A92141:132
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.
For 1. The withdrawer of the influence is under no obligation by any binding law to bestow it.
2. The man that wants the influence is willing to want it.
3. The man is obliged, who so wants the influence by an expressly binding law of God to perform the act commanded, and to abstain from the contrary act forbidden; and these three are the grounds why the Lord is not chargeable with the act of disobedience; and man is guilty and chargeable therewith. Hence man is the culpable cause of disobedience; and he never wants the influence of God, but his own sin interpretatively is the cause. The withdrawing of Dew and Rain is the cause of barrenness or non-fertility; the Lord's withdrawing is the physical cause of non-obedience; but the will of man is the only formal, vital, subjective, moral, and (as it were) the material ⟨p. 23⟩cause of sin; yea the only formal and efficient cause of sin.
3. The man is obliged, who so wants the influence by an expresly binding law of God to perform the act commanded, and to abstain from the contrary act forbidden; and these three are the grounds why the Lord is not chargeable with the act of disobedience; and man is guilty and chargeable therewith. Hence man is the culpable cause of disobedience; and he never wants the influence of God, but his own sin interpretatively is the cause. The withdrawing of Dew and Rain is the cause of barrennesse or non-fertility; the Lord's withdrawing is the physical cause of non-obedience; but the will of man is the only formal, vital, subjective, moral, and (as it were) the material ⟨p. 23⟩cause of sin; yea the only formal and efficient cause of sin.