Keeping the Heart - Part One

Extract

Keeping the Heart — Part One
John Flavel

“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” Proverbs 4:23.
The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward; it is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be, principally fixed upon it.

The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very force and stress of religion; here is that which makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate of heaven a strait gate. Direction and help in this great work are the scope of the text: wherein we have,

I. An exhortation, “Keep thy heart with all diligence.” II. The reason or motive enforcing it, “For out of it are the issues of life.”
I. In the exhortation I shall consider,
First, the matter of the duty.
Secondly, the manner of performing it.

First, the matter of the duty: Keep thy heart. Heart is not here taken properly for the noble part of the body, which philosophers call “the first that lives and the last that dies;” but by heart, in a metaphor, the Scripture sometimes represents some particular noble faculty of the soul. In Rom. 1:21, it is put for the understanding; their foolish heart, that is, their foolish understanding was darkened. Psalm 119:11, it is put for the memory; “Thy word have I hid in my heart;” and 1 John 3:10, it is put for the conscience, which includes both the light of the understanding and the recognitions of the memory; if our heart condemn us, that is, if our conscience, whose proper office it is to condemn.

But in the text we are to take it more generally, for the whole …
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