A92141:292
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.
and so calling other some, as they must be hardened, because he willeth, gives a seeming ground to two great Objections.
1. Why then doth God find fault and rebuke and eternally refuse the so called? for if they were called with that drawing power that others are called with, sure they would believe and come: but they are not so called; therefore God cannot blame us, & find the fault in unbelievers, Rom. 18. 19.
2. If God so call some as they obey, and others as they obey not, because he will, who can resist his will? his will is as himself: then do we reject God's calling, and eternally perish, because God so doth will? Now not any ever breathing, moved any such Objections, but the carnal Jew in Paul's time, and the Socinians, Jesuits, and Arminians in the age we now live in, and stumblers at the word; for all such enemies to grace, turn the Objection into an argument against the absolute will, and invincible grace of God, and answer not with the holy Ghost, who Rom. 9. calls it a bold fleshly replying unto God. v. 20. for the holy Ghost asserts the Sovereignty of God, as the potter over the clay, & the guiltiness of vessels of wrath, Rom. 9. 22. and their disobedience in refusing the call of God, v. 29. & their following like Pharisees Law-righteousness by works, and stumbling at Christ the stumbling stone laid in Zion, Rom. 9. 31, 32, 33. whereas the Gentiles were called of free grace, v. 24. 25, 26. therefore they ⟨p. 78⟩must be of the same stamp with the fleshly Jews, who thus object against us, and such are the Patrons of universal grace and free-will. Hence let that be discussed.