John Flavel — The Mystery of Providence

He laboured to recover and revive the ancient providences of God's mercies many years past, and suck a fresh sweetness out of them by new reviews of them.

There is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you.

Prayer is the honor of Providence, and Providence is the honor of prayer.

It is not the cleansing of the hand that makes a Christian, for many a hypocrite can shew as fair a hand as he; but the purifying, watching, and right ordering of the heart; this is the thing that provokes so many sad co…

Self is the poise of the unrenewed heart, which biases and moves it in all its designs and actions; and as long as it is so, it is impossible that any external means should keep it with God.

What the heart is to the body, that the soul is to the man; and what health is to the heart, that holiness is to the soul.