Thomas Brooks Quotes

Sin is a viper that does always kill where it is not killed.

Ah, beloved, have not you need to improve your time, who have much work to do in a short time: your souls to save, a God to honour, a Christ to exalt, a hell to escape, a race to run, a crown to win, temptations to withstand, corruptions to conquer, afflictions to bear, mercies to improve, and your generation to serve.

You have no lease of your lives, and death is not bound to give you warning before it gives you that deadly blow that will send you to everlasting misery or everlasting felicity.

Time is a jewel more worth than a world. Time is not yours to dispose of as you please; it is a glorious talent that men must be accountable for as well as any other talent.

Oh that you would arise in Christ's strength, and do what possibly you can for God, though you cannot do what you would and what you should!

I could heartily wish that you and all others concerned in this sad loss, were more taken up in minding the happy exchange that she hath made, than with your present loss. She hath exchanged earth for heaven, a wilderness for a paradise, a prison for a palace, a house made with hands for one eternal in the heavens (2 Cor 5:1-2). She hath exchanged imperfection for perfection, sighing for singing, mourning for rejoicing, prayers for praises, the society of sinful mortals for the company of God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, Heb 12:22-24; an imperfect transient enjoyment of God for a more clear, full, perfect, and permanent enjoyment of God. She hath exchanged pain for ease, sickness for health, a bed of weakness for a bed of spices, a complete blessedness. She hath exchanged her brass for silver, her counters for gold, and her earthly contentments for heavenly enjoyments.

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

Christ doth not love believers with a low, flat, dull, common love, with such a love as most men love one another with, but with a love that is like himself. Now, men will give as they love: 1 Sam. 1:4, 5, ‘And Elkanah gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all his sons and daughters, portions, but unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved her.’ In the Hebrew it is, ‘he gave her a gift of the face;’ that is, a great, an honourable gift. Men look upon great and honourable gifts with a sweet and cheerful countenance; so the gifts that Jesus Christ gives to believers are the gifts of the face, that is, they are the greatest gifts, the honourablest gifts, the choicest gifts, gifts fit for none but a king to give.

It is certain that great prosperity and worldly glory are no sure tokens of God's love.

There is no soul under heaven that commonly lies under the commanding power of the Word, but that soul that has an interest in the Word of Promise.

Such as diligently search the Scripture shall find that true blessedness, happiness, and salvation is attributed to several signs: sometimes to the fear of God, sometimes to faith, sometimes to repentance, sometimes to love, sometimes to meekness, sometimes to humility, sometimes to patience, sometimes to poverty of spirit, sometimes to holy mourning, sometimes to hungering and thirsting after righteousness; so that if a godly man can find any one of those in himself, he may safely and groundedly conclude of his salvation and justification, though he cannot see all those signs in him.

Certainly, those persons that shall deny sanctification to be a most sure, sweet, and comfortable evidence of man's justification, they must not only blot out, and abolish the epistles of James and John, but must also raze out and abolish all those evangelical promises of grace and mercy, and of happiness and blessedness, that are made to such persons as are invested, enriched, and bespangled with the several graces of the Holy Spirit.

There are many fair professors that are foul sinners, and that have much of God, and Christ, and heaven, and holiness in their lips, when they have nothing but sin and hell in their hearts and lives. These men’s conversations shame their profession, and therefore they cry against sanctification as a sure and blessed evidence of a man’s justification.

The lives of such are most desirable, and the deaths of such will be most lamented, who make it their business to serve their generation.

The first great work that men are to attend in this world is the eternal safety and security of their souls; the next great work is to know, to be assured, that it shall go well with their souls forever.