A92141:264
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.
Now as to the First.
Ass. 1. Suppose there be some seeming contradiction betwixt extreme pain and absence or withdrawings; yet a seeming contradiction only and not real it is,1 and the man is called to an habitual praying disposition, because what commands obligeth us to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, Ephes. 4. 23. lays a tie on us to do it without delay, Isa. 55. 6. Psal. 55. 7, 8. Joel 2. 12. and consequenter ever to be in a savoury disposition and to savour of the things of the Spirit, whether the spirit actually heat the soul with such savouriness; for otherwise our Saviour rebukes the disciples on no just ground when they were sleepy, for want of an actual heavenly disposition to pray; Could ye not watch with me one hour. The physical indisposition to pray does not take away the moral obligation to pray then. 2. Though pain and extreme soul-heaviness that the man cannot speak, Psal. 77. 4. and Hezekiah can but chatter as a crane or a swallow, Isa. 38. 14. and the Church can scarce ⟨p. 68⟩breath out a word of prayer, Lam. 3. 36. yet doth not the Lord in sending on a physical or judicial indisposition, contradict his own moral tie, which he hath laid on, by his command to pray at all times.
Ass. 1. Suppose there be some seeming contradiction betwixt extreme pain and absence or withdrawings; yet a seeming contradiction only and not real it is,