A92141:288
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.
3. Under withdrawings of influences of grace we are guilty.1 1. In not considering the temptation, signs and wonders we see and hear, Deut. 29. 3. yea though the Lord's not giving a new heart, be not our sin formally; yet our not having, nor receiving of a new heart, is our sin. The sourness and naughtiness of the Earth in bringing forth poisonable weeds, is the Earth's own indisposition; the Sun and Clouds extract these poisonable herbs; the natural dryness of some rocky Earth and the not raining of the clouds meet both in one, to wit, the barrenness of the earth; and this takes not away the faultiness of this earth so rocky. 2. Our guiltiness that appears is evident, in our eke which we make to original and natural malice; for acquired pravity meets with natural and original corruption, like two floods to make a Sea or a great River; or as when a man forceth a wound to bleed, which of it self would bleed: And again, what ever may be said of the result of the Lord's withdrawing of influences, we add an impulsion to his withdrawing, as the adding of the heat of an Oven near the root of a fruit tree, to cause it to ripen, adds something to the heat of the Sun, and the Influences of the Heavens, and when the heart walketh after the heart of our detestable things, as it is Ezech. 11. 21. and with the intended bensil of the free-will, we put our seal and consent to the Lord's withdrawing; there is no ground to complain of his withdrawing.
3. Under withdrawings of influences of grace we are guilty.1 1. In not considering the temptation, signs and wonders we see and hear, Deut. 29. 3. yea though the Lord's not giving a new heart, be not our sin formally; yet our not having, nor receiving of a new heart, is our sin. The sowrness and naughtiness of the Earth in bringing forth poysonable weeds, is the Earth's own indispotion; the Sun and Clouds extract these poysonable herbs; the natural driness of some rocky Earth and the not raining of the clouds meet both in one, to wit, the barrenness of the earth; and this takes not away the faultiness of this earth so rocky. 2. Our guiltiness that appears is evident, in our eik which we make to original and natural malice; for acquired pravity meets with natural and original corruption, like two floods to make a Sea or a great River; or as when a man forceth a wound to bleed, which of it self would bleed: And again, what ever may be said of the result of the Lord's withdrawing of influences, we add an impulsion to his withdrawing, as the adding of the heat of an Oven neer the root of a fruit tree, to cause it to ripen, adds something to the heat of the Sun, and the Influences of the Heavens, and when the heart walketh after the heart of our detestable things, as it is