A92141:311
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. In the matter of age; Were I old and grave, I would use the power of grace I have, to repent, walk softly, and be holy. Who told you that grace or parts not improved for God shall grow? and suppose they grow, who can promise, except he give free will surety, that he shall improve grace, ⟨p. 82⟩except by the help of grace? and though grace help grace, yet cannot free will engage for the time to come, to set a diet and term-day for turning to God the next year, and when you are old; when as ye are obliged while it is to day not to harden your heart, and presently to repent: this is to make repentance a tree which bears not fruit, while some scores of years after its planting; a holy heart doth fear and tremble under the present hardness and deadness.
3. In the matter of age; Were I old and grave, I would use the power of grace I have, to repent, walk softly, and be holy. Who told you that grace or parts not improved for God shall grow? and suppose they grow, who can promise, except he give free will surety, that he shall improve grace, ⟨p. 82⟩except by the help of grace? and though grace help grace, yet cannot free will engage for the time to come, to set a dyet and term-day for turning to God the next year, and when you are old; when as ye are obliged while it is to day not to harden your heart, and presently to repent: this is to make repentance a tree which bears not fruit, while some scores of years after its planting; a holy heart doth fear and tremble under the present hardness and deadness.
4. In the point of instruments of doing good; If I had much riches, I would build Churches, Bridges, Hospitals, entertain many Poor, erect Schools and Colleges; Now, have the loins of the poor and naked blessed you for any you have clothed, even according to what you have. God seeks of no man above that he hath, or according to what he hath not: and if you fail in what you have, what can you say for what you have not; the formal cause of the charity, is the pouring or drawing out of the soul to the hungry,