In 1860 James Nichol published the six volume works of the Puritan Thomas Brooks. Of all the Puritan divines Nichol reprinted, Brooks proved to be the most popular.
Brooks was probably born 400 years ago this year, some time in 1608 and though much good writing has appeared in those 400 years since, these chunky volumes were republished in 1980 and continue to be in print. They are also now accessible online too. They hold a treasure trove of what Richard Baxter once called affectionate practical writing and what a more modern writer has dubbed treatises for the heart.
Brooks' reputation as a writer of this sort of material has never been clouded. Some Puritans are difficult to read but this is not really true of Brooks. Spurgeon was a great admirer of Brooks. For Spurgeon he was “of all the Puritans ... the most readable, if we except John Bunyan; and if he cannot display the depth of Owen or the raciness of Adams, he leaves them far behind in excessive sweetness and sparkling beauty of metaphor.” He says Brooks was “of the race of the giants ... head and shoulders above all the people, not in his stature (like Saul), but in mind, and soul, and grace ... [a] marvellously rich author ... whose wealth of imagery surpasses all others of his age.”
As another writer put it, his sentences are as memorable as melodies. Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson have written of “spiritual insights ... presented directly and fervently ... replete with Scripture ....” “He communicates” they say “profound truths in a simple manner and is appropriate reading for young people and adults. His writings exude spiritual life and power and are particularly comforting for true believers.”
Smooth stones
Spurgeon says Brooks scatters “stars with both his hands: he hath dust of gold; in his storehouse are all manner of precious stones.” When she was still his fiancée he encouraged Sarah to comb Brooks' writings for choice quotations. Now easily accessed on line, the original book this led to was published in 1860, with the witty title, Smooth stones taken from ancient brooks. It contains around a thousand precious sayings.
There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace than for a man to live up to that little grace he has.
Zeal is like fire: in the chimney it is one of the best servants; but out of the chimney it is one of the worst masters. Zeal, kept by knowledge and wisdom in its proper place, is a choice servant to Christ and the saints; but zeal not bounded by wisdom and knowledge is the highway to undo all, and to make a hell for many at once.
As a body without a soul, much wood without fire, or a bullet in a gun without powder, so are words in prayer without the spirit of prayer.
The works
Useful as the quotations are, most benefit will be had from the works themselves. Brooks was a prolific writer. Between 1652 and 1670 he produced some 16 books of Christian devotion and edification. These became very popular. Apples of Gold (1657) reached 17 editions by 1693. Many works were later translated into other languages.
Volume 1 of his Works begins with his famous Precious remedies against Satan's devices. This ends with 10 helps that we can list here to give the book's flavour: walk by the rule of God’s Word, don’t grieve the Spirit, strive for heavenly wisdom, resist Satan’s first motions, labour to be filled with the Spirit, remain humble, pursue watchfulness, retain communion with God, fight Satan by drawing strength from the Lord Jesus and be much in prayer.
Also in Volume 1 is The mute Christian under the smarting rod on coping with suffering and the cryptically entitled works Apples of gold and A string of pearls. These look, respectively, at youth and old age and at heaven.
The other volumes contain other excellent things such as Heaven on earth, on assurance, and The privy key of heaven, on prayer. In a feat of typically Puritan concentration Volume 4 contains no less than 58 sermons all on one text – Hebrews 12:14 (The Crown and Glory of Christianity, or, Holiness the Only Way to Happiness).
Mystery man
But what about the man? What do we know of him? In short, the answer is very little. When the Nichol edition of the Puritans appeared it was the custom to preface each set with a memoir. Alexander Grosart, Brooks' editor, dutifully does this but spends quite a while musing on the lack of information and why it has been lost. He “spins it out to 16 pages”, as someone put it, but “the basic facts which he brings to light are few indeed”. There is no known portrait of Brooks and we know nothing of his ancestry, parentage or even where he was born. The current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests Sussex, possibly Lewes, as this is where Brooks' cousin Henry Godman was born. The year of his birth can only be ascertained by working backwards from his death, aged 72, in 1680.
The first solid date we have is a Cambridge University record stating “Thomas Brooks: matriculated as pensioner of Emanuel, July 7th 1625”, the year Charles I became King. Pensioner, suggests Grosart, shows that Brooks was well born, a gentleman. We know that Emmanuel was very much a Puritan college and he would have come under good influences there. He probably rubbed shoulders with men such as Milton, also born in 1608, and the prospective New Englanders Shepard, Cotton and Hooker. Brooks love for and skill in Hebrew, Greek and Latin began, even if it did not come to full bloom, in his College days.
When or how he was converted we do not know. After 1625 the meagre trail again disappears. It is now thought that he left university before graduation and was not ordained until around 1640. In 1652 he speaks of having been preaching 13 years, mostly in London, but his ministry had been an unsettled one. In the early 1640s he was east of London but preached occasionally at the parish of St Martin Ongar in the City.
An Independent
A strong Puritan, Brooks always stressed that true religious knowledge must be inward, experimental, even mystical, not merely external, notional and formal. The ODNB suggests that in the spectrum of Puritan thinkers he can be placed “on the radical side of Independency”. He unmistakably denounced antinomians and the radical ideas of Levellers and Fifth Monarchy Men but like Owen, Goodwin and others he strongly believed in the autonomy of the local church.
