Quotes from Thomas Brooks

remember this, that your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all!

There is nothing in the world that renders a man more unlike to a saint, and more like to Satan—than to argue from God's mercy to sinful liberty; from divine goodness to licentiousness. This is the devil's logic, and in whomever you find it, you may write, 'This soul is lost!' A man may as truly say, 'the sea burns', or 'the fire cools—as that God's free grace and mercy should make a truly gracious soul to live wickedly.

Cristo, la Escritura, vuestros propios corazones y las artimañas de Satanás, son las cuatro cosas principales que deben ser estudiadas y escudriñadas en primer lugar. Si alguien abandona el estudio de estas cosas, no puede estar seguro aquí, ni ser feliz en el futuro.

Until we have sinned, Satan is a parasite; when we have sinned, he is a tyrant.

When a man hath begun to sin, he knews not where, or when, or how he shall make a stop of sin. Usually the soul goes on from evil to evil, from folly to folly, till it be ripe for eternal misery. Men usually grow from being naught to be very naught, and from very naught to be stark naught, and then God sets them at nought forever.

Heliogabalus loved his children the better for resembling him in sin. But Christ loves his children the more for resembling him in sanctity. I have read of some springs that change the colour of the cattle that drink of them into the colour of their own waters, as Du Bartas sings: Cerona, Xanth, and Cephisus do make The thirsty flocks, that of their waters take, Black, red, and white; and near the crimson deep, The Arabian fountain maketh crimson sheep.

Tell the bewitched soul that sin is a viper that will certainly kill when it is not killed, that sin often kills secretly, insensibly, eternally, yet the bewitched soul cannot, nor will not, cease from sin.

The sluggish Christian will be sleeping, or idling, or trifling, when he should be in his closet a-praying. Sloth is the green-sickness of the soul; get it cured, or it will be your eternal bane. Of all devils, it is the idle devil that keeps men most out of their closets. There is nothing that gives the devil so much advantage against us as idleness.

Prayer is a shelter to the soul, a sacrifice to God and a scourge to the devil. David's heart was often more out of tune than his harp. He prays, and then, in spite of the devil, cries, 'Return unto your rest, O my soul.' Prayer is the gate of heaven, a key to let us into paradise. There is nothing that renders Satan's plots fruitless like prayer; therefore says Christ: 'Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation' (Matt. 26:41).

Solomon got more hurt by his wealth, than he got good by his wisdom.

Man's holiness is now his greatest happiness, and in heaven man's greatest happiness will be his perfect holiness.

A man's most glorious actions will at last be found to be but glorious sins, if he hath made himself, and not the glory of God, the end of those actions.

Every man obeys Christ as he prizes Christ, and no otherwise.

Ah, believer, it is only Heaven that is above all winds, storms, and tempests; God did not cast man out of Paradise that he might find another paradise in this world.

Sin in a wicked man is like poison in a serpent; it is in its natural place.

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.

Whatever sin the heart of man is most prone to, that the devil will help forward.

If any man should ask me what is the first, second, and third part of being a Christian, I must answer 'Action!'

An implicit confession is almost as bad as an implicit faith; wicked men commonly confess their sins by wholesale, We are all sinners; but the true penitent confesses his sins by retail.

There is the seed of all sins--of the vilest and worst of sins--in the best of men.

A man full of hope will be full of action.

So many read good books and get nothing, because they read them over cursorily, slightly, superficially.

Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yes, and which is more, when the author is not.

Faith is a Christian's right eye, without which he cannot look for Christ; right hand, without which he cannot do for Christ; it is his tongue, without which he cannot speak for Christ; it is his vital spirit, without which he cannot act for Christ.