Be Dead to the Profits, Pleasures, Honors, and Applause of the World

One lesson that you are to learn by the rod of affliction, is to get more weaned and more mortified affections to all worldly comforts, contentments, and enjoyments.

A man never comes to experience so much of . . .
the emptiness,
the nothingness,
the uselessness,
the vanity,
the mutability,
the impotency,
the insufficiency,
the uncertainty
of all worldly comforts and enjoyments--as when he falls under the rod of affliction. The constant cry of the rod is, "Be dead to the profits, pleasures, honors, and applauses of the world! Be dead to everything below a living Jesus!"

Thomas Brooks, "The Privy Key of Heaven" 1665 (from Grace Gems)