Keeping the Heart [Chapter 17] by John Flavel

“KEEP THY HEART WITH ALL DILIGENCE, FOR OUT OF IT
ARE THE ISSUES OF LIFE.”—Proverbs 4:23.


If all that has been said by way of inducement be not enough, I have yet some motives to offer you:

1. The studying, observing, and diligently keeping your own heart, will surprisingly help you to understand the deep mysteries of religion. An honest, well-experienced heart is an excellent help to the head. Such a heart will serve for a commentary on a great part of the Scriptures. By means of such a heart you will have a better understanding of divine things than the most learned (graceless) man ever had, or call have; you will not only have a clearer, but a more interesting and profitable apprehension of them. A man may discourse orthodoxy and profoundly of the nature and effects of faith, the troubles and comforts of conscience, and the sweetness of communion with God, who never felt the efficacy and sweet impression of these things upon his own soul. But how dark and dry are his notions compared with those of an experienced Christian!

2. The study and observation of your own heart will powerfully secure you against the dangerous and infecting errors of the times in which you live. For what think you is the reason why so many professors have departed from the faith, giving heed to fables? why have so many been led away by the error of the wicked? why have those who have sown corrupt doctrines had such plentiful harvests among us, but because they have met with a race of professors who never knew what belongs to practical godliness and the study and keeping of their hearts?














Keeping the Heart [Chapter 17] by John Flavel