A92141:138
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.
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, Matth. 25. 29. Matth. 13. 12. but how far the promise extends is after to be discussed. (3.) As touching influences natural, they seem to be common to free and voluntary Agents, and also to natural causes; so the Lord commandeth the Sun to rise, and it riseth, Psal. 104. 19. and he commandeth the Sun, and it riseth not, Job 9. 7. it rains, because the Lord lifteth up his voice unto the clouds, 1that abundance of rain may come; he sendeth out lightnings, Jerem. 14. 22.