A92141:160
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.
1. Though we fix an hour, it becomes Faith to await the Angels moving of the water, and when the Lord adds his influences to step in and join our strength cheerfully and with humble praises to him who draws.
1. Though we fix an hour, it becomes Faith to await the Angels moving of the water, and when the Lord adds his influences to step in and joyn our strength cheerfully and with humble praises to him who draws.
2. When there is a bentness of heart such a day or such a fixed hour to pray, build not too much upon the appointment and promises of our own heart, to say to morrow, Isle do wonders by prayer, & remove mountains. 1. Its good here, as in a purpose of going to a City to continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain, to say in a trembling subordination to God, as James counselleth chap. 4. 13, 15. If the Lord will, we shall live; so, to say if the holy sovereignty of grace breath fairly and strongly, Isle do well in praying; yet not I, but his grace; and if the wind of the Lord blow not, ah I cannot sail. 2. As in the case of James his Merchant, ⟨p. 31⟩and of Peter's undertaking, Isle die with thee, rather or I deny thee. So here 1. The man sows broad hopes upon his own praying, and the harvest is thin and nothing. 2. Such a Preacher shall set the Ship a float, and all shall be well, if such an Instrument act, and then the Lord is away, and the Reed is broken, and the Sea flows not. 3. At the Death of such an Eminent Christian, O there must be strange manifestations; and the poor man is taken away under a cloud, and in a huge deal of darkness. The faith of our reposing upon our selves and the creature, and our not reposing on the Lord's acting in us to will and to do, in these set times does disappoint us. A godly jealousy and despair of our selves, & a relying wholly upon the Lords actings is good; and seldom can we difference between presumptuous confidence on our selves, with a godly trembling, and a pure and spiritual relying upon God in his breathings of grace. (3.) We stumble, that when the impetuous faird of resolving is on, and possibly the Lord effectually acting us; yet when it comes to the time of praying, the whole spirit is a lump of deadness, and the Comforter is away; and the flesh saith, I covenanted a meeting with Christ, and he covenanted with me; but I kept the appointed time, and he failed and came not according to his promise; And we do not remember, that there is a promise that he will work in us to will and to do; but for a Covenant that the Spirit shall keep your fixed hour, where is that? for the Spirit, even the hour before blows sweetly and the hour after; but he is absent at your fixed hour. In a word, we may limit a time for your Duty; for the obligation (to pray continually) is perpetual;