A39675:48
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 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.
The Nature, Original, Immortality, and Capacity, of mine own Soul, for the present lodged in, and related to this vile Body, destinated to Corruption; Together with its Existence, Employment, Perfection, Converse with God, and other Spirits, both of its own, and of a Superior Rank and Order; when it shall, (as I know it shortly must) put off this its Tabernacle: These things have a long time been the matters of my limited desires to understand, so far as I could see the Pillar of fire (God in his Word) enlightening my way to the knowledge of them. Yea, such is the value I have for them, that I have given them the next place in my esteem, to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and my interest in him.