Thomas Brooks

Thomas Brooks served for a time as a chaplain at sea before settling into London pulpits, first at Thomas Apostle's and then at St Margaret's, Fish Street Hill. His first and most famous book, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, is exactly what its title says: a list of the specific ways a believer gets talked into sin — sin looks small, others do it, grace will cover it — each one followed by a specific answer. It is one of the plainest pieces of practical writing the Puritans produced.

Ejected from his living in 1662, Brooks stayed in the city rather than retreat to the country, and he was still there in 1665 when the plague emptied London and in 1666 when the fire burned it. The Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod, written on the words 'I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it,' is his book on suffering quietly, and he had earned the right to write it.