# “Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand” by Thomas Brooks

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2025/05/02/adversity-hath-slain-her-thousand-but-prosperity-her-ten-thousand-by-thomas-brooks/
- Published: 2025-05-02T08:00:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“His first device to draw the soul to sin is,

**Device (1). To present the bait and hide the hook**; to present the golden cup,
and hide the poison; to present the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may
flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin, and by hiding from the soul the wrath 
and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin.

By this device he took our first parents: **Gen. 3:4, 5**, ‘And the serpent said
unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know, that in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil.’

Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods! Here is the bait, the sweet,
the pleasure, the profit. Oh, but he hides the hook,—the shame, the wrath, and the
loss that would certainly follow!

There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy, and there 
is an opening of the eyes of the body to shame and confusion. He promiseth them 
the former, but intends the latter, and so cheats them—giving them an apple in exchange
for a paradise, as he deals by thousands now-a-days.

Satan with ease puts fallacies upon us by his golden baits, and then he leads us
and leaves us in a fool’s paradise. He promises the soul honour, pleasure, profit,&
c., but pays the soul with the greatest contempt, shame, and loss that can be.

By a golden bait he laboured to catch Christ, **Matt. 4:8, 9**. He shews him the
beauty and the bravery of a bewitching world, which doubtless would have taken many
a carnal heart; but here the devil’s fire fell upon wet tinder, and therefore took
not.

These tempting objects did not at all win upon his affections, nor dazzle his eyes,
though many have eternally died of the wound of the eye, and fallen for ever by 
this vile strumpet the world, who, by laying forth her two fair breasts of profit
and pleasure, hath wounded their souls, and cast them down into utter perdition.

She hath, by the glistering of her pomp and preferment, slain millions; as the serpent
Scytale, which, when she cannot overtake the fleeing passengers, doth, with her 
beautiful colours, astonish and amaze them, so that they have no power to pass away
till she have stung them to death.

Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.”

–Thomas Brooks, [_Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1800401671?tag=toletaupanre-20),
in [_The Works of Thomas Brooks, Volume 1_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1800401671?tag=toletaupanre-20),
ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1866/1980), 1: 12-
13.

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