“Man’s blessedness is from another, the Lord’s is from Himself; man’s is in grace, God’s in nature; man’s temporal, God’s eternal; man’s voluntary, God’s necessary, it cannot be otherwise; man’s changeable, God’s always the same.
The greatest and stateliest monarch puts off his glory and robes at some times; as when he goes into the bath, the bed, the grave.
He carries no sceptre in the bath, yet may he then have a crown on his head; he hath neither sceptre nor crown in his bed, yet even then he is known a king by his attending guard. But in the grave he leaves off all.
Now God’s glory is never left off, there is no interruption of His blessedness, not a moment wherein He is less happy. Having all things so fully in Himself, He needs no addition.
Many men think not themselves happy in the much they have, because they want something they would have.
But there is nothing more for God to desire. He contemplates His own goodness, and rests in Himself with a sweet complacency, as the infinite fountain of all blessedness.”
–Thomas Adams, An Exposition upon the Second Epistle General of St. Peter, ed. James Sherman (Edinburgh; London: James Nichol; James Nisbet & Co., 1862), 391. Adams is commenting on 2 Peter 2:9.
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