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 ...

§. 2.

But though we acknowledge it to be a great difficulty to trace it beyond the Limits of this World, though we per∣ceive nothing to depart from the Body at the instant of its expiration, but a puff of breath, which vanishes like Smoke into the air. And though Atheistical Witts daringly pro∣nounce an immaterial substance to be a meer Iargon,* 1.1 a Con∣tradiction in terminis; which being joined together, destroy one another: Yet all this doth not make the Notion of a separate Soul impossible, much less undermine its existence in its unbodied and lovely state; the Scriptures having so abundantly obviated all these Atheistical Suggestions, by so many plain Discoveries of the Happiness of some, and Mi∣sery of others after this Life. Yea, my Text answers us, That Death is so far from destroying or annihilating, that it perfects the Spirits of the Just.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Hobs Levia∣than, cap. 34.