A39675:67
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.
GENESIS II. vers. vii. And the Lord formed Man out of the dust of the Ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life; and Man became a living Soul.
Three things (saith *Athanasius) are unknown to men according to their Essence, viz. God, Angels, and the Souls of men. Of the Nature of the Divine and high-born Soul, we may say as the learned †Whitaker doth of the way of its infection by Original sin; It is easier sought than understood, and better understood than explicated: And for its Original, the most sagacious and renowned for wisdom amongst the ancient *Philosophers, understood nothing of it. It is said of Democritus, that there is †nothing in the whole ⟨p. 2⟩workmanship of Nature of which he did not write; and in a more lofty, and swelling Hyperbole, they stile their Eagle-eyed Aristotle, the Rule, yea and Miracle of Nature; Learning it self, the very Sun of knowledge: Yet both these are not only said, but proved by Lactantius to be learned Idiots. How have the Schools of Epicurus, and Aristotle, the Cartesians and other Sects of Philosophers, abused and troubled the world with a kind of Philosophical Enthusiasm, and a g[…] many ridiculous fancies about the Original of the Soul of Man? And when all is done, three words of God by the pen of his inspired Moses, 5enlightens us more than all their subtle Notions of the accidental concretion of Atoms, their materia subtilis, and Anima Mundi, and the rest of their unintelligible fancies could ever do.