A92141:238
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. Who ever complains of the want of grace and yet remains in the state of nature, doth close with his want of grace.
For 1. The renewed mans complaining of the want of grace, is neither in sense or godly feeling, nor in faith and humble believing. Nature can no more complain of the want of grace with any spiritual and godly sense, then a sucking child can weep, because he is not an understanding man of thirty years old;1 for darkness cannot seek after the Sun light, for so it should desire its own destruction; nor can cold desire heat, nor Satan be divided against Satan, and therefore these are but feigned and counterfeit bemoanings; For the actings of sinful nature with delight say, that the man hates grace, which he professeth, he so much desires; for only grace can thirst after, and long for grace. Joh. 15. 24. If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had not had sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. Such a hatred of the fullness of grace, Jesus Christ, cannot consist with a lively desire of grace.
For 1. The renewed mans complaining of the want of grace, is neither in sense or godly feeling, nor in faith and humble believing. Nature can no more complain of the want of grace with any spiritual and godly sense, then a sucking child can weep, because he is not an understanding man of thirty years old;1 for darkness cannot seek after the Sun light, for so it should desire its own destruction; nor can cold desire heat, nor Satan be divided against Satan, and therefore these are but feigned and counterfeit bemonings; For the actings of sinful nature with delight say, that the man hates grace, which he professeth, he so much desires; for only grace can thirst after, and long for grace. Joh. 15. 24. If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had not had sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. Such a hatred of the fulness of grace, Jesus Christ, cannot consist with a lively desire of grace.