A39675:17
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.
And certainly, my Friends, Discourses of the Soul and its immortality; of Heaven and of Hell, the next and only receptacles of unbodied Spirits, were never more seasonable and necessary than in this Atheistical age of the World, wherein all serious piety and thoughts of immortality are ridiculed, and hissed out of the company of many: As if those old condemned Heretics the [Greek or Hebrew] who asserted the corruptibility and mortality of the Soul as well as Body, had been again revived in our days.
And certainly, my Friends, Discourses of the Soul and its immortality; of Heaven and of Hell, the next and only receptacles of unbodied Spirits, were never more seasonable and necessary than in this Atheistical age of the World, wherein all serious piety and thoughts of immortality are ridicul'd, and hissed out of the company of many: As if those old condemned Hereticks the 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 who asserted the corruptibility and mortality of the Soul as well as Body, had been again revived in our days.
And as the Atheism of some, so the tepidity and unconcerned carelessness of the most needs and calls for such potent Remedies as Discourses of this kind do plentifully afford. I dare appeal to your charitable Judgments, whether the Conversations and Discourses of the Many, do indeed look like a serious pursuit of Heaven, and a flight from Hell?
Long have my thoughts bended towards this great and excellent Subject, and many earnest desires I have had, (as I believe all thinking persons must needs have) to know ⟨image 4⟩what I shall be when I breathe not. But when I had engaged my Meditations about it, two great rubs opposed the farther progress of my thoughts therein: Namely, I. The difficulty of the Subject I had chosen; And, II. The distractions of the times in which I was to write upon it.