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...