ADAMS, THOMAS. - English Protestant preacher, b. ca. 1590, and d. ca. 1653. In 1612 he was an Anglican minister at Willington; in 1614 he obtained the pastorate at Wingrave, and probably held it until 1636. From 1618 onward he often preached in London, at St. Gregory's, St. Paul's and Whitehall.
He was also observant chaplain to Sir Henry Montague, chief justice of the realm, to whom he dedicated in 1618 The Happines of the Church; or a description of those Spiritual Prerogatives wherever Christ hath endowed her considered in contemplation upon part of the twelfth chapter to Hebrew; being the sum of divers sermons preached in St. Gregorie's, London. He had friendly relations with the most prominent figures of the English Church and State; but his anti-Catholic zeal aroused the aversion of Laud, to the detriment of his career.
His sermons, which, despite some inconsistency and lack of good taste, have an irresistible charm and display an imposing erudition, at first published occasionally, and later collected in volumes (for the first time in 1629), place him among the most celebrated preachers of his time. He was rightly called the Shakespeare of prose among the Puritan theologians, comparable to Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller, whom he surpasses in richness of ideas, though being perhaps less brilliant. In 1633 he published in London the great Commentary on the Second Epistle of S. Peter. His works were reprinted by Th. Smith in Nicol's Puritan Divines (3 vols., London 1862), preceded by a biography written by Angus.
Bibliography2 works
Anselmo Musters