Flavel and the art of the simple

I have been re-reading - and using as the basis of our midweek Prayer Meeting studies at the moment - John Flavel's great work on 'Keeping the Heart'. His meditations on Proverbs 4:23 were originally published under the title of 'A Saint Indeed', and concern the most fundamental issue of the faith - maintaining our love and fellowship with God after conversion.

What strikes me in Flavel - as in most of the English Puritans - is the simplicity of his language and illustration. Consider the following quotations, for example:

'...the hand and tongue always begin where the heart ends'.

'...heart-work is hard work'.

'...concerning the heart, God seems to say, as Joseph of Benjamin, 'If you bring not Benjamin with you, you shall not see my face''.

'I never knew grace to thrive in a careless soul'.

'...the heart is, as it were, the inclosure, in which multitudes of thoughts are fed every day; a gracious heart, diligently kept, feeds many precious thoughts of God in a day'.

'Outward gains are ordinarily attended with inward losses'.

'Christians have two kinds of goods: the goods of the throne and the goods of the footstool: immoveables and moveables'.

'Affliction is a pill, which, being wrapped up in patience and quiet submission, may be easily swallowed; but discontent chews the pill, and so embitters the soul'.

.... and so on.

The aphorisms are superb: weighty yet succinct. The illustrations are powerful: homely yet conveying timeless truths. These Puritan sermons are soaked in Scripture, but they are also expressed in the simplest combination of words. We need not use twenty words where one will do; and we ought not to use complex language when simple language expresses the truth with much more power.