A92141:268
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.
2. We are now after Scripture is closed, and the complete Canon given to us, to follow no duty but what is warranted by the Word, and that the Spirit alone works not by the Word, it must then be wild-corn, and no part of the Lord's husbandry, and so not from the Lord: that we are not to pray, while first we feel the actings of the Spirit, for that position is both beside, and contrary to the Word. Something might be said for this, we are not to eat while we feel hunger, nor to sleep while we feel drowsiness, though if eating and sleeping be looked on as duties, it cannot bear the weight of Scriptural truth; yet to look to feelings, as a Rule before we obey a Command of God, and to make the feelings of breathings our Rule hath no colour of truth.
2. We are now after Scripture is closed, and the compleat Canon given to us, to follow no duty but what is warranted by the Word, and that the Spirit alone works not by the Word, it must then be wild-corn, and no part of the Lord's husbandry, and so not from the Lord: that we are not to pray, while first we feel the actings of the Spirit, for that position is both beside, and contrary to the Word. Something might be said for this, we are not to eat while we feel hunger, nor to sleep while we feel drouziness, though if eating and sleeping be looked on as duties, it cannot bear the weight of Scriptural truth; yet to look to feelings, as a Rule before we obey a Command of God, and to make the feelings of breathings our Rule hath no colour of truth.
Ass. 4. It may be looked on as another extremity to look to no actings,1 nor dispositions of the heart before we pray; for though the disposition of the heart be no rule morally obliging us, yet to fall upon duties looking only to the Rule, knowing the duty is a duty and suitable to the Rule, and no more but to fly to acting in our own strength is not good.
Ass. 4. It may be looked on as another extremity to look to no actings,1