Having seen that hypocrites, heart-neglect, and false professors of the Faith fill the professing church, and having seen that keeping the heart is the difference from them, Flavel now comes to stating some great benefits of this work: the chief duty of the Christian:
If the keeping of the heart be so important a business; if such great advantages result from it; if so many valuable interests be wrapt up in it, then let me call upon the people of God every where to engage heartily in this work. O study your hearts, watch your hearts, keep your hearts! Away with fruitless controversies and all idle questions; away with empty names and vain shows; away with unprofitable discourse and bold censures of ethers, and turn in upon yourselves. O that this day, this hour, you would resolve upon doing so!
Reader, methinks I shall prevail with you. All that I beg for is this, that you would step aside more often to talk with God and your own heart; that you would not suffer every trifle to divert you; that you would keep a more true and faithful account of your thoughts and affections; that you would seriously demand of your own heart at least every evening, ‘O my heart, where hast thou been to-day, and what has engaged thy thoughts?’
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 can have; you will not only have a clearer, but a more interesting and profitable apprehension of them. A man may discourse orthodoxly 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!
Keeping the heart leads not to only learning knowledge—as if only meant to remain in the head—but to applying it. Indeed, without the keeping of the heart, one can amass a huge array of knowledge but never actually put it into practice. Keeping the heart is this putting of biblical truths into practice. Yes, without keeping the heart, having knowledge of biblical truths is as a parable in the mouth of a fool. It is useless to him as a means to godliness, but it can be used to deceive others. Likewise, lacking this knowledge of the Scriptures is to lack knowledge of what we are to have our hearts conformed to! In other words, to neglect growing in the true knowledge of Scripture prevents one from keeping their heart, because this keeping is grounded in the truth of Scripture! So it is that the one keeping the heart can neither neglect learning the Scriptures nor, with that knowledge, neglect in applying it. We begin with a growing knowledge of the Scriptures, and that knowledge is applied in keeping the heart. Keeping the heart can never be done in a vacuum! The Bible can never be neglected in this duty, but is itself the very blueprint for keeping the heart! But God does accord us grace according to what He makes available to us, enabling us to keep our hearts as we can.
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 tabs on our heart—that is, subjecting it to the standard of Scripture—helps to secure it against the wiles and falsehoods of the world. It keeps it from the teachings of the devil, such as from the theory of evolution, identity politics, critical race theory, destructive higher criticism, the reversal of gender roles, the dissolving of the home, the rejection of authority, and other philosophies of darkness. Basing our lives on the Bible as our highest standard—by which all others are governed—helps to prevent us from error. And, for this reason, grounding ourselves in the biblical teaching of faithful saints of the past—people not blinded by our present circumstances—can help us to have an added measure of sobriety in these trying times. Then we can better see what it is to keep our heart in contradistinction to the great blindness of the world that merely poses as a way of keeping the heart.
3. Your care and diligence in keeping your heart will prove one of the best evidences of your sincerity. I know no external act of religion which truly distinguishes the sound from the unsound professor. It is marvellous how far hypocrites go in all external duties; how plausibly they can order the outward man, hiding all their indecencies from the observation of the world. But they take no heed to their hearts; they are not in secret what they appear to be in public; and before this test no hypocrite can stand. They may, indeed, in a fit of terror, or on a death-bed, cry out of the wickedness of their hearts; but such extorted complaints are worthy of no regard. No credit, in law, is to be given to the testimony of one upon the rack, because it may be supposed that the extremity of his torture will make him say any thing to get relief. But if self-jealousy, care and watchfulness be the daily workings and frames of your heart, you have some evidence of your sincerity.
Notice the distinction Flavel made here. He did not say that doing nice things or what appears as practicing righteousness will prove our sincerity in the Faith, but that “keeping your heart will prove one of the best evidences of your sincerity.” Keeping the heart precedes all other work, and it is only by keeping the heart that any sincerity can be validated. The hypocrite has no assurance and has no heart change, regardless of how he may appear to others. So, if you see this change in yourself in growing measure, take heart. The heart is where the battle lies, and the heart is what we are to guard with all vigilance. For the heart is what shows your sincerity in the Faith or its lack thereof.
Next time we will be looking at four more benefits of keeping the heart.