A39675:604
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 Law of Mortality binds all, good and bad, young and old, the most useful and desirable Saints, whom the World can worst spare, as well as useless and undesirable sinners, Rom. 8.10. and if Christ (or though Christ) be in you, the Body is dead because of sin, Peter himself must put off his Tabernacle, for they are but Tabernacles, frail and moveable frames, not built for continuance: these will drop off from our Souls, as the Shell falls of from the Bird in the Nest: be our earthly Tabernacles never so strong or pleasant,(2) we must depose them, and that shortly; our lease in them will expire quickly, we have but a short term, James 4.14. Like a thin mist in the morning which the Sun presently dissipates, this is a Metaphor chosen from the Air: You have one from the Land, where the swift Post runs, Job 9.25. So doth our life from Stage to Stage, till its journey be finished; and a third from the Waters, there Sail the swift Ships, Job 9.26. which weighing Anchor and putting into the Sea, continually lessen the Land, till at last they have quite lost sight of it; from the Fire, Psal. 58.4. The lives of men are as soon extinct as a blaze made with dry thorns, which is almost as soon out, as in. Thus you see how the Spirit of God hath borrowed Metaphors from all the Elements of Nature, to shadow forth the brevity and frailty of that life we now live in these Tabernacles: So that we may say […] one did before us, Nescio an dicenda sit vita mortalis, an vitalis mors; I know not which to call it, a mortal life, or a living death.
The Law of Mortality binds all, good and bad, young and old, the most useful and desirable Saints, whom the World can worst spare, as well as useless and undesireable sinners, Rom. 8.10. and if Christ (or though Christ) be in you, the Body is dead because of sin, Peter himself must put off his Tabernacle, for they are but Tabernacles, frail and moveable frames, not built for continuance: these will drop off from our Souls, as the Shell falls of from the Bird in the Nest: be our earthly Tabernacles never so strong or pleasant,