A92141:135
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.
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.
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 cloaths; 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.
- 1How we interpretatively yield to the want of influences of grace and sin formally in the same act.
Ans. Every comparison in some thing halteth; he who casts away his coat, is deservedly cold, true, and with deliberate reason and foolishly so doth; and that is false, that no man with deliberate reason refuseth divine influences; For willing or deliberate yielding to the sin, either of omission, or of commission, which is conjoined with the Lord's withdrawing of his influences, is both our formal sinning against the obligation of a command, and a yielding virtual (which is enough to make up guiltiness) to the want of divine influences.