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 IX.

TO conclude, If the Soul be so invaluably precious, how great and irreparable a loss must the loss of a Soul to all Eternity be!

There is a double loss of the Soul of man, the one in Adam, which loss is recoverable by Christ; the other by final impenitence and unbelief, cutting it off from Christ, and this is irreparable and irrecoverable. Souls lost by Adams sin are within the reach of the arms of Christ; but in the shipwrack of personal infidelity there is no plank to save the Soul so cast away: Of all losses this is the most la∣mentable, yet what more common? O what a shrlek doth the unregenerate Soul make, when it sees whereto it must, and that there is no remedy! Three cries are dreadful to hear on Earth, yet all three are drown'd by a more terrible cry in the other World. The cry of a condemned Prisoner at the Bar, the cry of drowning Seamen and Passengers in a shipwrack, the cries of Souldiers conquer'd in the field; all these are fearful cries, yet nothing to that of a Soul cast away to all Eternity, and lost in the depth of Hell.

If a man, as Chrysostome well observes, lose an eye, an arm, a hand, or leg, it is a great loss: but yet if one be lost, there is another to help him; for omnia Deus dedit duplicia, God hath given us all those members double: animam verò unam, but we have but one Soul, and if that be damned, there is not another to be saved.

And it is no small aggravation to this loss, that it was a wilful loss. We had the offers and means of Salvation plentifully afforded us: we were warn'd of this danger over and over: we were intreated and beseecht upon the knee of importunity, not to throw away our Souls by an obstinate rejection of Christ and Grace: we saw the diligence and care of others for the salvation of their Souls; some rejoycing in the comfortable assurance of it, and others giving all dili∣gence to make their calling and election sure: we knew that our Souls were as capable of blessedness as any of those that are in enjoying God in Heaven, or panting after that enjoy∣ment

on Earth; yea, some Souls that are now irrecoverably gone, and many others who are going after them, once were, and now are not far from the Kingdom of God: they had convictions of sin, a sense of their lost and miserable state, they began to treat with Christ in Prayer, to converse with his Ministers and People about their condition: and after all this, even when they seemed to have clean escaped the snares of Satan, to be again intangled and overcome; when even come to Harbours mouth, to be driven back a∣gain, and cast away upon the Rocks: O what a loss will this be!

O thou that createdst Souls with a capacity to know, love, and enjoy thee for ever; who out of thine unsearchable Grace ••entest thine own Son out of thy bosom to seek and save that which was lost, pity those poor Souls that cannot pity themselves: let mercy yet interpose it self betwixt them and eternal ruine; awaken them out of their pleasant slum∣ber, though it be at the brink of damnation, lest they pe∣rish and there be none to deliver them.