Saint Indeed or the Great Work of a Christian in Keeping the Heart in the Several Conditions of Life

Flavel designed this devotional treatise to aid all professing Christians in exploring their faith and cleansing their lives of sin. He takes his inspiration from Proverbs 4:23, which reads: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” Flavel explains that “keeping the heart” means not only keeping it away from evil, but also keeping it as one keeps a garden, nurturing it. Just as a gardener must plant according to the seasons, so also must one keep the heart in different ways across the seasons of human life. In the latter half of his treatise, Flavel offers advice for doing just that.

Kathleen O’Bannon
CCEL Staff