Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	arise_v	soul_n	zion_n	21	3	9.8898	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39675	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 ...	Flavel, John, 1630?-1691.	1685 (1685)	Wing F1176; ESTC R5953	379,180	504

subdued to and fitted for the use of the Spirit as never to impede clog or obstruct its motions and inclinations any more 1 Cor. 15.44 In this hope it parted from it and with this consolation it now receives it again Argument V. THere are many Scriptures which very much favour if they do not positively conclude the Souls inclination to and desire to be re-united with its own body even whilst it is in the state of its single glorification in Heaven certainly our Souls leave not our Bodies at death as the Ostrich doth her Egg in the sand without any farther regard to it or concernment for it but they are represented as crying to God to remember ave●●● and vindicate them Rev. 6 1● 11. How long Lord how long wilt thou not avenge our blood our blood speaks both the continued Relation and suitable affection they have to their absent Bodies And to the same sense a judicious and learned Pen expounds that place Iob 14.14 which is commonly but I know not how fitly accommodated to another purpose all the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come which words by a diligent comparing of the Context appear to have this for their proper scope and sense Iob in the former verse had expressed his confidence by way of Petition Mr. How 's Blessedness of the Righteous p. 170 171. that at a set and appointed time God would remember him so as to recal him out of the Grave and now minded to speak out more fully puts the Question to himself If a man die shall he live again And thus answers it all the days of my appointed time that is of the appointed time which he mentioned before when God should revive him out of the dust will I wait till my change come that is that glorious change when the corruption of a loathsome Grave should be exchanged for immortal glory which he amplifies and utters more expresly Ver. 15. Thou shalt call and I will answer thou shalt have a desire to the work of thy hands thou wilt not always forget to restore and perfect thine own Creature And surely this waiting is not the act of his inanimate sleeping dust but of that part which should be capable of such an action q. d. I in that part which shall be still alive shall patiently wait the appointed time of reviving me in that part also which Death and the Grave shall insult over in a temporary triumph in the mean time Upon these grounds I think the inclination of the separated Spirits of the just to their own Bodies to be a justifiable Opinion As for the damned we have no reason to think such a re-union to be desireable to them for alas it will be but the increase and aggravation of their torments which consideration is sufficient to over-power and stifle the inclination of nature and make the very thoughts of it horrid and dreadful To what end as the Prophet speaks in another case is it for them to desire that day It will be a day of darkness and gloominess to them re-union being designed to compleat the happiness of the one and the misery of the other But before I take off my hand and dismiss this question I must remember that I am Debtor to two Objections Objection 1. The Soul can both live and act separate from the Body it needs it not and if it don't want why should it desire it Solution The life and actings of the glorified are considerable two ways 1 Singly and abstractly for the life and action of one part and so we confess the Soul lives happily and acts forth its own powers freely in the state of separation 2 Personally or concretely as it is the life and action of the whole man and so it doth both need and desire the Conjunction or re-union of the Body for the Body is not only a part of Christs purchace as well as the Soul and is to have its own glory as well as it but it is also a constitutive part of a compleat glorified person and so considered the Saints are not perfectly happy till this re-union be effected which is the true ground and reason of this its desire Object 2. But this Hypothesis seems to thwart the account given in Scripture of the rest and placid state of separate Souls for look as Bodies which gravitate and propend do not rest so neither do Souls which incline and desire Solution There is a vast difference betwixt the Tendencies and Propensions of Souls in the way to glory and in glory we that are absent from the Lord can find no rest in the way but those that are with the Lord can rest in Jesus and yet wait without anxiety or self torturing impatience for the accomplishment of the promises to their absent Bodies Rev. 6.10 11. COROLLARY Let this provoke us all to get sanctified Souls to rule and use these their Bodies now for God this will abundantly sweeten their parting at death and their meeting again at the Resurrection of the just