Book Description

"You find no formalism in Flavel, and nothing languid. All is fresh, and there is fervour, and suggestiveness, and unction; and what was not then common, 'conciseness.' Like Him who 'spake as never man spake,' he abounds 'in similitudes,' thereby sending truth straight to the conscience, and with the force that is inseparable from deep conviction that what is said is as important as it is true. He believed that 'those three great words, Christ, soul, eternity,' are 'things of the greatest certainty, and the most awful solemnity.' Hence is uncommon seriousness. He is invariably in earnest. The effect is to turn away the reader's thoughts from mere style and words to himself - to make his 'heart burn.' For the accomplishment of that vast, spiritual, and moral change in man after which Flavel thirsted, his writings show how insufficient he regarded any, even the best, oratory with the Divine blessing. And, therefore, the prominence he ever gave to the work of the Holy Spirit; to the indispensable necessity of that agency for conversion and edification: and to his own dependence upon it." -The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle "Mr. Flavel was a nonconformist minister of the greatest eminence in the seventeenth century; and his writings, which indicate a high order of ministerial talents, and breathe the most elevated spirit of sound evangelical piety, have endeared his name to thousands of the present generation of Christians. His works have ever been esteemed as a treasure of divinity: but one of his treatises, though all truly excellent, appears equal to this work - 'The Fountain of Life.' The reading of the sermons would lead any one to anticipate the remark of one of the judicious hearers of Mr. Flavel; 'I could say much, though not enough, of the excellency of his preaching; and that person must have a very soft head, or a very hard heart, or both, that could sit under his ministry unaffected.'" -The Christian's Penny Magazine