The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, Apples of Gold for Young Men and Women, the Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod, a String of Pearls

It may surely be regarded as a favourable sign of the times, that so many reprints of the works of the thinkers of former days - laic and cleric - have been called for during the last ten years. It argues that while there may be many whose tastes incline them to 'milk for babes,' there are those who have appetites to relish, and stomachs to digest, 'stronger meat.' We have reference more immediately to the numerous and widely circulated republication of the elder Theologians of all shades of opinion on lesser matters" as well the acknowledged and famous, as the less known and hitherto uncollected and inedited. Of the former, suffice it to name Eden's 'Jeremy Taylor,' Napier' 'Isaac Barrow,' Wynter's 'Joseph Hall,' 'Thomas Goodwin' of this series; of the latter, or own 'Richard Sibbes,' and now 'Thomas Brooks,' with others in hand, together with the fine series of Commentaries being issued by our Publisher, and including such ripe and rare book as Airay on 'Philippinians,' King on 'Jonah,' Stock and Torshell on. Malachi,' Rainolds on 'Obadiah and Haggai,' Bernard and Fuller on 'Ruth,' Marbury on 'Obadiah and Habakkuk,' Hardy on '1st Epistle of St John,' Bayne on 'Ephesians,' and that magnum opus, Dr William Gouge on 'Hebrews.' It seems impossible that such intellectual and spiritual seed-corn as is treasured up in these early worthies can be sown thus broadcast, and yield an unbounteous harvest. Granted that, as with the sown grain, there is not a little of what is chaff, or, - speaking unmetaphorically, - that is tedious and attenuated, over-worded, effete, musty: yet the 'ingenuous' and thinking reader, like the kindly earth under supernal influences, assimilate the good and fruitful: and toward all the venerable writers, has a tender patience and charity…