A39675:1144
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
USE II. › Argument 1 › I. The Pleas of Nature for life, and against dissolution.
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.
And here the doleful voice of Nature laments, pleads, and bemoans it self to the willing Soul,
O my Soul, What dost thou mean by these thy desires to be dissolved? Art thou in earnest, when thou sayest thou art willing to leave thine own Body and be gone? Consider, and think again ere thou bid me farewell, what thou art to me, and what I have been and am to thee; thou art my Soul, that is, my Prop, my Beauty, my Honour, my Life, and indeed, all that is comfortable to me. If thou depart, what am I but a Spectacle of Pity, an abhorred ⟨p. 307⟩Carcass in a few moments? A prey to the Worms, a Captive to Death? If thou depart, my Candle is put out, and I am left in the horrors of darkness.
O my Soul, What dost thou mean by these thy desires to be dissolved? Art thou in earnest, when thou saist thou art willing to leave thine own Body and be gone? Consider, and think again ere thou bid me farewel, what thou art to me, and what I have been and am to thee; thou art my Soul, that is, my Prop, my Beauty, my Honour, my Life, and indeed, all that is comfortable to me. If thou depart, what am I but a Spectacle of Pity, an abhorred ⟨p. 307⟩Carcass in a few moments? A prey to the Worms, a Captive to Death? If thou depart, my Candle is put out, and I am left in the horrours of darkness.
I am thy House, thy delightful habitation, the House in which thou hast dwelt from the first moment of thy Creation, and never lodgedst one Night in any other: every Room in me hath one way or another been a Banqueting-room for thy entertainment, a Room of pleasure: all my Senses have been Purveyors for thy delight: my Members have all of them been thine Instruments and Servants to execute thy Commands and Pleasure; if thou and I part, it must be in a shower: thou shalt feel such pains, such travelling throes, such deep emphatical groans, such Sweats, such Agonies as thou never feltest before. For Death hath somewhat of anguish peculiar to it self, and which is unknown, though guessed at by the Living. Beside, when ever thou leavest me, thou leavest all that is and hath been comfortable to thee in this World: thy House shall know thee no more,