Else their parting will be doleful and their next meeting dreadful And so much for the Doctrine of Separation The USES of the Point OUr way is now open to the improvement and Use of this excellent Subject and Doctrine of Separation and certainly it affords as rich an entertainment for our affections as for our minds in the following Uses Of which the first will be for our information in six practical Inferences Inference I. IF this be the life and state of gracious Souls after their separation from the Body Then holy persons ought not to entertain dismal and terrifying thoughts of their own dissolution The Apprehensions and thoughts of death should have a peculiar pleasantness in the minds of Believers you have heard into what a blessed Presence and Communion death introduceth your Souls how it leads you out of a Body of sin a World of sorrows the Society of imperfect Saints to an innumerable Company of Angels and to the Spirits of just men made perfect To that lovely Mount Sion to the heavenly Sanctuary to the blessed Visions of the face of God O methinks there hath been enough said to make all the Souls in whom the well-grounded hopes of the life of glory are found to cry out with the Apostle We are con●ident I say yea and willing rather to be absent from the Body and present with the Lord 2 Cor. 5.8 When good Musculus drew near his end how sweet and pleasant was this Meditation to his Soul Hear his Swan-like Song Melchior Adams in vita Musculi p. 385 386. Nil superest vitae frigus praecordia captat Sed tu Christe mihi vita perennis ades Quid trepidas anima ad sedes abitura quietis En tibi ductor adest Angelus ille tuus Linque domum hanc miseram nunc in sua fata ruentem Quam tibi fida Dei dextera restituet Peccasti Scio sed Christus credentibus

were in the World and if it should be ours also we should not be much startled at it considering these Bodies of ours must be shortly pent up in a straiter darker and more loathsome place of confinement than any prison in this World can be The grave is a darker place Iob 17.13 And your abode there will be longer Eccles. 11.8 These and all other our outward enjoyments are separable things and its good thus to alleviate our loss of them Inference VI. HOw Heavenly should the tempers and frawles of those Souls be who are Candidates for Heaven and must be so shortly numbred with the Spirits of just men made perfect 'T is reasonable that we all begin to be that which we expect to be for ever To learn that way of living and conversing which we believe must be our everlasting life and business in the World to come Let them that hope to live with Angels in Heaven learn to live like Angels on Earth in Holiness Activity and ready obedience There is the greatest reason that our minds be there where our Souls are to be for ever A spiritual mind will be found possible congruous sweet and evidential of our interest in that glory to all those holy Souls who are preparing and designed for it First it is possible notwithstanding the clogs and entanglements of the Body to be heavenly minded Others have attained it Philip. 3.20 Two things make an heavenly conversation possible to men viz. 1. The natural abilities of the Mind 2. The gracious principles of the Mind 1. The natural abilities of the mind which can in a minutes time dispatch a nimble messenger to Heaven and mount its thoughts from this to that World in a trice The power of cogitation is a rich endowment of the Soul such as no other creature on earth is participant of Though spiritual thoughts be not the natural growth of the Soul yet thoughts capable of being spiritualized are And without this ability of projecting thoughts all intercourse must have been cut off 2. The gracious principles implanted in the Soul do actually incline the mind and mount its thoughts heaven-ward Yea this will prove more than a possibility of a conversation in Heaven whilst Saints tabernacle on earth in Bodies of flesh it will almost prove an impossibility that it should be otherwise For these spiritual principles setting the bent and tendency of the heart heaven-ward we must act against the very law of our new Nature when we place our affections elsewhere Secondly A mind in heaven is most congruous decorous and comely for those that are the enrolled inhabitants of that heavenly City Where should a Christians love be but where his Lord is Our hearts and our homes do not use to be long asunder It becomes you so to think and so to speak now as those who make account to be shortly singing Allelujahs before the throne Thirdly 'T is most sweet and delightful no pleasure in all this World comparable to this pleasure Rom. 8.6 To be spiritually minded is life and peace 'T is a young Heaven born in the Soul in its way thither Fourthly To conclude It is evidential of your interest in it an agreable frame is the surest title Col. 3.1 2. Matth 6.21 If Heaven attract your minds now it will centre them for ever USE II. THis Doctrine of the separation