A92141:415
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.
4. When the Lord withdraws, seek again and again, be sick after him, Cant. 3. 1, 2, 3. Cant. 7. 6, 7, 8. Joh. 20. 1, 2, 3, 13. and know that Christ is never so absent, but there may be also much cause of praising and humble blessing God, if there be love-sickness for him, hunger after him, and a spiritual missing of him, as there is reason to complain of the withdrawing of his influences; For Cant. 3. when Christ is absent, he is not absent; the soul is shined upon when the soul is overclouded,1 for it is noon-day at mid-night; he is absent as to feeling, as to finding, and quiet enjoying. I sought him, but I found him not; and again, I sought, him, but I found him not: but he is strongly present and shining, as to influences of grace. 1. In painful seeking in the bed by night, Cantic. chap. 3. ver. 1. ⟨p. 119⟩2. In and about the broad streets and ways, v. 2. 3. In using public means; watch-men, saw ye him? v. 3. 4. In using other means in private. I went a little further. 5. In holy missing. I found him not, v. 1. I found him not, v. 2. In holy finding, v. 4. I found him. 6. And all the while his presence is mighty in the soul-love to him. I sought him whom my soul loved, four times expressed, v. 1. v. 2. v. 3. v. 4. so that the gleaning is better then the full harvest, the mid-night absence hath as many sweet privileges as the noon days presence. A sinners seeking, loving, and longing and languishing after lost Christ is Heaven upon Earth; his pawns he leaves behind him are rich and sweet; nor can one be out of Heaven in a better desertion then missing and seeking the face of Jacob's God, Psal. 24. 6. Psal. 27. 8.