“A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty; the trouble of civility; the spoil of wealth; the distraction of reason. He is the brewer's agent; the tavern and ale house benefactor; the beggar's companion; the constable's trouble; his wife's woe; his children's sorrow; his neighbor's scoff; his own shame. In short he is a tub of swill, a spirit of unrest, a thing below a beast, and a monster of a man.”
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Thomas Adams was an English clergyman and reputed preacher. He was called "The Shakespeare of the Puritans" by Robert Southey; a Calvinist in theology, he is not accurately described as a Puritan.
Early sermons were Heaven and Earth Reconciled, and The Devil's Banquet. To Montagu he dedicated a work in 1618. In 1629 he collected into a massive folio his occasional sermons, a collection he dedicated to the parishioners of St Benet Paul's Wharf, and to the Lords Pembroke and Manchester. In 1638 appeared a long Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Peter, dedicated to "Sir Henrie Marten, Knt."
His works have been republished in Nichol's Series of Standard Divines (3 vols, 1862), edited by Thomas Smith, and with a life by Joseph Angus, and his Commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Peter (1839) by James Sherman.