A Puritan masterpiece on guarding the inner life. Flavel shows how to maintain spiritual vigilance over your thoughts, affections, and desires in every circumstance of life.
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Keeping the Heart is John Flavel's treatise on Proverbs 4:23, first published in 1668 AD as A Saint Indeed. Flavel defines heart-keeping as guarding the inward person, argues that it is the great work of a Christian's life, and then gives case-by-case counsel for twelve demanding seasons.
How the argument unfolds
01
One verse, one doctrine. Flavel splits a line of Proverbs into an exhortation, “Keep thy heart with all diligence,” and a motive, “For out of it are the issues of life.” From it comes the doctrine the book defends: “Keeping and rightly managing the heart in every condition is the great work of a Christian’s life.”
02
What “heart” means. Scripture sometimes uses heart for the understanding, the memory, or the conscience. Flavel reads it broadly here: “we must understand heart more generally as the whole soul, or inward person.”
03
What keeping involves. The work presupposes a heart set right by grace, then preserved in that condition. Flavel breaks it into six activities: observing the heart, humiliation over its disorders, prayer for cleansing grace, binding vows, watchfulness, and living under God's eye.
04
Hard, constant, chief. He ranks the duty three ways. It is the hardest, since outward conformity costs little and inward government costs much. It is constant: “The work of keeping the heart is never finished until life is finished.” And it is chief, since a duty offered without the heart is refused.
05
Six things bound up with it. Six things depend on this work: the honor of God, the sincerity of our profession, the beauty of our conduct, the comfort of our souls, the growth of our graces, and our stability under temptation.
06
Twelve demanding seasons. The longest section names the occasions requiring more than ordinary watchfulness: prosperity, adversity, troubles in the church, danger and fear, poverty and need, worship and prayer, injuries from others, provocation and anger, temptation, spiritual doubt, religious persecution, and sickness and death. Each is posed as a numbered case and answered with a set of helps, seven for prosperity and nine for affliction.
07
Four applications. The close turns the doctrine on the reader. It exposes heartless religion, humbles negligent Christians, calls God's people to the work, and gives practical directions. The last word is encouragement: three comforts for the Christian who already groans over his own heart.
Key themes
The inward person. Flavel's subject is the whole interior life: thoughts, affections, motives, and aims. His recurring contrast is the shop and the treasury: “The heart is the treasury; the hand and tongue are only the shops.”
Duty ours, power God's. The command sounds like self-sufficiency, and Flavel denies that reading at once: “We might as well be our own saviors as our own keepers.” The duty is ours; the strength is Christ's.
Hypocrisy and sincerity. The dedication opens on three sad sights, one of them hypocrites who imitate the saints convincingly. The test of sincerity is never outward exactness but whether a person minds where the heart goes in duty.
The means of keeping. The directions are concrete. Store up Scripture, since “Keep the Word, and the Word will keep you.” Call the heart to account each evening. Refuse so much business that the main work is crowded out.
“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov 4:23)
The human heart is at its worst before regeneration and at its best afterward. It is the seat of our principles and the fountain of our actions. God’s eye is fixed chiefly upon it, and the Christian’s eye should be as well.
The greatest difficulty in conversion is winning the heart to God, and the greatest difficulty after conversion is keeping the heart with God. Here lies the greatest challenge of the Christian life. This is what makes both the way to life and the gate to heaven narrow. The purpose and substance of this text are to direct and help us in this great work. In it we have:
1. An exhortation: “Keep thy heart with all diligence.”
2. The reason or motive that enforces it: “For out of it are the issues of life.”
In the exhortation I shall consider:
1. The matter of the duty.
2. The manner in which it is to be performed.
1. The matter of the duty is, keep thy heart. Here heart does not properly mean that noble part of the body which philosophers call the first to live and the last to die. Instead, Scripture sometimes uses heart metaphorically for a particular noble faculty of the soul. In Romans 1:21 it refers to the understanding: “their foolish heart” means that their foolish understanding “was darkened” (Rom 1:21). In Psalm 119:11 it refers to the memory: “Thy word have I hid in my heart” (Ps 119:11). In 1 John 3:20 it refers to the conscience, which contains both the light of the understanding and the recollections of the memory: “If our heart condemn us,” that is, if our conscience condemns us, for condemnation is its proper office (1 John 3:20).
