A92141:408
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.
8. So would we beware to fight with the Lord's dispensations ⟨p. 116⟩of grace; he is Lord and Sovereign disposer of his own comforts: whether we look upon comforts as duties commanded, 2 Thes. 5. 17. Jer. 31. 15. or as a reward of duties from the Lord, Rom. 15. 4. Psal. 27. 14. 2 Thes. 2. 16. Isa. 66. 13, 14. he is the Lord of all influences to work in us to will and to do, and Master of his own rewards. The Lord is Master of his own love-visits, and is neither debtor to the man Christ, nor to the elect Angels; yea, the Lord's saving influences go along with his free decree of Election; and look as the Lord of nature preserves the species of Roses,1 of Vine-trees, though this or that individual rose or vine-tree may wither and be blasted; so he holds on the work of believing, praying, of hoping, and persevering to the end; though there may be a miscarrying in this or that particular act of faith, and some deadness in praying, hic & nunc. And as in a great work of a water-mill, some one of the wheels may be broken, and yet the Mill is kept a going, and the Ship still under sail, though some instrument, or other be wanting and laid aside for a while: So when there is a withdrawing of feeling of a presence in praying, as Cantic. 5. 6. I called him, but he answered me not; yet influences flow in another duty of praising, ver. 10. My Beloved is white and ruddy, and the chief among ten thousand; And when there are withdraw-drawings of God, as touching vigorousness of believing, Why art thou disquieted, O my soul? &c. yet are there very large outlettings of God in love-sickness and strong desires after the Lord, Psal. 42. 2. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. So is it that some River which floweth a far other way, in a new cutted out Channel, the former being dried up. So the blood runs in another vein, and still furnisheth strength to the body: nor is there cause to complain, as if all strength were gone; for when the afflicted man eats ashes for bread, and drinks tears, & the heart is withered as grass, and the mans bones are burnt as an hearth,