A92141:113
Influences of the life of grace
Influences of the life of grace. Or, A practical treatise concerning the way, manner, and means of having and improving of spiritual dispositions, and quickening influences from Christ the resurrection and the life. By Samuel Rutherfurd, Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.Influences of the life of grace. Or, A practical treatise concerning the way, manner, and means of having and improving of spiritual dispositions, and quickning influences from Christ the resurrection and the life. By Samuel Rutherfurd, Professor of Divinity in the Vniversity of St. Andrews in Scotland.
London: printed by T.C. for Andrew Crook, 1659
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
In so far as willing and nilling are acts of second causes in the same sphere with natural causes; there seems to be no more reason for denying influences to nilling and willing simply,1 yea or for literal hearing and praying, then for ploughing and sowing, except that here God acts in a dreadful way of Justice, toward Pharaoh and other reprobates, in leaving them to the actings of their own heart; only it may be said, that God finding his child under deadness, and acting in a dead and literal way, as he hath bowels of compassion toward his chosen, under the evil of sin, that are ready to be drowned, he joins his help of influences, seeing his own go about duties with wrestling and pain, since he knows some one way or other they must be over the water, and helped, otherwise they cannot stir.
In so far as willing and nilling are acts of second causes in the same sphere with natural causes; there seems to be no more reason for denying influences to nilling and willing simply,1 yea or for literal hearing and praying, then for plowing and sowing, except that here God acts in a dreadful way of Justice, toward Pharaoh and other reprobates, in leaving them to the actings of their own heart; only it may be said, that God finding his child under deadness, and acting in a dead and literal way, as he hath bowels of compassion toward his chosen, under the evil of sin, that are ready to be drowned, he joynes his help of influences, seeing his own goe about duties with wrestling and pain, since he knows some one way or other they must be over the water, and helped, otherwise they cannot stir.
- 1Necessity of influences.
2. As there are some saving graces from the Mediator, so must there be some mediatory influences bestowed covenant ways upon the chosen of God. But 1. Free goodness, and not natural necessity, made the world; and that same freedom intervenes, in continuing, being and acting in creatures,