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Thomas Brooks
Thomas Brooks (1608 - 1680). English Puritan preacher and author born in Glastonbury, Somerset. Likely educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he entered ministry during the English Civil War, possibly serving as a chaplain in the Parliamentary navy. By 1648, he preached in London, becoming rector of St. Margaret’s, New Fish Street, in 1652, where he ministered through the Great Plague and Great Fire of 1666. A nonconformist, he was ejected in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity but continued preaching privately. Brooks wrote over a dozen works, including Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1652) and The Mute Christian Under the Rod, blending practical theology with vivid illustrations. Known for his warm, accessible style, he influenced Puritan spirituality, emphasizing repentance and divine sovereignty. Married twice—first to Martha Burgess in 1640, with whom he had four sons, then to Patience Cartwright—he faced personal loss but remained steadfast. His sermons drew crowds, and his books, reprinted centuries later, shaped Reformed thought. Brooks’ legacy endures through digital archives and reprints for modern readers.
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Sermon Summary
Thomas Brooks emphasizes that the rod of affliction serves as a powerful teacher, urging believers to detach their affections from worldly comforts and to recognize their ultimate emptiness and vanity. He explains that true contentment and fulfillment can only be found in a living relationship with Jesus, as worldly pleasures and honors are fleeting and unreliable. The sermon calls for a deep spiritual mortification of desires that distract from a focus on Christ.
The Constant Cry of the Rod
One lesson that you are to learn by the rod of affliction, is to get more weaned and more mortified affections to all worldly comforts, contentments, and enjoyments. A man never comes to experience so much of . . . the emptiness, the nothingness, the uselessness, the vanity, the mutability, the impotency, the insufficiency, the uncertainty of all worldly comforts and enjoyments—as when he falls under the rod of affliction. The constant cry of the rod is, "Be dead to the profits, pleasures, honors, and applauses of the world! Be dead to everything below a living Jesus!"
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Thomas Brooks (1608 - 1680). English Puritan preacher and author born in Glastonbury, Somerset. Likely educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he entered ministry during the English Civil War, possibly serving as a chaplain in the Parliamentary navy. By 1648, he preached in London, becoming rector of St. Margaret’s, New Fish Street, in 1652, where he ministered through the Great Plague and Great Fire of 1666. A nonconformist, he was ejected in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity but continued preaching privately. Brooks wrote over a dozen works, including Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1652) and The Mute Christian Under the Rod, blending practical theology with vivid illustrations. Known for his warm, accessible style, he influenced Puritan spirituality, emphasizing repentance and divine sovereignty. Married twice—first to Martha Burgess in 1640, with whom he had four sons, then to Patience Cartwright—he faced personal loss but remained steadfast. His sermons drew crowds, and his books, reprinted centuries later, shaped Reformed thought. Brooks’ legacy endures through digital archives and reprints for modern readers.