As an Independent in the Civil War period (1642-1648) he was undoubtedly a strong supporter of the army. There is reason to think that he was on intimate terms with Thomas Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of Parliamentary forces and it is virtually certain that he acted as a chaplain to Parliamentary commanders on land and sea. His ministry at sea is mentioned in some of his “sea-devotions”. He also speaks of being in other countries, of “some terrible storms I have been in” and says somewhere “I have been some years at sea and through grace I can say that I would not exchange my sea experiences for England’s riches.”
In 1647, and again in 1651, he signed declarations issued by Independent and Baptist churches that, among other things, openly espoused the principle of rule by the godly. On November 14, 1648, he preached the funeral sermon for Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, urging army leaders “to appear for the Saints, to side with the Saints, let the issue be what it will”. A month later, after the purge of the Long Parliament, he preached a fast sermon to the Rump in which he not only justified the action but exhorted the MPs to execute “justice and judgement”, a sermon on Psalm 44:18 later published as God's Delight in the Progress of the Upright. In 1650 he appeared before Parliament again to preach a thanksgiving sermon from Isaiah 10:6, following Cromwell's victory at Dunbar.
Brooks was one of the Independent ministers Cromwell called to his residence in July 1652 to discuss providing godly men to preach the gospel in Ireland. In early 1655 Cromwell again asked him to be present at an interview with the Fifth Monarchy Men. In October 1659 Brooks sent, with other Independent leaders, a letter to General Monck in Scotland urging mediation for peace between the two armies. The ODNB says that in April 1660, when General John Desborough contacted Congregationalist churches about an uprising in London, he found “Mr Brookes is very willing”. In January 1661, however, Brooks joined other Congregationalist ministers in denouncing the Fifth-Monarchist insurrection led by Thomas Venner.
Final years and death
In 1648 Brooks was chosen by the vestry of St Margaret's, New Fish Street Hill, as its minister. He laid down some uncompromising terms for his acceptance of the charge. He requested that the parish elders chosen under the presbyterian system should resign, that the godly people of the parish should gather together and own one another's grace in a conference and that they should receive godly strangers, though differing in opinion, into their church. Furthermore, he declared that he would offer communion only to members of this newly constituted church and baptise only their children. He in effect wanted to transform this parish church into an Independent congregation. This was more than the people were willing to accept and so negotiations broke down.
From 1648 to 1651, Brooks identified himself as “preacher of the gospel at St Thomas the Apostle, Queen Street” and it was not until March 1652 that, with an order from the committee for plundered ministers, he was finally settled at St Margaret's. Though there was still some opposition, he was able to continue his ministry there, and in later years combined it, until early 1660, with a gathered congregation meeting in the parish church.
After the Restoration, Brooks continued to preach, first in London, then at Tower Wharf and in Moorfields, near St Margaret's. In 1662, he fell victim to the notorious Act of Uniformity and was ejected from his living. He continued to preach in London, however, apparently suffering little persecution. Unlike many ministers, he stayed in London during the Great Plague of 1665, faithfully tending his flock and was at his post to comfort the afflicted during and after the Great Fire of 1666. The lengthy treatise London's Lamentations (Works Volume 6) is based on Isaiah 42:24, 25 and is “a serious discourse concerning that late fiery dispensation that turned our (once renowned) city into a ruinous heap: also the several lessons that are incumbent upon those whose houses have escaped the consuming flames”. It is “perhaps the most remarkable contemporary memorial” of the event.
In 1669 he was one of the lecturers in Hackney and in 1672 was licensed to preach as a Congregationalist in Lime Street according to the terms of the Declaration of Indulgence, but that licence was revoked in 1676. In that same year his first wife, Martha Burgess, a godly woman who he greatly treasured, died. He wrote of her that “she was always best when she was most with God in a corner. She has many a whole day been pouring out her soul before God for the nation, for Zion, and the great concerns of her own soul.” He later married a godly young woman named Patience Cartwright; she, as Grosart puts it, “spring-young” and he “winter-old”. She proved an excellent companion in his closing years.
Brooks died on September 27, 1680. He was buried on October 1 at Bunhill Fields. In his funeral sermon John Reeve spoke of Brooks' “sweet nature, great gravity, large charity, wonderful patience and strong faith.” Grosart discovered and printed his Last Will and Testament, composed six months before. Even here, before we get to the detail, Brooks' skill is seen. He begins
Death is a fall that came in by a Fall: that statute Law of Heaven 'Dust thou art and to dust thou shall returne' will first or last take hold of all mortalls; the core of that apple that Adam eat in Paradise will choke us all round one by one; there is not one man living that shall not see death; though all men shall not meete in Heaven, nor in Hell, yet all men shall meete in the grave whether wee and all a[re] going.
In truth, Brooks most important legacy is found in his published writings and it may be that in this anniversary year we will want to take time to peruse one or other of his works, giving thanks to God for what remains. As we do so we should, in Brooks' own words,
Remember that it is not hasty reading - but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, which makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee which gathers honey - but her abiding for a time on the flower which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most who will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.
First published in Evangelical Times
First published in Evangelical Times
