A92141:1284
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.
The Lord will have 1. free grace to shine above our sweating. 2. He will have us not to sacrifice to the creature, and created diligence, and to painful seeking, and will have us to learn our folly, who place our mercy and will have our Heaven to stand in running and willing and not in his free compassion. Esa• runs and hunts, and obtains not the blessing; Jacob stirs less and is blessed: I speak it not to cry down means, but to cry up Christ and free grace. The Lord seems to forbid Jacob to pray, Let me go, for the day dawneth: but he rather encourageth him to pray; but he teacheth that God's hearing and blessing is more then my tears and wrestling.
3. The Lord would have us to examine,1 whether it be a humble and believing using of means that we go about, or not. The repenting Thief, in three hours upon the Cross runs, and the same day gets Paradise; and many have a fair wind and sail seventy years in a profession, yea, hear much, and believe not, and the ship is broken, and the man perishes; For Matth. 8. 11. many shall come from the East, and the West, and sit down at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: and the children of the Kingdom (who were first called, and in before them) shall be cast into utter darkness. Do not some sail much and promove nothing to the harbour? Read Rom. 9. 31, 32. Ah, tremble to see a man believed to have many thousands, and a great stock in four, in seven ships, and yet the man goes a begging.
3. The Lord would have us to examine,1 whether it be a humble and believing using of means that we go about, or not. The repenting Thief, in three hours upon the Cross runs, and the same day gets Paradise; and many have a fair wind and sail seventy years in a profession, yea, hear much, and believe not, and the ship is broken, and the man perishes; For