A39675:1024
Pneumatologia, a treatise of the soul of man
Pneumatologia, a treatise of the soul of man wherein the divine original, excellent and immortal nature of the soul are opened, its love and inclination to the body, with the necessity of its separation from it, considered and improved, the existence, operations, and states of separated souls, both in Heaven and Hell, immediately after death, asserted, discussed, and variously applied, divers knotty and difficult questions about departed souls, both philosophical, and theological, stated and determined, the invaluable preciousness of humane souls, and the various artifices of Satan (their professed enemy) to destroy them, discovered, and the great duty and interest of all men, seasonable and heartily to comply with the most great and gracious design of the Father, Son, and Spirit, for the salvation of their souls, argued and pressed / by John Flavel ...Pneumatologia, a treatise of the soul of man wherein the divine original, excellent and immortal nature of the soul are opened, its love and inclination to the body, with the necessity of its separation from it, considered and improved, the existence, operations, and states of separated souls, both in Heaven and Hell, immediately after death, asserted, discussed, and variously applyed, divers knotty and difficult questions about departed souls, both philosophical, and theological, stated and determined, the invaluable preciousness of humane souls, and the various artifices of Satan (their professed enemy) to destroy them, discovered, and the great duty and interest of all men, seasonable and heartily to comply with the most great and gracious design of the Father, Son, and Spirit, for the salvation of their souls, argued and pressed / by John Flavel ...
London: printed for Francis Tyton, 1685
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Whether the separated Souls of the just in Heaven do incline to a re-union with their own Bodies? and how that re-union is at last effected?
That these blessed Souls have no such inclination or desire, these reasons seem to persuade.
That these blessed Souls have no such inclination or desire, these reasons seem to perswade.
1. That their Bodies, whilst they lived in them, were no better than so many Prisons. Many were the prejudices, damages and miseries they sustained and suffered in them.1 It kept them at an uncomfortable distance from the Lord, 2 Cor. 5.6. Their bemoaning cries spake their uneasy state. How often hath every gracious Soul thus lamented it self! Woe is me that I dwell in Mesheck. It enclosed their Souls within it's mud walls, which intercepted the light and joy of God's face. Death therefore did a most friendly office, when it set it at liberty, and brought it forth into its own pure and pleasant light and liberty. These blessed Spirits now rejoice as Prisoners do in their recovered liberty: and can it be supposed after all these sufferings, groans, and sighs, to be dissolved; they can be willing to be embodied again? Surely there is as little reason for Souls at liberty, to desire to be again embodied, as there is for a Bird got out of the Snare or Cage, to fly back again to its place of confinement and restraint. Yea, when we consider how loth some holy Souls when under the excruciating pains of sickness, and as yet in the sight of this alluring World; have been to •ear of a return to it, by the recovery of their health; we cannot think, but being quite out of the sight of this, and in the fruitions of the other World, the thoughts of the Body must needs be more loathsome to them than ever.