A39675:455
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.
2. And though in its ordinary actions in this life, it doth use the Body, as its Tool or Instrument in working, doth it thence follow, that it can neither subsist or act separate from them in the other World? Whilst a man is on Horseback in his Journey, he useth the help and service of his Horse, and is moved according to the motion of his Horse, but doth it thence follow, he cannot stand or walk alone, when dismounted at his Journeys end? We know Angels both live, and act, without the ministry of Bodies, and our Souls are Spiritual Substances as well as they.
But many Scriptures seem to favour the total cessation of the Souls actions,1 if not of its being also after Separation, ⟨p. 120⟩as that in 2 Sam. 14.14. We must needs dye, and are as Water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up, and Psal. 88.10, 11, 12. with Isaiah 38.18, 19. The dead cannot praise thee.
- 1Object. 4.
1Those words of the Woman of Tekoa, are not to be understood absolutely, but respectively: and the meaning is, that the Soul is in the Body as some precious liquor in a brittle glass, which being broken by death, the Soul is irrecoverably gone, as the Water Spilt on the ground, which by no humane power or art of man can be recovered again. All the means in the World cannot fetch it back into the Body again. She speaks not of the Resurrection, or what shall be done in the World to come, by the Almighty power of God, but of what is impossible to be done in this World by all the skill and power of Man.