A39675:170
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.
1Add to this that excellent place of Solomon in Eccles 12. 7. Then shall the Dust return to the Earth, as it was; and the Spirit to God who gave it. Where he shows us what becomes of Man, and how each part, of which he consists, is bestowed and disposed of after his Dissolution, by Death. And thus he states it: These two constitutive parts of Man are a Soul, and a Body: These two parts have two distinct Originals: The Body as to its material cause is Dust; the Soul in its nature is a Spirit, and as to its Origin, it proceeded from the Father of Spirits: 'tis his own creature in an immediate way. He gave it; He gave it the being it hath by Creation, and gave it to us (i.e.) to our bodies by Inspiration. Now qualis Genesis, talis Analysis: When death dissolves the union which is betwixt them, each part returns to that from whence it came, dust to dust, and the Spirit to God that gave it. The Body is expressed by its material cause, dust, the Soul only by its efficient cause, as the gift of God, because it had no material cause at all, nor was made out of any preexistent matter, as the Body was. And therefore Solomon here speaks of God, as if he had only to do with the Soul, leaving the Body to its material and instrumental causes, with whom he concurs by a general influence. 'Tis God, not Man alone; or God by Man, that hath given us these bodies: but 'tis not Man but God alone, who hath given us these souls. He therefore passeth by the Body, and speaks of the Soul as the gift of God, because that part of Man, and that only flows immediately from God, and at death returns to him that gave it. All these expressions, The Father of Spirits, the former of the spirit in Man, the Giver of the Spirit, how agreeable ⟨p. 37⟩are they to each other, and all of them to the point under hand, that the Soul flows from God by immediate Creation? You see it hath no principle out of which (according to the order of nature) it did arise, as the body had; and therefore it hath no principle into which (according to the order of nature) it can be returned, as the body hath: but returns to God its efficient cause, if reconciled, to a Father, not only by Creation but Adoption; if unreconciled, as a creature guilty of unnatural Rebellion against the God that formed it, to be judged.