Here, however, we must understand heart more generally as the whole soul, or inward person. What the heart is to the body, the soul is to the person; and what health is to the heart, holiness is to the soul. The condition of the whole body depends upon the soundness and vigor of the heart, and the everlasting condition of the whole person depends upon whether the soul is in a good or evil state.
By keeping the heart, understand the diligent and constant use of every holy means and duty to preserve the soul from sin and maintain its sweet and free communion with God. I say constant because the reason added in the text extends this duty to every state and condition of a Christian’s life and makes it always binding. If the heart must be kept because the issues of life flow from it, then we are obliged to keep it for as long as those issues continue to flow.
Lavater understands the word through the image of a besieged garrison, surrounded by many enemies outside and in danger of betrayal by treacherous citizens within. In such danger the soldiers are commanded, on pain of death, to keep watch. Although the expression keep thy heart appears to place the work upon us, it does not imply that we have sufficient ability to perform it. By our own skill and power, we can no more rule and order our hearts than stop the sun in its course or make the rivers run backward. We might as well be our own saviors as our own keepers.
Yet Solomon speaks properly when he says, “Keep thy heart,” because the duty is ours though the power is God’s. An unregenerate person has no power to do it. A person who has grace has some power, though not enough, and that power depends upon Christ’s awakening and assisting strength. The grace within us depends upon grace beyond us. As Christ says, “Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). So much for the matter of the duty.
2. The manner in which it is to be performed is with all diligence. The Hebrew expression is very emphatic: “keeping with all keeping.” In other words, keep watch, keep watch; set double guards, or your hearts will escape. The force with which this duty is urged plainly shows both how difficult it is to keep your hearts and how dangerous it is to let them go.
3. The reason or motive that urges us to this duty is compelling and weighty: “For out of it are the issues of life.” The heart is the source and fountain of every vital action and operation. Jerome calls it the fountain of good and the origin of sin. Like the spring in a watch that sets all its wheels in motion, it is the source and origin of both good and evil.
The heart is the treasury; the hand and tongue are only the shops. Whatever appears in those shops comes from the treasury. The hand and tongue always begin where the heart ends. The heart devises, and the other parts of the body carry out its plans. “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things; for out of the abundance of his heart his mouth speaketh” (Luke 6:45).
Therefore, if the heart goes wrong in its work, the hand and tongue must go wrong in theirs. Errors of the heart are like errors in the first stage of digestion, which cannot be corrected afterward. Or they are like type and letters misplaced and reversed in a printing press, which necessarily produce just as many errors in every copy printed from them. Oh, then, how important is the duty contained in the following proposition!
[Doctrine:] Keeping and rightly managing the heart in every condition is the great work of a Christian’s life.
What the philosopher says about waters applies just as well to hearts: they are hard to keep within their bounds. God has set bounds and limits for them, yet how often they cross not only the boundaries of grace and religion, but even those of reason and common honesty! This is the work and the labor that gives the Christian cause for effort, fear, and trembling until the day of death.
Merely washing the hand does not make someone a Christian, for many a hypocrite can show a hand just as clean. The real work is purifying, watching, and rightly ordering the heart. This is what provokes so many sorrowful complaints and costs so many deep groans and salty tears. The pride of Hezekiah’s heart made him lie in the dust, mourning before the Lord (2 Chron 32:26). Fear that hypocrisy might invade his heart made David cry, “Let my heart be found in thy statutes that I be not ashamed” (Ps 119:80). His painful experience of his heart’s divisions and distractions in the service of God made him pour out this prayer: “Unite my heart to fear thy name” (Ps 86:11).
The method by which I shall develop this doctrine is as follows.
First, I shall inquire what keeping the heart presupposes and involves.
Second, I shall give several reasons why Christians must make this the great work and business of their lives.
