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 ...

§. 4.

But the difficulty seems to lie in this, how the Soul can subsist alone, without a Body; and how the habits of Grace which were infused into it in this life by Sanctification, do inhere in it, or can be reduced into act by it when it hath no bodily Organs to work by.

As to the first, there is no difficulty at all, if we once rightly apprehend what is meant when we call it a Spiritual Substance; that is, a Being by it self, independent upon any other Creature as to its existence, as was opened before: The Soul depends not for its life upon the Body, but the Body upon the Soul. It is the same Sword when it is drawn, as it was when sheathed in its Scabbard; the Soul is as much it self when separated from the Body, as it was when united with it; its Being is independent on it: it can live and act in a Body, and it can do so without it. For it is a distinct Being from its Body, a substantial Being by it self. And