A39675:109
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.
(2.) This evidenceth the Soul to be a Substance, that it can and doth exist and subsist by it self alone, when separated from the body by Death. Luk. 23.43. To day shalt thou (i. e. thy Soul) be with me in Paradise; and Matth. 10.28. Fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the Soul. Were the Soul but an Accident, a Quality, a Result, he that kills the Body must needs kill the Soul too. As he that casts a Snow-ball into the fire, must needs destroy the whiteness with the Snow. Accidents fail and perish with their Subjects: but seeing it's plain in these and many other Scriptures, the Soul doth not fail with the body; nothing can be more plain and evident, than that it is of a substantial Nature.
When the Spaniards came first among the poor Indians, they thought the Horse and his Rider to be one Creature; as many ignorant ones think the Soul and Body of Man to be nothing but Breath and Body: whereas indeed they are two distinct Creatures, as vastly different in their Natures, as the Rider and his Horse, or the Bird and his Cage. While the Man is on Horseback, he moves according to the motion of the Horse; and whilst the Bird is incaged, he eats and drinks, and sleeps, and hops, and sings in his Cage. But if the Horse fail and dye under his Rider, or the Cage be broken, the Man can go on his own feet, and the Bird enjoy himself as well, yea better in the open Fields and Woods, ⟨p. 12⟩than in the Cage: neither depend as to Being or action, on the Horse or Cage.