A92141:367
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.
7. Neither should it be strange, if we might place, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others in a seventh class, who had their own complainings; One saying, my leanness, my leanness; another fasting and walking in sackcloth for the sanctuaries desolation, and yet most submissive to the holy dispensations of God. In all which, another mans compass is not our rule of sailing, nor is the Lord's various dispensation to his children, which is ordered by his decree and will of pleasure, not by his commanding and approving will, the Scripture rule that we are to follow, in looking after Influences; Every one would submit to be ordered of God; he hath almost a various way of leading his own: if the same complete ransom, the same Promises, the same Guide, and Steersman to Heaven be mine, and the same hope of glory; yet the manifestations of God, the love visits, the influences of grace are hardly the same. ⟨p. 104⟩Its then a faulty ground of some, never one was like me, none of my condition in the world, since the Creation. Every one thinks their own hell on earth, the only hell. 2. Nor should Christians be unwilling, to know the spiritual condition one of another; you may fall upon some, in your very course and kind. Its like David, Psal. 71. 7. Heman, Psal. 88. 15. the suffering Church, Lam. 1. 12. Psal. 102. 6, 7. Elijah, 1 King. 19. 10. Isaiah and Christ, and the children of Christ, who were wonders and signs, Isa. 8. 18. Heb. 2. 13. who were there alone as worlds wonders, might judge themselves like no other (though the man Christ could not mistake his own spiritual estate) as to their case spiritual, and God's dispensation towards them.
7. Neither should it be strange, if we might place, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others in a seventh class, who had their own complainings; One saying, my leanness, my leanness; another fasting and walking in sackcloth for the sanctuaries desolation, and yet most submissive to the holy dispensations of God. In all which, another mans compasse is not our rule of sayling, nor is the Lord's various dispensation to his children, which is ordered by his decree and will of pleasure, not by his commanding and approving will, the Scripture rule that we are to follow, in looking after Influences; Every one would submit to be ordered of God; he hath almost a various way of leading his own: if the same compleat ransome, the same Promises, the same Guide, and Steersman to Heaven be mine, and the same hope of glory; yet the manifestations of God, the love visits, the influences of grace are hardly the same.