A39675:1530
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
MATTH. 16.26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole… › Doctrine 2: DOCT. II.
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.
Be hid] If not as to the general light and superficial knowledge of it, yet as to its saving influence and converting efficacy upon their hearts, this never reacheth home to the Souls and spirits of multitudes that hear it; but it is never finally so hidden, except
To them that are lost,] So that all those to whom the converting and saving power of the Gospel never comes, whatever other knowledge they have, whatever duties they perform, whatever names and reputations they may have among men, yet this Text looks upon them all as a lost generation: they may have as many amiable homiletical Virtues, as sweet and lovely Natures, as clear and piercing eyes in all other things as any others; but they are such however
To them that are lost,] So that all those to whom the converting and saving power of the Gospel never comes, whatever other knowledge they have, whatever duties they perform, whatever names and reputations they may have among men, yet this Text looks upon them all as a lost generation: they may have as many amiable homilitical Vertues, as sweet and lovely Natures, as clear and piercing eyes in all other things as any others; but they are such however
Whose eyes the God of this world hath blinded,] Satan is here called the God of this World, not properly, but by a Mimesis, because he challenges to himself the honour of a God, a•d hath a world of Subjects that obey him; and to secure their obedience he blinds them, that they may never see a better way or state than that he hath drawn them into. ⟨p. 397⟩Therefore he is called the Ruler of the darkness of this World, who rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience, the eye of the Soul is the mind, that thinking, considering and reasoning power of the Soul; this is, as the Philosophers truly call it, the [Greek or Hebrew], the leading faculty to all the rest, the guide to all the other faculties which in the order of Nature follow this their Leader: if therefore this be blinded, the Will which is caeca potentia, a blind power in it self, and all the Affections blindly following the blind, all must needs fall into the ditch. And this is the case of the far greater part of even the professing World. Let us suppose a number of blind men upon an Island, where there are many smooth paths all leading to the top of a perpendicular cliff; and these blind men going on continually, some in one path, and some in another: but all in some one of those many paths which lead to the brink of their ruin which they see not; it must needs follow, if they all move forward, the whole number will in a short time be cast away, the Island cleared, and its Inhabitants dead and lost in the bottom of the Sea. This is the case of the unregenerate World: they are now upon this habitable spot of earth, environed with the vast Ocean of Eternity, there are multitudes of paths leading to eternal misery, one man takes this way, another that; as it is