A39675:605
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 continuance of these our Tabernacles or Bodies is short, whether we consider them absolutely, or comparatively.
I. Absolutely, if they should stand seventy or eighty years, which is the longest duration, Psal. 90.10. How soon will that time run out? what are years that are past but as a dream that is vanished, or as the waters that are past away. It is in fluxu continuo: there is no stopping its swift course, or calling back a moment that is past. Death set out in its journey towards us the same hour we were born, and how near is it come this day to many of us? it hath us in chase, and will quickly fetch us up, and overtake us: but few stand so long as the utmost date.
II. Comparatively, let us compare our time in these Tabernacles (1) either with Eternity, or with him who inhabits it, and it shrinks up into nothing, Psal. 39.5. Mine age is nothing unto thee. So vast is the disproportion, that it seems not only little, but nothing at all. Or (2) with the Duration of the Bodies of men in the first Ages of the World, when they lived many hundred years in these fleshly Tabernacles. The length of their life was the benefit of the World, because Religion was then [Greek or Hebrew], a thing handed down from Father to Son; but certainly, it would be no benefit to us that are in Christ, to be so long suspended the fruition of God in the everlasting Rest.
II. Comparatively, let us compare our time in these Tabernacles (1) either with Eternity, or with him who inhabits it, and it shrinks up into nothing,