A92141:324
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. Were influences at our disposal, we might make our prayers only to our own free will, who only can by this way hear and help; but we pray to God only for quickening, determining, leading, and stirring up influences, and for effectual teaching; and influences are in a good hand, when the matter is so.
3. Were influences at our disposal, we might make our prayers only to our own free will, who only can by this way hear and help; but we pray to God only for quickning, determining, leading, and stirring up influences, and for effectual teaching; and influences are in a good hand, when the matter is so.
4. The unregenerate, as in Shepherd's select Cases, page 96. pag. 102. are not within the compass of any conditional promise, though in Baxter's Append. to Aphor. to Obj. 10. 11. p. 28. he puts a note of censure on it: for if the new heart were in the power of Cain and Judas, and this were holden forth to all and every one of mankind; run well and win the crown of conversion, and of the life of grace and of glory. For 1. You have sufficient grace to win it. 2. You have the influences of grace at your own disposal and power, be you Brazilian, Indian, or what else. Then were all men made independent Lords of salvation and damnation, and of the holy and deep decrees of Election and Reprobation. And if so, there were not such a thing as a decree of Reprobation, but as a sort of over-birth, and a decree of some after-wit, in the holy Majesty of God (after he were disappointed of his former Gospel-decree of choosing all to glory) who wisely, yea out of his manifold wisdom willed and decreed all to be saved, so they would use the universal power, and the influences of grace well, as they might and could; but unto what God should such make their prayers? whether to God the Father of our Lord Jesus, or to themselves, I cannot divine.
4. The unregenerate, as in Shepherd's select Cases, page 96. pag. 102. are not within the compass of any conditional promise, though in Baxter's Append. to Aphor. to Obj. 10. 11. p. 28. he puts a note of censure on it: for if the new heart were in the power of Cain and Judas, and this were holden forth to all and every one of mankind; run well and win the crown of conversion, and of the life of grace and of glory. For 1. You have sufficient grace to win it. 2. You have the influences of grace at your own disposal and power, be you Brasilian, Indian, or what else. Then were all men made independent Lords of salvation and damnation, and of the holy and deep decrees of Election and Reprobation. And if so, there were not such a thing as a decree of Reprobation, but as a sort of over-birth, and a decree of some after-wit, in the holy Majesty of God (after he were disappointed of his former Gospel-decree of choosing all to glory) who wisely, yea out of his manifold wisedom willed and decreed all to be saved, so they would use the universal power, and the influences of grace well, as they might and could; but unto what God should such make their prayers? whether to God the Father of our Lord Jesus, or to themselves, I cannot divine.