A92141:129
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.
But 1. He who withdraws such an influence and impression of grace, from the reasonable creature, constrained, compelled, and unwilling to want such an influence; he is the cause of the disobedience, and rendreth the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable. The Proposition in that sense is true; But now the assumption is most false; For if the man should seek and desire the influence of God in that very act, and the Lord deny it and withdraw it violently from the Will, as if the Child a drowning should cry to the Father being obliged to help, that he would reach help, and the Father shall refuse, then is the Father the cause of the Child's drowning; and so should the holy Lord be the cause of ⟨p. 22⟩our disobedience, and render us guiltless and excusable if he were obliged not to withdraw.
But he who withdraws his influence from the creature, who in the same act of wanting, is most willing to want it, and gives in the same act of disobedience, his virtual consent to the same withdrawing, he is the cause of the disobedience of the act, and renders the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable. The Proposition in this sense is false; and the Assumption true. God so withdraws his influence that in the same act, the man is unexcusably willing to want it. He is deservedly cold, who joyfully and willingly yields to the pulling away of his coat; Here that is true, an injury is not done to a man who receives it as a favour: Volenti non fit injuria; as is clear in the Lord's active hardening of Pharaoh's heart, Exod. 7. 3. and Pharaoh's hardening of his own heart, Exod. 8. 15. both in a material act.
But he who withdraws his influence from the creature, who in the same act of wanting, is most willing to want it, and gives in the same act of disobedience, his virtual consent to the same withdrawing, he is the cause of the disobedience of the act, and renders the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable. The Proposition in this sense is false; and the Assumption true. God so withdraws his influence that in the same act, the man is unexcusably willing to want it. He is deservedly cold, who joyfully and willingly yields to the pulling away of his coat; Here that is true, an injury is not done to a man who receives it as a favour: Volenti non fit injuria; as is clear in the Lord's active hardning of Pharaoh's heart,