A39675:1345
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.
It must be thankfully confessed there are two great differences betwixt the terrors of Conscience here, and there: One in the degrees of anguish, the other in the reliefs of that anguish. The ordinary distresses of Conscience here, compared with those of the damned, are as the flame of a Candle, to a fiery Oven; a mild and gentle fire: Or as the Sparks that fly out of the top of a Chimney, to the dreadful eruptions of Vesuvius, or Mount Aetna. Beside, these are capable of relief, but those are unrelievable: their hearts die, because their hope is perished from the Lord.
It must be thankfully confessed there are two great differences betwixt the terrours of Conscience here, and there: One in the degrees of anguish, the other in the reliefs of that anguish. The ordinary distresses of Conscience here, compared with those of the damned, are as the flame of a Candle, to a fiery Oven; a mild and gentle fire: Or as the Sparks that fly out of the top of a Chimney, to the dreadful eruptions of Vesuvius, or Mount Aetna. Beside, these are capable of relief, but those are unrelievable: their hearts die, because their hope is perished from the Lord.
But yet of all the miseries and distresses incident to men in this World, none like those of distressed Consciences: the terrors ⟨p. 353⟩of God set themselves in array, or are drawn up in Batalia against the Soul, Job 6.4, Whilst I suffer thy terrors (saith Heman) I am distracted, Psal. 88.15. Yea, they not only distract, but cut off the Spirit; as he adds v. 16. They lick up the very Spirit of a man, and none can bear them, Prov. 18.14. for now a man hath to do immediately with God; yea, with the Wrath of the great and dreadful God; and this wrath which is the most acute and sharp of all torments, falls upon the most tender and sensible part, the Spirit and Mind which now lies open and naked before him to be wounded by it. No Creature can administer the least relief, by the application of any temporal comfort or refreshment to it. Gold and Silver, Wife and Children, Meat and Melody, signify no more than the drawing off a silk stocking to cure the Paroxysms of the Gout.