The New International Encyclopædia/Adams, Thomas

ADAMS, Thomas. An English preacher in the early part of the seventeenth century, called by Southey “the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians . . . scarcely inferior to Fuller in wit or to Taylor in fancy.” He was minister at Willington, Wingrave, and London, and “observant chaplain” to Sir Henry Montague, the lord chief justice. Adams was a Puritan within the Church of England, as distinguished from the nonconformist Puritans who left the church. He published a large number of sermons, the quaint titles of two of which are: Heaven and Earth Reconciled, and The Devil's Banquet. It is likely that John Bunyan read and was influenced by these writings. They have been republished in Nichol's Puritan Divines (3 volumes, 1862).