A92141:114
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.
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, ⟨p. 16⟩which act by nature. Fire casteth heat, the Sun light and influences, the Sea ebbeth and floweth by nature; yet there must also be a free new commission sealed from eternity, to every acting of nature; he commandeth the Sun, and it riseth not; forbideth the fire to cast out heat, and it obeyeth, Job 9. 7. Heb. 11. 34. Dan. 3. 27. and it is an obliging and an endearing of the heart to God, 1to come daily under new debt, and multiplied free gifts, and it renews acts of love in us, as fresh actings of salvation flow: whether it be new deliverances, Psal. 18. 1, 2, 6, 7. Psal. 116. 1, 2, 3, 4. or new acts of keeping faith from drying up in the fire, 1 Pet. 1. 3, 4. so as you being tried as gold, verse 8. y• love having not seen him. 2. It extracts acts of praying, sense of spiritual slowness seems to pray, Cant. 1. 4. Draw me, we will run; and sense of spiritual dullness, Psal. 119. 33. Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes. 3. Hence comes humble relying upon God, when faith is put to believe that at every stirring of the members, and at every lifting of the foot, for a new step, the head must stir in heaven, and let down new influences of life; and the bottles of Heaven, and well of life, must let down new flowings of rain, every moment, upon the withered garden; if as much rain fell in one day, as would suffice the earth for seven years, and a man might eat so much at one meal, as he should neither be hungry nor thirsty for five years, there should not be such daily dependence upon new influences for rain and dew daily, and for our daily bread this day. We can but (4.) hence, but believe the infinite wisdom of the Lord, who well knows how to husband and steward his showers; for in the man Christ they are continual.