Third, I shall identify the special seasons that particularly call for diligence in keeping the heart.
Fourth and finally, I shall apply the whole doctrine in several applications.
1. What Keeping the Heart Means
Keeping the heart necessarily supposes a prior work of sanctification that has set the heart right by giving it a new spiritual bent and inclination. As long as the heart has not been set right by grace in its habitual disposition, no duty or means can keep it right with God. Self is the balancing weight of the unsanctified heart, biasing and moving it in all its designs and actions. As long as self holds that place, no outward means can possibly keep the heart with God.
At creation, man had one constant and uniform disposition of spirit and followed a straight and even course. Not one thought or faculty rebelled or fell into disorder. His mind was perfectly enlightened to understand and know the will of God, his will complied with it perfectly, and his sensory appetite and other lower powers remained in complete obedience to the higher faculties.
Through the fall, man became a deeply disordered and rebellious creature. He contends with and opposes his Maker as the first cause through self-dependence, as the chief good through self-love, as the highest Lord through self-will, and as the final end through self-seeking. He is therefore completely disordered, and all his actions are irregular. His once-enlightened understanding is clouded by ignorance, his once-compliant will is full of rebellion and stubbornness, and his lower powers have cast off the rule and government of the higher faculties.
But through regeneration, this disordered soul is set right again. Sanctification rectifies and properly orders it, or, as Scripture puts it, renews the soul after the image of God (Eph 4:24). In this renewal, self-dependence is removed by faith, self-love by the love of God, self-will by submission and obedience to the will of God, and self-seeking by self-denial. The darkened understanding is enlightened again (Eph 1:18), the stubborn will is sweetly subdued (Ps 110:3), and the rebellious appetite, or sinful desire, is gradually conquered, as discussed throughout Romans 6–7. Thus the soul, which sin had corrupted in every part, is restored and set right again by grace.
With this understood, it is not difficult to grasp what it means to keep the heart. It is the constant care and diligence of a renewed person to preserve the soul in the holy disposition to which grace has restored it, a disposition he daily strives to maintain.
Although grace has set the soul right to a great extent and given it a settled, heavenly disposition, sin often throws it into disorder again. Even a gracious heart is like a musical instrument. However precisely it has been tuned, a small thing can put it out of tune again. Let it hang unused for only a little while, and it will need tuning before you can play another piece on it. So it is with gracious hearts. They may be properly disposed in one duty, yet how dull, lifeless, and disordered they can be when they come to the next. Therefore, every duty requires a particular preparation of the heart: “If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands towards him” (Job 11:13). To keep the heart, then, is to guard it carefully from the sin that disorders it and to maintain the spiritual and gracious disposition that fits it for a life of communion with God.
This includes six activities.
1. It includes frequent observation of the heart’s condition. We must turn inward and examine how matters stand within us. Sinful and merely formal people pay no attention to this and cannot be persuaded to confer with their own hearts. Some men and women have lived forty or fifty years in the world and have scarcely spent one hour in conversation with their own hearts during all that time. It is difficult to bring a person face to face with himself for such an examination. But the saints know that these private reflections and inward conversations are exceedingly useful. Even a heathen could say, “The soul becomes wise by sitting still in quietness.” Bankrupts may not wish to examine their account books, but upright hearts will find out whether they are moving backward or forward: “I commune with mine own heart” (Ps 77:6). The heart can never be kept until its condition has been examined and understood.
2. It includes deep humiliation over the evils and disorders of the heart. Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart (2 Chr 32:26). In the same way, the people were commanded to spread out their hands to God in prayer with an awareness of the plague in their own hearts (1 Kgs 8:38). Many an upright heart has been brought low before God on this account: “Oh, what a heart I have!” In confession, they have pointed to the heart as the place of pain: “Lord, here is the wound. Here is the festering sore.” A well-kept heart is like the eye, which is a fitting picture of it. If even a speck of dust enters the eye, it will not stop blinking and watering until it has wept the dust out. In the same way, an upright heart cannot rest until it has wept out its troubles and poured out its complaints before the Lord.
