The final part of the ET article
Act of restoration
In 1648 Brooks was invited to be minister of St Margaret’s, New Fish Street Hill, but laid down uncompromising terms. He requested that the parish elders chosen under the Presbyterian system should resign and that the godly people of the parish should gather in conference to own one another’s grace and receive godly strangers, though differing in opinion, into their church.
Furthermore, he would offer communion only to members of this newly constituted church and baptise only their children. In effect, he wanted to transform this parish church into an Independent congregation. This was too much for the people and negotiations broke down.
It was not until March 1652 that, with an order from the committee for plundered ministers, he was finally settled at St Margaret’s. After the Restoration, Brooks continued to preach, first in London, then at Tower Wharf and in Moorfields, near St Margaret’s.
In 1662 he fell victim to the notorious Act of Uniformity and was ejected from his living. He continued to preach in London, however, apparently suffering little persecution. Unlike many ministers, he stayed in London during the Great Plague of 1665, faithfully tending his flock and comforting those afflicted by the Great Fire of 1666.
The lengthy treatise London’s Lamentations (Works Volume 6) is based on Isaiah 42:24, 25 and is ‘a serious discourse concerning that late fiery dispensation that turned our (once renowned) city into a ruinous heap: also the several lessons that are incumbent upon those whose houses have escaped the consuming flames’. It is ‘perhaps the most remarkable contemporary memorial’ of the event.
The fall of death
In 1672 he was licensed to preach as a Congregationalist in Lime Street under the Declaration of Indulgence, but that licence was revoked in 1676. In that same year his first wife, Martha Burgess, a godly woman whom he greatly treasured, died.
He wrote: ‘She was always best when she was most with God in a corner. She has many a whole day been pouring out her soul before God for the nation, for Zion, and the great concerns of her own soul’.
He later married a godly young woman named Patience Cartwright — she, as Grosart puts it, ‘spring-young’ and he ‘winter-old’. She proved an excellent companion in his closing years.
Brooks died on 27 September 1680 and was buried on October 1 at Bunhill Fields. In his funeral sermon John Reeve spoke of Brooks’ ‘sweet nature, great gravity, large charity, wonderful patience and strong faith’. Grosart discovered and printed his Last Will and Testament, composed six months before. It begins:
‘Death is a fall that came in by a Fall: that statute Law of Heaven “Dust thou art and to dust thou shall return” will first or last take hold of all mortals; the core of that apple that Adam ate in Paradise will choke us all round one by one; there is not one man living that shall not see death; though all men shall not meet in Heaven, nor in Hell, yet all men shall meet in the grave whither we and all a[re] going’ [spelling modernised].
Brooks’ most important legacy lies in his published writings and in this anniversary year we may want to take time to peruse one or other of his works, giving thanks to God for what remains. In Brooks own words:
‘Remember that it is not hasty reading, but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, which makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee which gathers honey, but her abiding for a time on the flower which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most, but he who meditates most, who will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian’.
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