Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them. John Flavel
Brief Biography
John Flavel (1628-1691)
During the Plague of London,
in 1665, a few Christian friends were gathered for prayer in a private house in
Convent Garden; but, as it was an unlawful assembly, the soldiers broke in with
drawn swords and arrested the worshippers. They were committed to Newgate
prison, where the pestilence was raging; and an old minister from the country,
Mr. Richard Flavel, and his wife, caught the infection, and were released only
to die. Their eldest son was also at this time a minister. Although he did not
become a musician or a poet, as his mother had hoped, this nobler vocation was
his destiny.
As a minister and author, he transmitted the joyful sound of
the gospel through the dark reigns of Charles and James the Second; and of all
who sang songs in that night, few found listeners so eager and grateful as John
Flavel. In 1656, when he was about twenty-six years of age, the people of
Dartmouth, in Devon, chose him as their minister. Going amongst them on their
own invitation, and in all the freshness of his affections, he and the
inhabitants became ardently attached to one another. With his fund of striking
incidents, with his faculty of happy illustration, with a temperament in which
cheerfulness and solemnity were remarkably blended, and with a style of address
in which friendly encouragement alternated with grave remonstrance and melting
pathos, except among the worst reprobates, his ministry was boundlessly
popular.
And when he went from home, his plain and arresting discourses
were so often the means of awakening or converting careless hearers, that he
was induced to extend his labours far beyond the bounds of his own large
parish. The period, however, was brief during which he was allowed to ply such
a free and unfettered ministry. Ejected by the Act of Uniformity, for some time
he endeavoured to keep together and instruct the members of his flock; but
spies and penal laws made their meetings difficult and dangerous. At last the
Oxford Act was promulgated, and according to its terms, Mr. Flavel could no
longer reside in Dartmouth.
On the day of his departure, the inhabitants
accompanied him as far as the churchyard of Townstall, where, amidst prayers
and tears, they parted. Nevertheless, his heart was still with his beloved
people. He took up his abode as near them as the letter of the law allowed;
and, sometimes in Dartmouth itself, sometimes in a quiet apartment in a
neighbouring village, and sometimes in a wood or other sheltered spot in the
open air, he contrived to meet a detachment of them almost every Sabbath day.
At last King James Indulgence permitted the open resumption of his
ministry. A commodious meeting-house was built, and there, for the remaining
years of his life, he continued to warn, exhort, and comfort all who came, with
a fervor of which the tradition has not yet died out in Devon. His prayers were
wonderful. Much of his retirement was spent in devotional exercises; and in the
great congregation he was sometimes seized with such agonies of earnestness, or
carried away in such a rapture of praise and thanksgiving, that it seemed as if
the tabernacle of clay must perish amidst the excessive emotion. At last,
towards the end of June, 1691, he presided at a meeting of the Nonconformist
ministers of Devonshire. The object was to bring about a union of Presbyterians
and Independents. The preliminary resolutions passed unanimously, and Mr.
Flavel closed the work of the day with prayer and praise, in which his spirit
was carried out with wonderful enlargement and affection. On the 26th, he
wrote to a London minister an account of this auspicious meeting, and appeared
remarkably cheerful and happy. But that evening, he was taken with the palsy,
and soon died.
No period of English history has been so fruitful in
religious literature as the half-century between the commencement of the
Parliamentary War and the glorious Revolution; or we might say, the period
included in the publishing career of Richard Baxter. But amidst that enormous
authorship there are few books which retain so much attraction for modern
readers as some of Flavels practical treatises, such as On Keeping the
Heart. For their enduring popularity, they are, no doubt, in some degree
indebted to their kind, affable, and earnest tone; but still more, we presume,
is due to the skill and felicity with which matters of the greatest moment are
expounded. With a view to be useful, the writers great anxiety was to be
understood, and he sought out the words and the modes of representation which
might suit the sailors of Dartmouth and Plymouth, and the farmers of Devon and
Dorset. His books abound in anecdote, and they are rich in those homely
metaphors and ingenious comparisons which are an effective ingredient in
popular oratory. Above all, they command the readers attention, by the
importance of the themes which they handle; they secure his confidence, by
their unaffected seriousness and deep sincerity; and they win his heart, by the
evangelical warmth and personal kindness with which they are all aglow.
Useful
Links
http://graceforgrace.org/christ.htm
Biography at length.
http://www.ccel.org/f/flavel/ Works
and life.
http://grace-for-today.com/flavel.htm
more works
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-flafount.html
"Fountain of Life"
http://www.reformed.org/documents/flavel/short_cat/Q004.html
Shorter Catechism
http://www.swordandshield.com/flavel/flavel.htm
three works on line.