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 ...

Argument V.

THE Immortality of the Soul of Man may be evinced from the Dignity of Man above all other Creatures (Angels only excepted) and his Dominion over them all.

In this the Scriptures are clear, that Man is the Master-piece of all Gods other work, Psal. 8.5, 6. For thou hast made him a little lower than the Angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou hast made him to have Dominion over the works of thy hands, thou hast put all things under his feet. Other Creatures were made for his service, and he is crowned King over them all. One Man is of more worth than all the inferiour Creatures.

But wherein is his Dignity and excellency above all o∣ther Creatures, if not in respect of the capacity and immor∣tality of his Soul? Sure it can be found no where else, for as to the Body, many of the Creatures excel man in the perfections of Sense, greatness of Strength, agility of Mem∣bers, &c. Nos Aper auditu praecellit, aranea tactu, vultur odo∣ratu, linx visu, simia gustu: And for beauty, Solomon in all his Glory was not arrayed like one of the Lilies of the Field. The Beasts, and Fowls enjoy more pleasure, and live dive∣sted of those cares and cumbers which perplex and wear

out the lives of men. It cannot be in respect of bodily per∣fections or pleasures that man excels other Creatures.

If you say, he excels them all in respect of that noble en∣dowment of Reason, which is peculiar to man, and his sin∣gular excellency above them all.

'Tis true, this is his glory, but if you deprive the reaso∣nable Soul of Immortality, you despoil it of all, both its glory and comfort, and put the reasonable into a worse condition than the unreasonable and brutish Creatures; for if the Soul may dye with the Body, and man perish as the Beast, happier is the life of the Beast, which is perplexed with no cares nor fears about futurities: our Reason serves to little other purpose, but to be an engine of Torture, a meer Rack to our Souls.

Certainly, the Priviledge of Man doth not consist in that, as abstracted from Immortality. But in this it pro∣perly consists, that he enjoys not only a reasonable, but al∣so rejoyceth in an Immortal Soul, which shall overlive the world, and subsist separate from the Body, and abide for ever, when all other Souls being but material forms, pe∣rish with that matter on which they depend. This is the proper Dignity of Man above the Beast that perisheth, and to deprive him of Immortality, and leave him his Reason, is but to leave him a more miserable and wretched Creature than any that God hath put under his feet. For Man is a prospecting Creature, and raiseth up to himself vast hopes and fears from the world to come: by these he is restrained from the sensual pleasures which other Creatures freely enjoy, and exercised with ten thousands cares which they are unacquainted with; and to fail at last of all his hopes and expectations of happiness in the world to come, is to fall many degrees lower than the lowest Creature shall fall, even so much lower, as his expectations and hopes had lifted him higher.