A39675:356
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.
The Bodies of these Martyrs of Jesus were destroyed by divers sorts of torments, but their Souls were out of the reach of all those cruel Engines. They were in safety under the Altar, and in glory, clothed with their white Robes, when the Bodies they lately inhabited on earth, were turned to ashes, and torn to pieces by wild Beasts.
The Bodies of these Martyrs of Jesus were destroyed by divers sorts of torments, but their Souls were out of the reach of all those cruel Engines. They were in safety under the Altar, and in glory, cloathed with their white Robes, when the Bodies they lately inhabited on earth, were turned to ashes, and torn to pieces by wild Beasts.
The point I am to discourse from this Scripture, is the immortality of the Soul, for the better understanding whereof, let it be noted that there is a twofold Immortality.
I. Simple, and absolute in its own Nature, II. Derived, dependent, and from the pleasure of God.
In the former Sense, God only hath Immortality, as the Apostle speaks, 1 Tim. 6.16. our Souls have it as a gift from him. He that created our Souls out of nothing, can, if he please, reduce them to nothing again; but he hath bestowed Immortality upon them, and produced them in a nature suitable to that his appointment: fitted for an everlasting life. So that, though God by his absolute power can, yet he never will annihilate them, but they shall and must live for ever in endless Blessedness or Misery; Death must destroy these mortal Bodies, but it cannot destroy our Souls. And the certainty of this assertion is grounded upon these reasons, and will be cleared by these following Arguments.