3. It includes earnest pleas and urgent prayer for grace to purify and set the heart right when sin has defiled and disordered it: “Cleanse thou me from secret faults” (Ps 19:12), and “Unite my heart to fear thy name” (Ps 86:11). The saints always have many such requests pending before the throne of God’s grace. This is what they plead for most earnestly with God. When they pray for outward mercies, their spirits may be less fervent. But when the condition of the heart is at stake, they exert their spirits to the utmost, fill their mouths with arguments, weep, and make supplication: “Oh, for a better heart! Oh, for a heart that loves God more, hates sin more, and walks more steadily with God! Lord, whatever else you deny me, do not deny me such a heart. Give me a heart to fear you, love you, and delight in you, even if I must beg my bread in desolate places.”
It is said of the godly Mr. Bradford that, when he confessed sin, he would not stop until he felt some brokenness of heart over that sin. When he prayed for any spiritual mercy, he would not give up that request until he had gained some taste of that mercy. This is the third activity included in keeping the heart.
4. It includes placing strong obligations and bonds upon ourselves to walk more carefully with God and avoid the occasions that might draw the heart into sin. Carefully composed, wise, and deliberate vows can sometimes be exceedingly useful in guarding the heart against a particular sin: “I made a covenant with mine eyes” (Job 31:1). By this means, godly people have held their souls in reverent restraint and preserved themselves from defilement by particular corruptions of the heart.
5. It includes constant, holy watchfulness over our own hearts. Clear-sighted suspicion of ourselves is an excellent safeguard against sin. Whoever would keep the heart must keep the eyes of the soul awake and open to every disorderly and tumultuous stirring of the affections. If the affections break loose and the passions become agitated, the soul must detect and suppress them before they rise too high: “O my soul, are you right to act this way? My tumultuous thoughts and passions, who authorized you?” As Virgil asks, “Halt, men! What brings you on your journey, and who are you who come armed?”
“Happy is the man that thus feareth always” (Prov 28:14). It is through this fear of the Lord that people depart from evil, shake off carelessness, and preserve themselves from iniquity. Whoever would keep the heart must eat with reverent fear, rejoice with reverent fear, and spend the whole of life here in reverent fear. Even all this is scarcely enough to keep the heart from sin.
6. Finally, it includes realizing that God is present with us and setting the Lord always before us. God’s people have found this an exceptional means of keeping their hearts upright and restraining them from sin. When the eye of our faith is fixed upon the eye of God’s omniscience, we do not dare to release our thoughts and affections into vanity. Holy Job did not dare to let his heart yield to an impure or vain thought. What moved him to such careful conduct? He tells us: “Doth he not see my ways, and count all my steps?” (Job 31:4). And God says to Abraham, “Walk before me and be thou perfect” (Gen 17:1). Parents place their children where they can see them in the congregation, knowing that otherwise the children will be playing and fooling around. The heart of even the best person would do the same if it were not kept under the eye of God.
In these and similar ways, gracious souls express their care for their hearts. They are as careful to prevent their corruptions from breaking loose in times of temptation as sailors are to secure the guns so that they do not break loose in a storm. They are as careful to preserve the sweetness and comfort they have received from God in any duty as someone coming out of a hot bath or a heavy sweat is careful not to catch cold by stepping into the chilly air. This is the work, and of all the works of religion, it is the most difficult, constant, and important.
1. It is the hardest work. Work upon the heart is hard work indeed. It costs little effort to hurry through religious duties with a careless and inattentive spirit. But it will cost you something to set yourself before the Lord and bind your loose and wandering thoughts to constant, serious attention to him. It is easy to gain fluency and skill in the language of prayer and to put your meaning into fitting and proper words. But it will certainly cost you groans and the labor pains of the soul to have your heart broken over sin while you confess it, melted by free grace while you bless God for it, and truly ashamed and humbled by the awareness of God’s infinite holiness. It also takes painful work to keep your heart in this condition both during and after the duty.
