The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks

This is not a Victorian penny dreadful but rather Volume IV of The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, a seventeenth-century Puritan divine, published in the nineteenth century as part of Nichol's Series of Standard Divines. The volume contains The Crown and Glory of Christianity, a theological treatise issued in 1662 comprising fifty-eight sermons expounding Hebrews 12:14. Brooks argues that real holiness is the only path to happiness and eternal salvation. The work systematically defines holiness in sixfold terms, provides ten arguments supporting the doctrine, and addresses seven practical applications including conviction, self-examination via sixteen marks of true holiness, and exhortation through fifteen motives and sixteen counsels. Substantially, Brooks answers seven major objections: that humans lack power for sanctification, that postponement is permissible, that holiness destroys joy, that it invites persecution, that it causes poverty, that it dishonors gentility, and that it brings social reproach. The treatise concludes with means to increase holiness and twelve signs of spiritual progress.