A92141:134
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.
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.
Obj. He that casts away his coat, is deservedly cold; for he doth it against deliberate reason,1 except he be mad, or in an extreme distemper of body; But no man refuseth divine influences with deliberate reason and the law of nature. 2. The law of nature lays bands upon men not to cast away their clothes; but to have, or to want the influences of God, falleth under no command of God laid upon man. 3. No man, by your way, hath the influences of grace in his own power to receive or reject them, as he that casteth away his garments in a cold day, hath undeniably such a power.