A39675:798
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.
Beside, Truth now is forced in compliance with our weakness, and distance from the Fountain, to descend from Heaven under Veils, Shadows, and Umbrages, thereby to contract some kind of Affinity with our Fancies and exterior Senses first, that so it may with more advantage transmit it self to our Understandings.1 It must come under some veil or other to us, whilst we are veiled with Mortality, because the Soul cannot behold it in its native lustre, nor converse otherwise with it.
Beside, Truth now is forced in compliance with our weakness, and distance from the Fountain, to descend from Heaven under Vails, Shadows, and Umbrages, thereby to contract some kind of Affinity with our Fancies and exterior Senses first, that so it may with more advantage transmit it self to our Understandings.1 It must come under some vail or other to us, whilst we are vailed with Mortality, because the Soul cannot behold it in its native lustre, nor converse otherwise with it.
- 1Lumen supremum nunquam descendit sine indumento impossibile est aliter nobis lucere radium divinum, nisi varietate Sacro•um velaminum circumvelatum Dionys. Areop. de celoest hier. cap.
And hence it was that Augustin made his rational Conjecture, Why Men use to be so much delighted with Metaphors, because they are so much proportioned to our Senses, with which our reason in this embodied state hath contracted such an Intimacy and Familiarity: But when the Soul lays aside its veil of Flesh, Truth also puts off her veil, and shows the Soul her naked, beautiful, and ravishing face: ⟨p. 224⟩It thenceforth beholds all truth in God the fountain of Truth. There are five ways by which men attain the knowledge of God, say the Schools, four of which the Soul makes use of in this World; but the fifth which is the most perfect, is reserved for the separate state. Men discern God here, (1) In vestigio, by his foot-steps in the Works of Creation. God hath imprest the marks of his Wisdom and Power upon the Creatures, by which impressions we do discern that God hath been there. Thus the very Heathen arrive to some knowledge of a God,