It is no great achievement to restrain the outward acts of sin and arrange the external part of your life in a respectable and attractive way. Even sinful people can do this by the power of common moral principles. But it is not easy to kill the root of corruption within, establish and maintain a holy government over your thoughts, and have everything lie straight and orderly in the heart.
2. It is a constant work. The work of keeping the heart is never finished until life is finished. This labor and our life end together. A Christian in this work is like sailors whose ship has sprung a leak at sea. If they do not work constantly at the pump, the water rises and will soon sink them. It is useless for them to say, “The work is hard, and we are tired.” No time or condition in the Christian life permits this work to be interrupted.
Watching over our hearts is like holding up Moses’ hands while Israel and Amalek fought below (Exod 17:12). As soon as Moses’ hands grow heavy and sink, Amalek prevails. You know that David and Peter suffered through many sorrowful days and nights because they stopped watching over their own hearts for only a few minutes.
3. It is the most important work of a Christian’s life. Without it, we are only formalists in religion, and all our professions, gifts, and duties mean nothing. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov 23:26). God is pleased to call this a gift, though it is truly a debt. God grants the creature this honor by receiving it from him as a gift. But if the heart is not given to him, he pays no regard to anything else you bring. What we do has worth and value only to the extent that our heart is in it.
Concerning the heart, God seems to say what Joseph said about Benjamin: “If you bring not Benjamin with you, you shall not see my face.” Among the heathens, when an animal was cut open for sacrifice, the priest first examined its heart. If the heart was diseased and worthless, the sacrifice was rejected. God rejects every duty offered to him without a heart, however glorious it may seem in other respects. The person who performs a duty without a heart, that is, heedlessly, is no more acceptable to God than the person who performs it with a double heart, that is, hypocritically (Isa 66:3).
I have now briefly explained the nature of the duty and what is contained in the command, “Keep thy heart.”
2. Why We Must Keep the Heart
Next I will give several reasons why Christians should make keeping their hearts the great work of their lives.
The importance and necessity of making this our chief business will become clear when we consider that six things are bound up with it and depend on our sincerity and care in this work: 1. the honor of God; 2. the sincerity of our profession; 3. the beauty of our conduct; 4. the comfort of our souls; 5. the growth of our graces; and 6. our stability in the hour of temptation.
1. The glory of God is deeply concerned in this work, for the evils of the heart greatly provoke the Lord. The theologians rightly observe that outward sins are sins of greater infamy, but sins of the heart carry deeper guilt. How severely the great God has revealed his wrath from heaven against wickedness in the heart! The great crime for which the ancient world was condemned was heart-wickedness (Gen 6:5-7): “God saw that every imagination of their heart was only evil, and that continually,” meaning every fiction of the heart. For this he sent the most dreadful judgment ever executed since the world began: “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping things and the fowls of heaven, for it repenteth me that I have made man.” Their murders, adulteries, and blasphemies are not specifically alleged against them, though they were defiled by these, but the evils of their hearts are.
Indeed, the evil of the Israelites’ hearts so provoked God that he gave his own inheritance into the enemy’s hand: “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved; how long shall vain thoughts lodge within thee?” (Jer 4:14). God took special notice of the wickedness and vanity of their thoughts, and because of this the Chaldean would come upon them “as a lion from his thicket” (Jer 4:7) and tear them to pieces.
It was for the sin of their thoughts that God cast the fallen angels out of heaven and still keeps them in everlasting chains for the judgment of the great day. This expression plainly suggests that some extraordinary judgment is reserved for them. Prisoners loaded with the most chains may be supposed to be the greatest offenders. And what was their sin? It was entirely spiritual wickedness, for having no bodily organs, they could commit no outward act against God.
Mere evils of the heart are so provoking that because of them God indignantly rejects all the duties some people perform for him: “He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, is as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol” (Isa 66:3). In what stronger words could the holy God express his abhorrence of a creature’s actions? In his sight, murder and idolatry are no more vile than their sacrifices, even though the sacrifices themselves were what he had appointed. What made them so vile? The following words tell us: “their soul delighteth in their abominations” (Isa 66:3).
