A92141:1335
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.
1. Blindness and hardening of the heart,1 and Pharaoh's not setting his heart, Exod. 7. 23. on the miracle of turning the water of the river to blood; so that the fish in the river dyed, and the river stank, hinders influences of obedience, to let the people go, Exod. 8. 1, 2, 3. Matth. 13. 15. Their eyes have they closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them; as if they were afraid for the saving influences of the saving grace of conversion: so men keep strong forts, and imaginations against God besieging them by the preached Gospel, 2 Cor. 10. 5. 6. and will not have their thoughts led captives to the obedience of Christ. Whereas softness and tenderness in Josiah 2 Kings 22. 19, 20. brings stooping and self-humiliation, and receives influences for repenting, weeping and renting the cloths before God; for what impressions of grace can the stone or rock, (and such is the heart hardened, Ezech. 36. 26.) or the Adamant receive, Zech. 7. 12? temptations, signs and wonders do nothing at all to bring down the heart, Deut. 29. 3. keep thy heart in some softness and tenderness, and then shall it receive smitings from God; for the very renting of the lap of the garment of an enemy, the not despising of the cause of a servant, whom the master may easily bear down; or the not warming of the loins of the fatherless, with the ⟨p. 386⟩fleece of the flock,