A92141:1371
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.
17.1 The sad freatings and wrestlings at the providence of God incapacitates men for influences of grace: thrice Psalm 78. the people are said to tempt the Lord, and especially in asking meat for their lust, v. 18. can he provide flesh for his people? v. 20. and the Spirit of the Lord so tempted, lets not out his sweet and saving influences upon such as wrestle with his holy dispensations; was there more of the Spirit let out to Israel for murmuring at the red sea or less? yea less, Exod. 15. for after that they murmured again at Morat, Exod. 14. and in the wilderness of Sin, Exod. 16. 1. yea, forty years in the wilderness, Psal. 95. 9, 10. They tempted God, and did err in heart; and that with their first murmuring in Egypt, was a provoking cause of Gods withdrawing his Spirit: all these forty years is called v. 8. The day of temptation; for to tempt God is a great wickedness; he who welcomes all dispensations with godly submission, and can bow to his Lords will, and cashier and lay aside his own, as the man Christ, nevertheless not my will, but thy will be done, Matth. 26. 39. under the greatest suffering that possibly could be on created flesh, as he who is most holily passive to suffer the will of God, is most holily capacitate to receive the holy, spotless, active influences of grace, as was the holy thing Jesus, a wide and capacious vessel, as the wisdom of Angels and men can imagine, in whom was all fullness of grace: be then humble and submissively flexible and bowable to the Lords will, in his decrees and revealed will, and the Lord shall dwell with you, and look toward you, Isa. 57. 15. Isa. 66. 2. But what are all these to fetch the wind of the Spirits breathings? for you must have a wind to fetch this wind, a new predetermination and influence of grace to all these duties of heavenly softness. 2. Faith. 3. Liveliness. 4. Watchfulness, &c. opposite to hardness of heart. 2. To unbelief. 3. To deadness. 4. To security, &c. and so we give (say the adversaries) nothing that we can rest on for the acquiring and purchasing of influences of grace, but we must lie dead as passive lumps (say the Libertines and Calvinists what they please on the contrary) that influences begin, and we follow is most necessary,