Divine Conduct, or The Mystery of Providence
TL;DR — Flavel’s Puritan treatise on reading God’s hand in the pattern of one’s own life — and keeping a record of it.
⬇ Download the archived copy — kept here so the document survives its source going dark. Public domain by age (pre-1929).
A seventeenth-century Puritan classic, full title: Divine Conduct, or the Mystery of Providence, wherein the being and efficacy of Providence are asserted and vindicated; the methods of Providence, as it passes through the several stages of our lives, opened; and the proper course of improving all Providences pointed out.
The third clause is the interesting one. Flavel’s practical instruction is to keep a written record of providences and review it — to treat one’s own life as evidence requiring study rather than as events requiring reaction.
That is a journaling argument made theologically, and it belongs next to the journal-keeping material elsewhere in this wiki.
Where this came from
251 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.