A92141:1370
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.
16. The ignorance of the Gospel, and the loathing of Christ,1 renders all Pagans who hear the rumour of Christ but receive him not, and all Reprobates within the visible Church in a worse condition then rocks and deserts are in, for Sun, clouds and rain send influences in them, but the malignity and dryness, and coldness of the soil is the cause why they do not spring and blossom as the gardens and meadows; but though the Lord send common helps to such Pagans and unbelievers, yet it is justice that the Spirit in his influences should be a stranger to such as live strangers to the Son of God, for the Son and Spirit go not contrary ways to their operations. Carnal professors who study only a form of godliness, and aim not at the power of godliness, and do but bear the bare letters and outward bulk of baptism, and the sound of the word preached, and hate Christ, and persecute the godly that are chosen by him out of the world, come under the name of the world, who cannot receive the Spirit nor his influences, John 14. 17. and have a spirit of their own, the spirit of the world, 1 Cor. 2. 12. this spirit is their tutor and guide; and such as are out of Christ are led by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, Ephes. 2. 2. and are taken captive by him at his will, 2 Tim. 2. 26. Now can these two spirits, the Spirit of God and the Devil lodge in one and the same dwelling, and exercise their several operation on the same soul? No.
16. The ignorance of the Gospel, and the loathing of Christ,1 renders all Pagans who hear the rumour of Christ but receive him not, and all Reprobates within the visible Church in a worse condition then rocks and desarts are in, for Sun, clouds and rain send influences in them, but the malignity and driness, and coldness of the soil is the cause why they do not spring and blossome as the gardens and meddows; but though the Lord send common helps to such Pagans and unbelievers, yet it is justice that the Spirit in his influences should be a stranger to such as live strangers to the Son of God, for the Son and Spirit go not contrary ways to their operations. Carnal professors who study only a form of godliness, and aim not at the power of godliness, and do but bear the bare letters and outward bulk of baptism, and the sound of the word preached, and hate Christ, and persecute the godly that are chosen by him out of the world, come under the name of the world, who cannot receive the Spirit nor his influences,