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The Three Divine Sisters. Thomas Adams, 1847 Edition, Thomas Nelson, London. 

This is a compilation of treatises by this famed Puritan. They are as follows: The Three Divine Sisters (Faith, Hope, and Love); The Leaven, or, A Direction to Heaven; A Crucifix (On the passion of Christ); the Immutable Mercy of Christ; ; Heaven=s Gate; The Power of Christ, even dying; The Fool and His Sport; The Christian=s Walk; Love=s Copy; God=s Bounty; The Taming of the Tongue.

Adams (? - 1653) was a Puritan preacher of note in England . This set was one of the Nichols Series of Eminent Divines (c1865). He was known as the AShakespeare of Puritan theologians@ (Grosart). AHe was lively, unambiguously Calvinistic, but with a pastoral orientation, thoroughly theocentric in his thinking, saying much that is illuminating on the ways of God in dealing with sinners in both mercy and judgment . . . vigorously outspoken against Rome@ (Packer, The Encyclopedia of Christianity). 

Thomas Adams (1583?-1652) Vilified in a 1647 Puritan tract as "a known profane pot-companion, ... and otherwise a loose liver, a temporizing Ceremony monger, and malignant against the parliament," Thomas Adams was acclaimed in the Nineteenth Century as, the "prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians." His condemnation for presumed anti-Puritan leanings and his rehabilitation as an eminent Puritan divine suggest the ironies of politics and literary history. Like his illustrious contemporary, Bishop Joseph Hall, Adams, though Calvinist in his theology, cannot be called Puritan in any strict use of that vexed term. He maintained a moderate position within the Church of England, suffering persecution for this stance amid the political and ecclesiastical controversies that racked England during the first half of the Seventeenth Century. And like Hall--whose works he knew, admired, and imitated--Adams could appease neither High Church Laudians nor Puritans during those crucial years that hurtled England toward civil war. One of the most popular preachers in London during the first quarter of the Seventeenth Century, Adams fell into disrepute during the sequestrations of the 1640s. Yet the eclipse of his reputation belies the achievement of his earlier career and his enduring stature as a gifted preacher. In his study of Puritan preaching, John Brown ranks Adams above the "silver-tongued" Henry Smith. Morris W. Croll finds Adams an important transitional figure in the development of English prose style. W. Fraser Mitchell calls Adams the "greatest of all early Puritan divines," and Douglas Bush singles out Adams, Andrewes, Donne, and Taylor, as exemplars of seventeenth-century religious prose at its finest. 

Born between 1582 and 1583, Adams was educated at Cambridge , where he took the A. B. in 1601 and M. A. in 1606. Following his ordination in 1604, Adams served at a number of scantily paid rural posts before moving to London . In 1605, Adams was licensed to the curacy of Northill in Bedfordshire, but was dismissed from this post when Northill College Manor was sold. His dismissal marked the beginning of a life-long struggle to maintain himself and his family on the incomes he earned. His own experiences of financial difficulty must have made him keenly aware of the exploitation of the poor that attended the social and economic changes of his own time, for he preached a Gospel of social justice. Resounding with the voice of prophetic utterance, his sermons excoriated particular social abuses that wrung profit from the weak during the profound dislocations that shaped early modern England . 

By 1611, Adams assumed the vicariate of Willington, where he remained until 1614, pursuing his dual ministry of preaching and preparing his sermons for publication. While at Willington, Adams began to distinguish himself as an occasional preacher, appearing twice before the public audience at Paul's Cross, London, and once before the clergy at Bedford for the visitation of the Archdeacon. His first Paul's Cross Sermon, The Gallants Burden (1612) fared respectably in print, passing through three printings by 1616. Preached at Paul's Cross in 1613, The White Devil, his most popular sermon, reached five editions by 1621. Adams also completed his first of several sermon suites, The Devills Banket (1614), which saw two editions. The sermons Adams published during the earlier years of his ministry sound the theme that was to run throughout his career, reveal the rich literary traditions that informed his prose, and demonstrate his consummate skill in accommodating literary forms to his homiletic purposes. In the preface, "Ad Vel in Lectorem," of The Devills Banket, Adams announces his central concern: "The main intents of all preachers and the contents of all sermons aim to beat down sin and convert sinners." Conventional as this concern seems, Adams , like the other great preachers of his day, drew upon a wealth of rhetorical, devotional and literary traditions to forge a distinctive idiom and individualized style. In his preface, "To the Reader," of the 1615 edition of The White Devill, he discloses the literary tradition that exerted the greatest influence on his idiom and style: "It is excepted that I am too merry in describing some vice. Indeed, such is their ridiculous nature, that their best conviction is derision; ... Others say, I am otherwhere too satirically bitter. It is partly confessed." Through his conscious manipulation of satiric conventions, Adams urges his auditors to recognize the absurdity of vice, repudiate their own sin, and seek forgiveness and comfort in the Grace of God. 

Recognized today as a noteworthy preacher in an age characterized by its dazzling pulpit oratory, Adams developed a highly flexible and distinctive homiletic style. Throughout his career, Adams skillfully drew upon the full range of prose styles available to him, blending the old and the new, the Euphuistic and the Senecan, the ornate and the emerging essay styles to create subtle rhythmic effects in his preaching of conversion. Responding to changing literary tastes and developments in genre, Adams modified popular satiric and dramatic conventions to shape sermons at times astonishing in their vitality, wit and affective force. A resourceful writer and learned theologian, who fashioned himself simply, "preacher of God's word," Thomas Adams need not be compared to Shakespeare. His prose can stand on its own. 

(Biographical data extracted from Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Prose Writers of the Early Seventeenth Century. Vol. 151. Edited by Clayton D. Lein. Detroit : Gail Publishers, 1995. 3-10.) 

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