reasons, to learn from one of Adams’ prefaces, that by contemporaries he was considered a trifle fanciful, and given to allegories and rhetorical flourishes; but in point of fact such sermons are merely specimens of the "figure sermons" beloved of Spanish preachers, some of whom, according to Claude, even laid down rules for preaching in this manner. Robinson, Claude’s editor, in a note, further informs, us that so great a preacher as Cardinal Borromeo, in his Oration to the clergy of Milan, delivered at the opening of his sixth Provincial Council, indulged in a composition of this kind, in which various sins are depicted in turn by their resemblance to physical diseases, very much in the manner of Adams’ earlier discourse. From Robinson’s note we further learn that this fashion of strange titles and series of religious contemplations paralleled by descriptions drawn from some variegated sphere in life flourished considerably in England in the 40 years which ended about 1590. Adams' productions, therefore, represent a survival rather than an innovation.
Note Some of his more outstanding titles may be mentioned in passing. His first recorded sermon was The Gallants Burden, followed soon after by The Devills Banket, a series of six sermons, each with a separate title: 1. The Banket Propounded, Begun 2. The Second Service 3.The Breaking up of the Feast 4. The Shot 5. The Sinners Passing-Bell 6. Physicke from Heauen. Others are Politicke Hunting, The Three Divine Sisters, The White Devil (Or the Hypocrite Vncased: In a Sermon Preached at Paules Crosse, March ... 1612, the same year as the publication of Webster’s play; probably this represents a topical hit), The Cosmopolite and The Spirituall Navigator.
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