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 ...

PROP. II. All the sin and guilt contracted upon the Souls and consciences of impeni∣tent men in this World, accompanies and follows their departed Souls to judgment; and there brings them under the dreadful condemnation of the great and terrible God, which cuts off all their hopes and comforts for ever.

IF you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins, Joh. 8.24. and Job 20.11. His bones are full of the sins of his youth which shall lye down with him in the dust. No Proposition lies clearer in Scripture, or should lie with greater weight upon the hearts of sinners: nothing but pardon can remove guilt; but without faith and repentance there never was nor shall be a pardon, Acts 10.43. Rom. 3 24, 25. Luk. 24.46, 47. Look as the graces of Be∣lievers, so the sins of Unbelievers follow the Soul whithersover it goes. All their sins who dye out of Christ cry to them when they go hence, We are thy works, and we will follow thee. The acts of sin are transient, but the guilt and effects of it are permanent; and it is evident by this, that in the great day their consciences which are the Books of record wherein all their sins are registred, will be opened, and they shall be judged by them, and out of them, Rev. 20.12.

Now before that general judgment, every Soul comes to its particular judgment, and that immediately after death; of this I apprehend the Apostle to speak in Heb. 9.27. It is appointed for all men once to dye, but after that the judgment. The Soul is presently stated by this judgment in its everlasting and fixed condition. The Soul of a wicked man appearing before God in all its sin and guilt, and by him sentenced, immediately it gives up all its hope, Prov. 11.7. When a wicked man dyeth, his expectation shall perish,* 1.1 and the hope of unjust men perisheth. His strong hope perisheth,

as some read it; (i.e.) his strong delusion: for alas! He took his own shadow for a bridge over the great waters, and is un∣expectedly plunged into the gulph of eternal misery, as Matth. 7.22.

This perishing or cutting off of hope is that which is called in Scripture the death of the Soul, for so long the Soul will live as it hath any hope. The deferring of hope makes it sick, but the final cutting off of hope strikes it quite dead (i.e.) dead as to all joy, comfort, or expectation of any for ever, which is that death which an immortal Soul is capable to suffer: the righ∣teous hath hope in his death; but every unregenerate man in the world breaths out his last hope in a few moments after his last breath, which strikes terror into the very centre of the Soul, and is a death-wound to it.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Etiam spes va∣lentissima.