A39675:959
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.
To conclude.
My Opinion upon the whole matter is this, that although it cannot be denied, but in some grand and extraordinary cases, as at the transfiguration, and Resurrection of Christ. God did, and perhaps sometimes though rarely may order or permit departed Souls to return into this World; yet for the most part I judge those Apparitions are not the Souls of the Dead, but other Spirits, and for the most part evil ones.
1Of this Judgment was St. Augustine, who when he had at full related the Story above, of the Fathers Ghost directing his Son to the Acquittance, yet will not allow it to be the very soul of his Father, but an Angel: where he farther adds, If (saith he) the souls of the dead might be present in our affairs, they would not forsake us in this sort; especially my Mother Monica, who in her life could never be without me, surely she would not thus leave me being dead.
- 1Lib. de cura pro mortuis.