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 ...

Inference IV.

HOW Comfortable is the Doctrine of the Resurrection to Be∣lievers, which assures them of receiving their Bodies again, though they part with them for a time!

Believers must die as well as others: their Union with Christ priviledges them not from a Separation from their Bodies, Rom. 8.10 Heb. 9.27. But yet, they have special grounds of Consolation against this doleful separation above all others. For,

1. Though they part with them, yet they part in hopes of receiving them again, 1 Thessal. 4.13, 14. They take not a final leave of them when they die. Husbandmen cast their Seed-corn into the earth chearfully and willingly, be∣cause they part with it in hope; so should we; when we commit our Bodies to the earth at death.

2. Though death separate these dear Friends from each other; yet it cannot separate either the one or other from Christ, Luke 20.37, 38. I am the God of Abraham, &c. Your very dust is the Lords, and the Grave rots not the Bond of the Covenant.

3. The very same Body we lay down at death, we shall assume again at the Resurrection. Not only the same spe∣cifical, but the same Numerical Body, Iob 19.25.26. With these eyes shall I see God.

4. The unbodied Soul shall not find the want of its Body, so as to afflict or disquiet it, nor the Body the want of its Soul; but the one shall be at rest in Heaven, and the other sweet asleep in the Grave, and all that long interval shall slide away, without any afflicting sense of each others ab∣sence. The time will be long, Iob 14.12. but if it were longer, it cannot be afflicting, considering how the Soul is cloathed immediately 2 Cor. 5.1, 2. and how the Body sleeps sweetly in Jesus, 1 Thess. 4.14.

5. When the day of their re-espousals is come, the Soul will find the Body so transformed and improved, that it shall never receive prejudice from it any more, but a singu∣ler addition to its Happiness and Glory. Now it clogs us, Matth. 26.41. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the Flesh is weak. It incumbers us with cares to provide for it: and eats up time and thoughts; but then it will be a Spiritual Body, 1 Cor. 15.43. like to the Angels, for manner of subsi∣stence, Luke 20.35, 36. 1 Cor. 6.13. and which is the high∣est step of glory, like unto Christs glorious Body, Philip. 3.21. well therefore might the Father say, Resurrectio mor∣tuorum, est Consolatio Christianorum: The Resurrection of the Dead, is the Consolation of Christians.