To conclude, mere sins of the heart are so vile that Scripture sometimes indicates how difficult their pardon is. In the case of Simon Magus, his heart was not right. He held vile thoughts of God and the things of God, so the apostle told him to “repent and pray, if perhaps the thoughts of his heart might be forgiven him” (Acts 8:21). Never treat evils of the heart lightly, then, for by them God is greatly wronged and provoked. For this reason, let every Christian make it his work to keep his heart with all diligence.
2. The sincerity of our profession depends greatly on the care and conscientiousness with which we keep our hearts. It is certain that anyone who neglects the condition of his heart is merely a hypocrite in his profession, however meticulous he may be in the outward practices of religion. We have a striking example in Jehu: “But Jehu took no heed to walk in the ways of the Lord God of Israel with his heart” (2 Kgs 10:31). The context tells of Jehu’s great service against the house of Ahab and Baal, and of the great temporal reward God gave him for it, namely, that his children would sit on Israel’s throne to the fourth generation. Yet these words condemn Jehu as a hypocrite. Though God approved and rewarded the work, he abhorred and rejected the person who performed it because he was hypocritical.
Where did Jehu’s hypocrisy lie? It lay in this: he did not take care to walk in the Lord’s ways with his heart. He acted insincerely and for selfish ends. Although his work was materially good, he did not purge his heart of those unworthy, self-serving aims in doing it, and so he was a hypocrite.
Simon, whom we mentioned before, appeared to be the kind of person whom the apostle could not properly refuse. Yet his hypocrisy was quickly exposed. What revealed it? Though he professed faith and joined himself to the saints, he remained a stranger to the mortification of sins in the heart: “Thy heart is not right with God” (Acts 8:21).
It is true that Christians differ greatly in their diligence and skill in this work of the heart. Some are more practiced and successful in it than others. But anyone who pays no attention to his heart and does not carefully set it right before God is only a hypocrite: “And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and sit before thee (as my people) and they hear thy words, but they will not do them; for with their mouths they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness” (Ezek 33:31). These people were formal hypocrites, as the expression “as my people” makes clear: they were like God’s people, but were not of them.
What made them hypocrites? Their outward appearance was impressive. They assumed reverent postures, made lofty professions, and seemed to find much joy and delight in the ordinances: “Thou art to them as a lovely song” (Ezek 33:32). Yet for all this, they did not keep their hearts with God in those duties. Their lusts commanded their hearts, and they went after their covetousness. If they had kept their hearts with God, all would have been well. Their hypocrisy lay in failing to care where their hearts went while they performed their duties.
[Objection:] If some upright soul should conclude from this, “Then I too am a hypocrite, for my heart often departs from God in worship. No matter what I do, I cannot hold it close to God.”
[Answer:] The objection itself contains its answer. You say, “No matter what I do, I cannot keep my heart with God.” Soul, if you do all you can, you have the blessing of an upright person, though God sees fit to exercise you under the affliction of a disordered heart. Some wildness remains in the thoughts and imaginations of even the best Christians in order to humble them. But if you find that you take care beforehand to prevent wandering thoughts, oppose them when they arise, and grieve over them afterward, you have enough evidence to clear yourself of reigning hypocrisy.
(1.) This prior care appears partly in laying up the Word in your heart to prevent such thoughts: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Ps 119:11); partly in your efforts to bind your heart to God (Jer 30:21); and partly in asking God for restraining grace as you begin a duty (Ps 119:36-37). It is a good sign when this care comes before a duty.
(2.) It is also a sweet sign of uprightness to oppose such thoughts when they first arise: “I hate vain thoughts” (Ps 119:113); “The spirit lusteth against the flesh” (Gal 5:17).
(3.) Your grief afterward also reveals an upright heart. If, like Hezekiah, you are humbled by the evils of your heart, you have no reason to question its integrity because of those disorders. But to let sin settle quietly in the heart, and to allow your heart to wander from God habitually and without restraint, is indeed a sad and dangerous symptom.
