A92141:322
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.
The next answer to this; had I grace, or more grace, I should be as holy as David: its a blowing up of nature, and a dethroning of Christ. For this (I) when you say, I should be holy as David, is not that gracious (I) of which Paul, Gal. 2. 20. I live not, but Christ lives in me; but its (I) and (self) divided from self and grace: but woe to the will separated from Christ;1 woe to the branch cut off from the green and flourishing tree, its good for nothing but the fire; woe to the arm sawen off the living body; and by this, as one saith well, If God would give the power, you would of your self,2 add the will, this is the Pelagian heresy. Let God but make a stirring and a blowing, and give a sort of will, I could do wonders: as if it were not the Lord, who works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Phil. 2. 13. yea it lays little upon God's calling: (for he calleth Cain and Judas) and much, yea the All of our salvation on our Answering. Christ knocks by word of mouth, and (I) and (self) free-will opens the heart of Lydia which debaseth Christ and powerful grace. In all which consider, had you the influences of grace at your disposing; 1. Then, might free will bar the Iron door, against sin; that sin of Angels and men, without free wills good leave should never enter the world. And the Creature should be more Master and Lord Governor over providence, then the Sovereign Lord himself: then could the Lord erect no theatre, nor set a Chair of free-grace to the Mediator and Lord of grace, Jesus Christ, while first he took Counsel with created free will, and say, O creature may I have thy good leave to send my Son to the world, and the disease must be consulted, shall there be such a precious one, as the Physician, the healer of sinners? Its true, no sinner, no Saviour; no lost one, no Redeemer, such as our Emanuel; but its known, if influences of grace be, (as Pelagianizing universalists say) at the disposing of nature, with that absolute indifferency, the free creature may stand, or may fall, let the All-governing Lord do his best to the contrary: there is here a created Sovereign dominion; If God create the creature free, it involves a contradiction, that God should be free to hold out or bring in sin, and hell, and misery, and God is ⟨p. 87⟩