of the Spirits of the Just from their Bodies as it lyes before you in this Discourse affords a singular help to all the people of God to entertain lovely and pleasant thoughts of that day to make death not only an unregretted but a most pleasant and desirable thing to their Souls I know there is a pure simple natural fear of death from which you must not expect to be perfectly freed by all the Arguments in the World And there is a reverential awful fear of death which it would be your prejudice and loss to have destroyed You will have a natural and ought to have a reverential fear of death the one flows from your sensitive the other from your sanctified nature But it is a third sort of fear which doth you all the mischief a fear springing in gracious Souls out of the weakness of their Graces and the strength of their unmortified affections A fear arising partly out of the darkness of our minds and partly out of the sensuality and earthlyness of our hearts this fear is that which so convulseth our Souls when death is near and imbitters our lives even whilst it is at a distance He that hath been over-heated in his affections to this World and over-cooled by diversions and temptations neglects and intermissions to that World cannot chuse but give an unwilling shrug if not a frightful screech at the appearance of death And this being the sad case of too many good and upright Souls for the main and there being so few even amongst serious Christians that have attained to that courage and complacence in the thoughts of death which the Apostle speaks of 2 Cor. 5.8 to be both confident and willing rather to be absent from the Body and to be present with the Lord I will from this discourse furnish them with some special assistance therein But withal I must tell you upon what great disadvantages I am here to dispute with your fears so strong is the current of natural and vicious fear that except a special hand of God back and set on the Arguments that shall be urged they will be as easily swept away before it as so many Straws by a rapid Torrent nor will it be to any more purpose to oppose my breath to them than to the Tides and Waves of the Sea Moreover I am fully convinced by long and often experience how unsteady and inconstant the frames and tempers of the best hearts are and that if it be not full home yet it is next to an impossibility to fix them in such a temper as this I aim at is Where is that man to be found who after the revolutions of many years and in those years various dispensations of providence without him altering his condition and greater variety of temptations within can yet say notwithstanding all these various aspects and positions his heart hath still held one steddy and invariable tenour and course Alas there be very few if any of such sound and Athletick temper of mind whose pulse beats with an even stroke through all inequalities of condition alike free and willing at one time as another to be uncloathed of the Body and to be with Christ. This heighth of faith and depth of mortification this strength of love to Christ and ardour of holy desire are degrees of grace to which very few attain The case standing thus it is no more than needs to urge all sorts of Arguments upon our timorous and unsteady hearts and it 's like to prove an hard and difficult task to bring the heart but to a quiet and unregretting submission to the appointment

Immortality But in this it properly consists that he enjoys not only a reasonable but also rejoyceth in an Immortal Soul which shall overlive the world and subsist separate from the Body and abide for ever when all other Souls being but material forms perish with that matter on which they depend This is the proper Dignity of Man above the Beast that perisheth and to deprive him of Immortality and leave him his Reason is but to leave him a more miserable and wretched Creature than any that God hath put under his feet For Man is a prospecting Creature and raiseth up to himself vast hopes and fears from the world to come by these he is restrained from the sensual pleasures which other Creatures freely enjoy and exercised with ten thousands cares which they are unacquainted with and to fail at last of all his hopes and expectations of happiness in the world to come is to fall many degrees lower than the lowest Creature shall fall even so much lower as his expectations and hopes had lifted him higher Argument VI. THE Souls of Men must be Immortal or else the desires of Immortality are planted in their Souls in vain That there are desires of Immortality found in the hearts of all men is a truth too evident to be denied or doubted Man cannot bound and terminate his desires within the narrow limits of this world I beseech men for Gods sake that if at any time there arise in them a desire or a wish that others should speak well of them rather than evil after their death then at that time they would seriously consider whether those motions are not from some Spirit