His book Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices: Being a Companion for Christians of All Denominations (1652) contains some interesting tropes. Now perhaps the word "Satan" strikes you as so old-fashioned that there is nothing to learn in a text which uses a phrase like Satan's devices. But perhaps if we considered the reality being referred to --- the creativity and psychological insight of the man, Thomas Brooks, would be apparent. By "Satan" people of that time meant what we call DNA, what scientists call determinism, what Jan Cox called the machinery of Life. In other words, some hundreds of years ago, the difference was that the threat to one's psychological calm and creative intellect, one's ability to pursue a purpose efficiently, lay in some definable aspect of the external world. That's a big difference between us and our progenitors: but the difference is not that our forefathers were less smart than we are, or more gullible.
Take this scenario-- you are swatting at a fly, and the thought occurs to you. Wouldn't the world be better off without these pests? Here is how our Puritan divine treated such a situation:
If the devil made flies, the devil made worms, and not God, for they are living creatures as well as flies: ...[but if] the devil made worms; ...., then he made birds, beasts, and man....[So]by denying God in the fly, he came to deny God in man, and to deny the whole creation.....By all this we see, that the yielding to less[er] sins, draws the soul to the committing of greater....A little hole in a ship sinks it; a small breach in a sea-bank carries away all before it; a little stab in the heart kills a man; and a little sin, without a great deal of mercy, will damn him.... Against this device of Satan, solemnly consider, that other saints have chosen to suffer the worst of torments, rather than they would commit the least sin; i. e. such as are so in the world's account; as you may see in Daniel and his companions, who would rather choose to burn, and be cast to the lions, than bow to the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
Today we might call 'sin' a lack of alertness. And the monitions of Brooks' function to increase our attention to our surroundings, internally and externally. Of course the perspective I am suggesting would certainly not please Thomas Brooks, any more than it does contemporary readers.
Thomas Brook preached before the English House of Commons on December 26, 1648.His sermon was entitled, 'God's Delight in the Progress of the Upright'. The custom in sermons, then as now,was to hang it on a Biblical text; in this case the verse was Psalm 44:18: 'Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from Thy way'.
It was a month later that this House of Commons beheaded King Charles I.
Thomas Brooks got one thing right though, and that was that it is the tiny attention in the present that can catch "the glory of god." And that may be the whole game.
Take this scenario-- you are swatting at a fly, and the thought occurs to you. Wouldn't the world be better off without these pests? Here is how our Puritan divine treated such a situation:
If the devil made flies, the devil made worms, and not God, for they are living creatures as well as flies: ...[but if] the devil made worms; ...., then he made birds, beasts, and man....[So]by denying God in the fly, he came to deny God in man, and to deny the whole creation.....By all this we see, that the yielding to less[er] sins, draws the soul to the committing of greater....A little hole in a ship sinks it; a small breach in a sea-bank carries away all before it; a little stab in the heart kills a man; and a little sin, without a great deal of mercy, will damn him.... Against this device of Satan, solemnly consider, that other saints have chosen to suffer the worst of torments, rather than they would commit the least sin; i. e. such as are so in the world's account; as you may see in Daniel and his companions, who would rather choose to burn, and be cast to the lions, than bow to the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
Today we might call 'sin' a lack of alertness. And the monitions of Brooks' function to increase our attention to our surroundings, internally and externally. Of course the perspective I am suggesting would certainly not please Thomas Brooks, any more than it does contemporary readers.
Thomas Brook preached before the English House of Commons on December 26, 1648.His sermon was entitled, 'God's Delight in the Progress of the Upright'. The custom in sermons, then as now,was to hang it on a Biblical text; in this case the verse was Psalm 44:18: 'Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from Thy way'.
It was a month later that this House of Commons beheaded King Charles I.
Thomas Brooks got one thing right though, and that was that it is the tiny attention in the present that can catch "the glory of god." And that may be the whole game.
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