A92141:1482
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.
He who contributes an insuperable influence with free-will. if that influence be contemperated and sweetly accommodate to the nature, and elective, and rational way of working of free-will acting out of judgment, as our free-will acts here.
He who contributes an insuperable influence with free-will. if that influence be contemperated and sweetly accommodate to the nature, and elective, and rational way of working of free-wil acting out of judgment, as our free-wil acts here.
He is not a cause inferring violence to free-will. Should ⟨p. 432⟩he indeed over-drive and over-act the free inclination, contrary to the reason, light, and judgment of the mind, and to the moral and free elective inclination of the will, he should constrain and force free-will: But this he does not, but inclines the heart of David to the Lords testimonies sweetly, strongly, insuperably; and this David prays for, Psalm 119. Psalm 5. Psalm 19. and the Saints in many places; and neither David nor the Saints in such prayers suit of God to destroy free-will: also the Lords command, and not the Lords influence, is our rule of obedience. But since we know not the Lords actual denying of his influence, because we are willing he should deny it, our sinful non-acting is no less our guiltiness, then if we had the dominion and commandment of the Lords influences in our power. A Master commands his servant to come to such a place where his Master useth to be, yet neither is the Master obliged to be in the place hic & nunc, neither passes he any promise to be there: if the servant come not to that place, and willingly absent himself, and willingly consent that the Master be not in the place, the servants not coming is a manifest contravening of his Masters command. So the Lord commanding me to pray, though he concur not by his Spirit interceding to help me as he useth to do, my not praying is a contravening of his command, who calls to me, pray hic & nunc under this trouble: For,