to continue a Spirit after it leaves its earthly habitation rather than from an earthly Spirit a vapour which cannot act or imagine or desire or f●ar things beyond its continuance Halt de Anim p. 73. and the time that measures it Nothing that can be measured by time is commensurate to the desires of Mans Soul No Motto better suits it than this Non est mortale quod opto I seek for that which will not die Rom. 2. v. 7. and his great relief against death lies in this Non omnis moriar That he shall not totally perish Yea we find in all men even in those that seem to be most drowned and lost in the loves and delights of this present World a natural desire to continue their Names and Memories to posterity after death Hence it is said Psal. 49.11 Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever and their dwelling-places to all generations they call their lands after their own Names And hence is the desire of children which is as one saith nodosa Aeternitas a knotty Aeternity when our thred is spun out and cut off their thred is knit to it and so we dream of a continued succession in our Name and Family Abs●lom had no children to continue his Memory to supply which defect he reared up a Pillar 2 Sam. 18.18 Now it cannot be imagined that God should plant the desire of Immortality in those Souls that are incapable of it nor yet can we give a rational account how these apprehensions of Immortality should come into the Souls of men except they themselves be of an immortal nature For either these notions and apprehensions of Immortality are imprest upon our Souls by God or do naturally spring out of the Souls of men It forms conceptions of things Spiritual and abstract from matter and discerns objects which have no dimensions Figure Colour or affection of matter Si conceptus de immortalitate fons sit ipsamet anima est ipsa immortalis quo●iam quod momentan 〈…〉 est ideam natu●ae perennis fa 〈…〉 non potest quemadmodum anim● rati●●s exp●●s conceptum ratione●et●ttis fom 〈…〉 nequit Sterne de morte p. 198. if God impress them those impressions are made in vain if there be no such thing as Immortality to be enjoyed and if they spring and rise naturally out of our Souls that is a sufficient evidence of their Immortality For we cannot more conceive and form to our selves Ideas and Notions of Immortality if our Souls be mortal than the Brutes which are void of reason can form to themselves Notions and Conceptions of rationality So then the very apprehensions and desires that are found in mens hearts of Immortality do plainly speak them to be of an Immortal Nature Argument VII MOreover the account given us in Scripture of the return of several Souls into their own Bodies again after death and real separation from them shews us that the Soul subsists and lives in a separate state after death and perisheth not by the stroke of death for if it were annihilated or destroyed by death the same Soul could never be restored again to the same Body A dead Body may indeed be acted by an assisting form which may move and carry it from place to place So the Devil hath acted the dead Bodies of many but they cannot be said to live again by their own Souls after a real separation by death unless those Souls over-lived the Bodies they forsook at death and had their abode in another Place and state You have divers unquestionable examples of the Souls return into the Body recorded in Scripture As that of the Sh●namites Son 2 King 4.18 19 20 32 33 34 35 36 37. That of the Rulers daughter Matth. 9.18 23 24 25. That of the Widows Son Luke 7.12 13 14 15. and that of Lazarus Iohn 11.39 40 41 42 43 44 45. These were no other but the very same Souls Non aliam sed ipsam priorem anima● corpori mortuo res●itutam esse contra tos qui puta●erunt bodie putant anim●m post mortem corporis nihil esse their own Souls which returned into them again which as Chrysostom well observes is a great proof of their Immortality against them that think the Soul is annihilated after the death of the Body 'T is true the Scripture gives us no account of any sense or apprehension they retained after their re-union of the place or state they were in during their separation There seemed to be perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forgetfulness of all that they saw or felt in the state of separation And indeed it was necessary it should be so that our faith might be built rather upon the sure promises of God than such reports and narratives of them that came to us from the dead Luke 16.31 And if we believe not the word neither would we believe if one came from the dead Argument VIII MOreover eighthly The supposition of the Souls perishing with the Body is subversive of the Christian Religion in the principal Doctrines and Duties thereof take away the Immortality of the Soul and all Religion falls to the ground I will instance in 1. The Doctrines of Religion 2. The Duties of Religion 1. First It overthrows the main Principles and Doctrines of Christian