A39675:47
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.
When the God that formed it, out of free grace to the work of his own hands, had thus recovered it to a sense of its own worth and danger; my next work was to get it united with Christ, and thereby secured from wrath to come. Which I found to be a work of difficulty to effect, (if it be yet effected) and a work of time to clear, though but to the degree of good hope through grace.
And since the hopes and evidences of Salvation began to spring up in my Soul, and settle the state thereof, I found these three great words, viz. Christ, Soul, and Eternity, to have a far different, and more awful sound in my ear than ever they used to have. I looked on them from that time, as things of greatest certainty, and most awful Solemnity. These things have lain with some weight upon my thoughts, and I have felt at certain seasons, a strong inclination to sequester my self from all other Studies, ⟨image 11⟩and spend my last days, and most fixed Meditations upon these three great and weighty Subjects.
I know the subject matter of my Studies and Enquiries (be it never so weighty) doth not therefore make my Meditations and Discourses upon it great and weighty: Nor am I such a vain Opiniona•or as to imagine my Discourses every way suitable to the dignity of such Subjects; No, no, the more I think and study about them, the more I discern the indistinctness, darkness, crudity, and confusion of my own conceptions, and expressions of such great and transcendent things as those: But, In magnis voluisse sat est, I resolved to do what I could; and accordingly some years past I finished and published in two parts the Doctrine of Christ, and by the acceptation and success the Lord gave that, He hath encouraged me to go on in this Second part of my work, how unequal soever my Shoulders are to the burden of it.