A92141:1206
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.
2.1 This seems a considerable difference, the earth cannot plough and sow wheat of it self, yet when it is ploughed and laboured, and seeded, it can enlive and nourish the sown corn; but though we can do much more in the using of means then we do, yet means work upon us, if they be only external,2 by no necessity of nature, but according as he stirs, who hath mercy on whom he will, though men run and will: Nor can we deny but the child of God, endued with an habit of grace, hath actu primo, a power to draw life from the head,3 as the living members can draw nourishment from the stomach through the liver and veins; yet the Sun and heaven hath influence in all actings of nature; the necessity of actual grace doth not remove any of the virtue and power of the habit of grace: so doth the renewed heart lie fair to a Gospel-command: and as actions vital are immanent, and received often on themselves, so here, the heart renewed can work upon the heart. Prov. 23. 19. Hear thou my son and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way: it's grace that guides the heart in the way, but the graced heart also guides it self, in its manner of working, in the way of God. 1 Tim. 5. 22. Keep thy self pure. 2 Tim. 2. 15. Study to show thy self approved unto God. Jude v. 21. Keep your selves in the love of God. So 1 Joh. 3. 3. Every man that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as he is pure. The sea purgeth it self of mire and dirt, and new wine casteth out the scum and refuse, and gold melted separates and casts out its dross, and the superfluity of the metal; far more doth the renewed heart keep it self by a lively power against every power contrary to it self: only the heart cannot plough the heart, and remove its rockiness, the Lord by an omnipotent infusion of a new spirit doth that.