A92141:137
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.
2. True it is, to have or to want the influence of God, falleth under no command of God laid upon man, as a man is by the law of nature forbidden to cast away his coat in a cold season; but in virtual yielding to have influences of God, conjoined with doing evil, and in virtual yielding to want influences conjoined with other sins of omission or commission, we sin, and so are under a command; as he who refuseth a Staff, or a stronger man to lean upon in going through a water, is guilty of drowning himself.
2. True it is, to have or to want the influence of God, falleth under no command of God laid upon man, as a man is by the law of nature forbidden to cast away his coat in a cold season; but in virtual yielding to have influences of God, conjoyned with doing evil, and in virtual yielding to want influences conjoyned with other sins of omission or commission, we sin, and so are under a command; as he who refuseth a Staff, or a stronger man to lean upon in going thorow a water, is guilty of drowning himself.
3. Thus far we are deliberately to desire influences that we are to pray for them; Draw me, Cant. 1. 4. Lord teach me, Psal. 119. 33. Open mine eyes, that I may behold the wonders of thy Law, ver. 18. Incline mine heart to thy testimonies, and not to covetousness, v. 36. As we are obliged to have a new heart, and to have the image of God, which we willingly lost in Adam, and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and to make to our selves a new heart, and are ⟨p. 24⟩commanded so to do, Ezech. 18: 31. Ephes. 4. 23. and yet the Lord's omnipotent creating of a new heart in us cannot fall under a Commandment formally obliging us to create in our selves a new heart, and so are we commanded consequently to have the breathings and influences of grace. 1. In the same act in the which we are commanded to obey. 2. In that we are to pray for, and to desire the breathings of God. 3. In that there is a promise, to him that hath it shall be given,