A39675:1539
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.
1. Let all Parents consider what a fearful thing it is to be the instruments of ruining for ever those that received their Beings instrumentally from them; and to seek whose good, they stand obliged by all the Laws of God and Nature.
In vain are all your cares and studies for their bodies, whilst their Souls perish for want of knowledge. You rejoiced at their birth, but they will have cause to curse the day they were born of you, and say, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which I was conceived. You were solicitous for their bodies, but careless of their Souls; earnest to see them rich, but indifferent whether they were gracious. You neglected to teach them the way of Salvation, but the Devil did not neglect to teach them the way of sin. You will one day wish you had never been Parents, when the doleful cries of your damned Children shall ring such Notes as these in your Ears. O cursed Father, O cruel, merciless Mother, whose examples have drawn me after you into all this misery. You had time enough, and motives enough to have warned me of this place and misery whilst my heart was tender, and my affections pliable: Had it not been as easy to have put a Bible as a Play-book before me? To have chastised me when I provoked God by sin, as when I provoked you about a trifle? One word spoken in season might have saved my Soul; one reproof wisely given, and set on by your example, might have preserved me. Had it not been the same pains to have asked me, Child, what wilt thou do to be saved? as what wilt thou do to live in the world? Or had I but observed any serious Religion in you, had I but found or heard my Father or Mother upon their knees in prayer, it might have awakened me to a consideration of my condition: in my youth I was shame faced, fearful, credulous, and apt to imitate; had you had but wisdom, as other Parents have, to have taken hold of any of these handles in time, you had rescued my Soul from Hell. Nay, so cruel have you been to your own Child, that you allowed me no time (if I had had a disposition) for any exercise of Religion; yea, you have quenched and stifled the sparks of convictions, and better inclinations that sometimes were in my heart. O happy had it been, if I had never been born ⟨p. 401⟩