The Mute Christian under the Smarting Rod Thomas Brooks first published this work in 1659 as the expression of his own experience under trials and afflictions and as an encouragement and an admonition to others. Here afflictions, trials, temptations, and human weakness are set in the balance against Scriptural knowledge in an exhortation to faith and the humble acceptance and profiting of the children of God under the disciplining hand of a God who would be known as our Father: "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Hebrews 12:9-11 And as recorded in the Psalms, "My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips." Psalms 89:28-34