A39675:623
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.
We cannot live always if we would, and our hearts should be wrought to that frame, as to say, we would not live always if we could. Job 7.16. I would not live always or long, saith he. But why should Job deprecate that which was not attainable? I would not live alway; he needed not to trouble himself about that, it being impossible that he should; both Statute and Natural Law forbid it. Ay, but this is his sense, supposing no such Necessity as there is, if it were pure matter of Election: Upon a due balancing of the accounts, and comparing the good and evil of death, I would not be confined always, or for any long time to the Body: It would be a bondage unsupportable to be here always.
We cannot live always if we would, and our hearts should be wrought to that frame, as to say, we would not live always if we could. Iob 7.16. I would not live always or long, saith he. But why should Iob deprecate that which was not attainable? I would not live alway; he needed not to trouble himself about that, it being impossible that he should; both Statute and Natural Law forbid it. Ay, but this is his sense, supposing no such Necessity as there is, if it were pure matter of Election: Upon a due ballancing of the accounts, and comparing the good and evil of death, I would not be confined always, or for any long time to the Body: It would be a bondage unsupportable to be here always.
Indeed those that have their Portion, their All, in this life, have no desire to be gone hence. They that were never changed by grace, desire no change by death; if such a Concession were made to them, as was once to an English Parliament, that they should never be dissolved, but by their own consent, when would they say as Paul, I desire to be dissolved? But it's far otherwise with them whose portion and affections are in another World, they would not live always if they might, knowing, that never to die, is never to be happy.