A92141:1339
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.
4.1 Security obstructs actings of grace: the Spouse sleeps, and Cant. 5. 2. the Spirit withdraws influences to open to the beloved: the Disciples sleep, when Matth. 26. Christ exhorts them to watch and pray: and can the Spirit breath upon a lying and sleeping sluggard? there is godly fear on the heart; but Peter and the rest of the Disciples in their shameful flight and stumbling at the sufferings of Christ, after their fearless and fleshly undertaking, saying that they should rather die then forsake him, prove that the spirits withdrawing, by which they fell in that sin, goes along with security: we would watch and fear always; and the contrary of fearing always is hardening of the heart, Prov. 28. 14. which infers a withdrawing of that enlightening and softening grace. Where there is rising at midnight to praise, Psal. 119. 62. a preventing of the dawning of the morning to cry to God, Psal. 119. 147. there must be a continued shower of outlettings of influences of grace for the lengthening out of hoping all the day long: as when Christ cannot sleep, but watches and prays when others sleep, the life of this must hold forth a sea of flowing in continued actings of grace in him.
4.1 Security obstructs actings of grace: the Spouse sleeps, and Cant. 5. 2. the Spirit withdraws influences to open to the beloved: the Disciples sleep, when Matth. 26. Christ exhorts them to watch and pray: and can the Spirit breath upon a lying and sleeping sluggard? there is godly fear on the heart; but Peter and the rest of the Disciples in their shameful flight and stumbling at the sufferings of Christ, after their fearlesse and fleshly undertaking, saying that they should rather die then forsake him, prove that the spirits withdrawing, by which they fell in that sin, goes along with security: we would watch and fear always; and the contrary of fearing alwayes is hardening of the heart,