3. The beauty of our conduct arises from the heavenly condition and holy order of our spirits. There is spiritual brightness and beauty in the conduct of the saints: “The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour,” and they shine as the lights of the world. But whatever brightness and beauty appears in their lives comes from the excellence of their spirits, just as the candle inside a lantern gives it light.
A disordered and neglected heart can never produce a well-ordered life. Since, as the text observes, the issues or streams of life flow from the heart as their fountain, it necessarily follows that the life will correspond to the heart. Hence Peter says, “Abstain from fleshly lusts . . . having your conversation honest,” or beautiful, as the Greek word means (1 Pet 2:11-12). Isaiah likewise says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts” (Isa 55:7). His way means the course of his life, while his thoughts mean the condition of his heart. Since the course of his life flows from his thoughts, or the condition of his heart, he will forsake both or neither.
The heart is the womb of all actions. Our actions are present in seed form within our thoughts, and once those thoughts have formed our affections, they soon become corresponding actions and practices. If the heart is wicked, then, as Christ says, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,” etc. (Matt 15:19). Notice the order: first come lustful or revengeful thoughts, and then unclean or murderous deeds.
If the heart is holy and spiritual, then David speaks from sweet experience: “My heart is inditing a good matter, I speak of things which I have made, my tongue is as the pen of a ready writer” (Ps 45:1). Here is a life richly beautified with good works. Some are already made: “I will speak of the things which I have made.” Others are still being formed: “My heart is inditing.” But both proceed from the heavenly condition of his heart.
Set the heart in order, and the life will quickly show that it is so. I do not think it is very difficult to discern the state of Christians’ spirits from their duties and conversations. Consider a Christian whose heart is in a good state. How serious, heavenly, and profitable his conversations and duties will be! What a lovely companion he is while it continues! It would do anyone’s heart good to be with him at such a time: “The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment, the law of his God is in his heart” (Ps 37:30-31).
When the heart is lifted up to God and full of God, how skillfully and naturally such a Christian brings spiritual matters into conversation, using every occasion and advantage for some heavenly purpose! Few words then run uselessly down the drain.
Why have the conversations and duties of many Christians become so shallow and unprofitable? Why has their communion both with God and with one another become like a dry stalk? Surely it is because they neglect their hearts. This is an evil greatly to be mourned. For lack of such Christian fellowship, it has become lifeless. The compelling beauty that once shone from the conduct of the saints upon the faces and consciences of the world is now largely lost, to the unspeakable harm of religion. Even if that beauty did not attract people and make them love the ways of God, it at least left a testimony in their consciences to the excellence of those Christians and their ways.
There was a time when Christians lived in such a way that the world stood astonished at them, as the word in 1 Peter 4:4 implies. Their lives and speech had a different character from those of others. Wherever they went, their speech revealed that they were Galileans. But now the case is sadly changed. Empty speculation and fruitless controversy have become widespread, while the work of the heart and practical godliness have been greatly neglected among people professing Christianity. Their conversation has become like everyone else’s. If they come among you now, they may, to allude to Acts 2:6, “hear every man speak in his own language.”
Truly, I have little hope of seeing this evil corrected and the honor of religion restored until Christians return to their old work and apply themselves more closely to the work of the heart. When the salt of heavenly-mindedness is cast into the spring, the streams will run clearer and sweeter.
4. The comfort of our souls depends greatly on keeping our hearts, for those who neglect to attend to their own hearts are ordinarily strangers to assurance and to the sweet comforts that flow from it.
If the Antinomian doctrine were true, teaching you to reject every mark and sign by which to test your spiritual condition and telling you that the Spirit alone immediately assures you by directly witnessing your adoption without such signs, then you could neglect your hearts, even remain strangers to them, and yet not remain strangers to comfort. But since both Scripture and experience refute this delusion, I hope you will never seek comfort in that unscriptural way.
I do not deny that it is the work and office of the Spirit to assure you. Yet I confidently affirm that if you ever attain assurance through the ordinary way in which God gives it, you must take pains with your own hearts. You may expect comfort on easier terms, but I am mistaken if you ever enjoy it on any others. “Give all diligence, prove yourselves.” This is the scriptural way.
