A92141:41
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.
It is boldness to weave a web of carnal difficulties against the Lords holy providence; he hated the first sin as he doth all sin, but to say he was weak and impatient about its entrance in the world, blames his omnipotency, to say the watchman of Israel was; as to all care and vigilance of holy providence, sleeping or slumbering, and was thoughtless and drowsy, not valuing whether his noble Sons of creation, Angels and men, should fall, and irrecoverably and eternally be broken, and become fuel for everlasting fire, or stand and be eternally happy, is injurious to infinite wisdom, and the perfection of his holy will, to say that the Lord loved such a guest as sin, must blame his spotless holiness: but if any say,
It is boldness to weave a web of carnal difficulties against the Lords holy providence; he hated the first sin as he doth all sin, but to say he was weak and impatient about its entrance in the world, blames his omnipotency, to say the watchman of Israel was; as to all care and vigilance of holy providence, sleeping or slumbring, and was thoughtless and drowsie, not valuing whether his noble Sons of creation, Angels and men, should fall, and irrecoverably and eternally be broken, and become fewel for everlasting fire, or stand and be eternally happy, is injurious to infinite wisedom, and the perfection of his holy will, to say that the Lord loved such a guest as sin, must blame his spotless holiness: but if any say,
Obj. But did man by any necessity of a divine decree sin?
Answ. A compelling necessity everting the creatures liberty there was none, but a necessity by which the man was determined to one distinctively to stand or fall, not copulatively both to stand and not to stand, to obey and disobey, there was in created free-will, if we suppose there had been no decree. Now the holy decree brought no necessity, 1. Compelling, such as is of a man bound hand and foot. 2. No natural necessity, such as that of the Sun to give light, the fire to cast out heat. Nor 3. No brutish necessity void of a discoursing faculty, such as that of the swallow building her nest, the Bee making honey; but we must say there was some eminent, holy and spotless necessity of decree in Christs thrice rather then seven times praying: why King Joash smites the ground thrice and stays, and smites it not six times,