I am reading back through my copy of Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices that my old pastor Paul Harrison gave me in 2007. Dr. Harrison is always giving away copies of books by the Puritans—something I love about him—and one of his favorite books to give away is Thomas Brooks’s Precious Remedies.
I’ve been reading portions of it as part of my daily devotional exercises, and I’m going to share a choice quote from it below. But before that, let me reflect a little on Puritan spirituality.
I love to read the Puritans. As I often tell my classes here at Welch College, we need to read the Puritans. They represent some of the best spirituality and theology the Christian tradition has to offer. I often say that the sort of Reformation spirituality represented by our General Baptist forefathers (my own tradition, the Free Will Baptist Church, originated from English General Baptists who moved to this side of the Atlantic in the 1600s) is essentially Puritan spirituality.
Puritans could be either baptistic or paedobaptistic (baptizing infants) or Calvinist or Arminian. So, while most Puritans advocated infant baptism (like Brooks or Thomas Boston or John Owen), there were also baptistic Puritans (Baptists—part of a branch of what many scholars, such as my late major professor Richard Greaves, call “radical Puritans”) like John Bunyan and Thomas Grantham and William Kiffin. And while most Puritans were Calvinists, there were also Puritans, such as the General Baptists, who were Arminians. John Goodwin is probably the best-known Arminian Puritan.
General Baptist spirituality, as a branch of Puritan spirituality, is basically an Arminian and Baptist version of Puritan spirituality. Thus it is Arminian and so is non-deterministic and admits that apostasy of genuine believers is a possibility, and it is baptistic and emphasizes conversion in a way some paedobaptistic Puritan spirituality doesn’t. In this way it is like the spirituality of John Bunyan as seen in books like The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Thus, like Puritan spirituality, General Baptist spirituality is very much an “ordinary means of grace” spirituality. It is more about what Edith Schaeffer called “common sense Christian living.” It was about the spiritual disciplines. It was very common sense and down-to-earth, not as mystical and crisis-experience-oriented as much modern evangelical spirituality, which has been influenced by the holiness and charismatic movements.
Puritan spirituality was also less individualistic than much modern evangelical spirituality. It emphasized the church and Christian community. It was just as apt to talk about how to listen to a sermon and the importance of attending church as it was to talk about an individual’s solitary devotional exercises (which it also talked about a lot!).
Puritan spirituality, in being less mystical and more common-sense-oriented, was very Word-centered and doctrinal. Learning and studying and meditating prayerfully on Holy Scripture was at the heart of this sort of spirituality.
We need to get back to this sort of basic, biblical, evangelical, ordinary-means-of-grace spirituality.
Now that you have read my musings about Puritan spirituality, I want to give you a great quote from Precious Remedies. What Brooks does is list a device of Satan and then respond with several remedies against that device. The third device Satan uses against us is the “extenuating and lessening of sin.” Brooks writes,
“Ah! says Satan, it is but a little pride, a little worldliness, a little uncleanness, a little drunkenness, etc. As Lot said of Zoar, ‘It is but a little one, and my soul shall live’ (Gen. 19:20). Alas! says Satan, it is but a very little sin that you stick so at. You may commit it without any danger to your soul. It is but a little one; you may commit it, and yet your soul shall live.”
Brooks gives seven things to consider which provide remedies for dealing with this strategy of Satan:
- Sin which men account small brings God’s great wrath on men.
- The giving way to a less sin makes way for the committing of a greater.
- It is sad to stand with God for a trifle.
- Often there is most danger in the smallest sins.
- The saints have chosen to suffer greatly rather than commit the least sin.
- The soul can never stand under the guilt and weight of sin when God sets it home upon the soul.
- There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest affliction.
The second remedy is one that I wanted to share with my readers. When engaging in spiritual warfare, we need to “preach ourselves a sermon” and remind ourselves that when we give way to a lesser sin, it makes it easier for us to commit a greater sin. Ponder the wisdom in Brooks’s last paragraph in this section:
“By all this we see, that the yielding to lesser sins, draws the soul to the committing of greater. Ah! how many in these days have fallen, first to have low thoughts of Scripture and ordinances, and then to slight Scripture and ordinances, and then to make a nose of wax of Scripture and ordinances, and then to cast off Scripture and ordinances, and then at last to advance and lift up themselves, and their Christ-dishonoring and soul-damning opinions, above Scripture and ordinances. Sin gains upon man’s soul by insensible degrees. “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talking is mischievous madness.” (Eccles. 10:13) Corruption in the heart, when it breaks forth, is like a breach in the sea, which begins in a narrow passage, until it eats through, and casts down all before it. The debates of the soul are quick, and soon ended; and that may be done in a moment that may undo a man forever. When a man has begun to sin, he knows 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, until it is 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.”
I encourage you to read Thomas Brooks’s Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices. Stick with it, despite the older vocabulary (some of which you might have to google). Because it’s so scriptural, it will be food for your soul, spiritual nourishment for your mind, heart, and will.