In his Treatise of the Covenant, Mr. Roberts tells of a Christian who, early in his Christian life, longed so intensely for infallible assurance of God’s love that for a long time he earnestly desired a voice from heaven. Sometimes, while walking alone in the fields, he even pleaded for some miraculous voice from the trees and stones. After all his desires and longings, this was denied him. In time, however, something better was given through the ordinary practice of searching the Word and his own heart.
The learned Gerson gives a similar example of someone whom temptation drove to the very edge of despair. After he was at last sweetly settled and assured, someone asked him how he had attained it. He answered, “Not through any extraordinary revelation, but by submitting my understanding to the Scriptures and comparing my own heart with them.”
The Spirit does indeed assure us by witnessing our adoption, and he witnesses in two ways.
(1.) First, he witnesses objectively, by working in our souls those graces that are the conditions of the promise. In this respect the Spirit and his graces within us are one, for the indwelling Spirit of God is a mark of our adoption. We cannot discern the Spirit in his essence, but we can discern him in his operations. To discern those operations is to discern the Spirit. I cannot imagine how they could be discerned without seriously examining and diligently watching the heart.
(2.) The other way the Spirit witnesses is effectively, by shining a light into the soul that reveals grace and illuminates his own work. By the order of its nature, this follows the former work: he first infuses grace and then opens the soul’s eye to see it. Since the heart is the seat of that infused grace, even this way of the Spirit’s witnessing includes the necessity of carefully keeping our own hearts. For:
(1.) A neglected heart is so confused and dark that the little grace within it cannot ordinarily be discerned. Even the most careful and hardworking Christians, those who take the greatest pains and spend the most time attending to their hearts, find it very difficult to distinguish the pure and genuine workings of the Spirit there. How, then, will a Christian who is comparatively negligent and careless about the work of the heart ever be able to discern it?
Sincerity, the thing being sought, lies in the heart like a small piece of gold at the bottom of a river. Whoever wants to find it must wait until the water is clear and settled; then he will see it sparkling at the bottom. And how much effort, vigilance, care, and diligence it takes for the heart to become clear and settled!
Questions
What is Keeping the Heart about?+
It is about the Christian's inner life and how to guard it. Flavel explains what heart-keeping involves, gives six reasons it matters, works through twelve seasons that test the heart, and closes with applications.
What does Flavel mean by “keeping the heart”?+
He defines it as “the diligent and constant use of every holy means and duty to preserve the soul from sin and maintain its sweet and free communion with God.” The Hebrew of Proverbs 4:23, he notes, is emphatic: “keeping with all keeping.”
What are the twelve seasons in Keeping the Heart?+
Prosperity, adversity, troubles in the church, danger and fear, poverty and need, worship and prayer, injuries from others, provocation and anger, temptation, spiritual doubt, religious persecution, and sickness and death.
How long is Keeping the Heart?+
This edition runs about 49,500 words, roughly a 3 hour read. The twelve seasons take up the largest share of it.
Who was John Flavel?+
John Flavel was an English Puritan minister who served the port town of Dartmouth and was ejected from his pulpit in 1662 AD. He dedicated this book to that congregation, writing as a pastor kept from his people.
Is Keeping the Heart hard to read?+
The original is dense 17th century prose with long sentences and untranslated Latin. This modern English edition keeps Flavel's full argument and his Scripture wording, in sentences that read clearly today.
John Flavel (1627-1691) was an English Presbyterian minister and prolific author known for his practical and devotional writings. Educated at Oxford, he served as a minister in Dartmouth, England, until the Act of Uniformity of 1662 ejected him from his pulpit. Despite persecution and the threat of imprisonment, Flavel continued to minister secretly to his congregation for over two decades. His writings, characterized by their warmth, practicality, and deep spiritual insight, have remained in print for over three centuries. Flavel possessed a remarkable ability to apply theological truths to everyday life, making him one of the most beloved of the Puritan authors. His works were widely read in both England and America, influencing generations of Christians including figures like George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon.
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