ABSTRACT
Thomas Adams was a Puritan preacher, celebrated for this talent as ‘the Shakespeare of the Puritans’. His treatise, Diseases of the Soule , was printed in 1616. It examines the nature, cause, symptoms and cure of nineteen bodily diseases and Adams allegorically uses these to describe the vices that affect the human soul. His aim, set out at the start of the work, is ‘the straitening of our warped Affections, and directing the Soule to heauen’. In the following extract, Adams examines the emotions of anger and envy within this framework. God placed Anger amongst the affections ingraffed in nature, gaue it a seate, fitted it with instruments, ministred it matter whence it might proceed, prouided humours whereby it is nourished. It is to the Soule as a nerue to the body. The Philosopher cals it the Whetstone tofortitude , a spurre intended to set forward Vertue.
