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.

HOw much are the spirits of men sunk by sin, below the dig∣nity and excellency of their Nature?

Our Souls are Spirits by nature, yet have they naturally no delight in things spiritual: They decline that which is ho∣mogeneal and suitable to Spirits, and rellish nothing but what is carnal and unsuitable to them. How are its affe∣ctions inverted and misplaced by sin? That noble spiritual Heaven-born creature the Soul, whose Element and Centre God alone should be, is now fallen into a deep Oblivion both of God, and it self; and wholly spends its strength in the pursuit of sensual and earthly enjoyments, and becomes a meer drudge and slave to the body. Carnal things now measure out and govern its delights and hopes, its fears and sorrows. O how unseemly is it, to b••••••ld such an high-born spirit lackying up and down the Wo••••d in the service of the perishing flesh? Their heart (saith the Prophet) goeth after their Covetousness, Ezek. 33.31. as a Servant at the beck or nod of his Master.

O! how many are there to be found in every place, who melt down the precious affections and strength of their Souls, in sensitive brutish Pleasures and Delights. Iames 5.5. Ye have lived in pleasures upon Earth, as the Fish in the Water, or rather as the Eel in the Mud; never once lifting up a thought or desire to the spiritual and eternal pleasures, that are at Gods right hand.

Our Creation did not set us so low; we are made capa∣ble of better and higher things.

God did not inspire such a noble, excellent spiritual Soul into us, meerly to salt our bodies, or carry them up and down this world for a few years, to gaze at the vanities of it. It was a great saying of an Heathen: * 1.1 I am greater, and born to greater things, than that I should be a slave to

my body. We have a spirit about us, that might better understand its Original, and know it is so base a Being, as its daily imployments speak it to be. The Lord raise our apprehensions to a due value of the dignity of our own Souls, that we may turn from these sordid imployments with a generous disdain, and set our affections on what is a∣greeable to, and worthy of an high-born spirit.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Maior sum, & ad majora na∣tus, quam ••t carporis ••ti sim mancipium. Seneca.