A92141:1352
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.
7. The desperate wickedness and deceitfulness of the heart,1 Jer. 17. 9. puts the Prophet to speak to God, v. 13. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed. Influences then must be withdrawn from deceitful workers; and if the heart be deceitful above all things, then in some regard it's deceitful above Satan, as being a heart-deceiving and murdering of our own souls, beyond the privity of Satan, we boiling in the secret furnace of the heart many naughty thoughts that are unknown to Satan; and who knows the hypocrisy of the heart? and what way God plagues hypocrisy with farther hypocrisy, and by all sins? heart-deceitfulness is within it self a rooting of it self: now this deceitfulness being so contrary ⟨p. 392⟩to sincere and singleness of heart must be uncapable of influences, for the upright and sincere heart, and truth in the inward parts, Psalm 51. 6. is desired and loved, Psal. 11. 7. Psal. 146. 8. exceedingly by the Lord, as most like himself. Psalm 11. 7. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, his countenance doth behold the upright. And so as every thing loveth its own, the hen warms and cherishes her chickens, and every bird the young ones; so must the Lord follow with heavenly and quickening influences sincerity of heart, when he particularly saith to them, Psalm 32. 11. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. The Lord must then follow his own planting, (for the loving of the Lord Jesus in sincerity, and the girdle of truth about the loins, is a part of the armour of God, Ephes. 6. 14.) with pruning, hedging, digging, and showers from heaven, whereas upon the heart unrenewed and still deceitful, there shall fall no rain; nor is a deceitful heart more capable of lively influences, then thick gross misty air can admit of wind, or then a torch steeped in mire and dirt is in capacity to receive light and flaming; and suppose (which yet is not possible) God should send saving influences on an unrenewed and deceitful heart, remaining such, yet could not such a poisoned stem bud and bring forth acts of saving grace; as the thorn tree in the fattest and choicest soil near the Sun, under influences of a warm heaven, benign clouds, a sweet moderate air, could never bring forth delicious wine, grapes, or pomegranates: