Complete Works of Thomas Brooks

This is Volume IV of a scholarly edition of the complete works of Thomas Brooks, a Puritan divine, edited by Rev. Alexander Balloch Grosart and issued in 1867. The featured work is "The Crown and Glory of Christianity," originally published in 1662, comprising fifty-eight sermons on Hebrews 12:14. Brooks argues that real holiness is the exclusive path to happiness and that all people must achieve holiness on earth to attain heavenly beatitude. The treatise methodically defines holiness (sixfold), provides ten arguments establishing the proposition, and offers five supporting reasons. It addresses seven major objections—including human inability to achieve holiness, procrastination, loss of worldly pleasure and prosperity, social disgrace and persecution—with multiple answers to each. The work includes sixteen marks identifying genuine holiness, fifteen motivational exhortations with six negative and seven positive counsels, proofs of deficient holiness, provocations to increased holiness, and twelve signs of spiritual progress.