A92141:433
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.
Prop. 2. Though the Lord's promise and his free decree hath tied himself (in a manner) to be prevented by a moral cause;1 yet that moral cause even the praying man stirs not until God first prevent him to pray. Hence the Lord moves and wheels about the heart and will of the man, who ⟨p. 125⟩is most free and most absolute among all the sons of men, even the King, Prov. 21. 1. and that not if the King will and say amen with his prior or former or collateral consent, but whithersoever Jehovah will. Hence our prayers that God would incline our hearts to his testimonies, Psal. 119. 36. Not incline the heart to any evil thing, Psal. 141. 4. Unite the heart to fear his name, Psal. 86. 11. So Jacob prays the Lord would give his sons favour in the eyes of the Governor of Egypt a Heathen man as to him: (Esther and her maids pray for grace in the eyes of Ahasuerus,) see Gen. 43. 14. The Lord Almighty give you mercy before the man. If God could not indeclinably bow the will to his own way, side, or end, (be it by antecedent predetermination or what way else you shall call it, so the Lord be the more Master of willing and nilling then the creature) but in so doing he should destroy free will; we should in all such petitions pray for the destroying of free will, where sure, we pray for perfecting and the sanctified bowing of free will to obey God. 2. If the dominion of free acts remain strongly in the creatures power, we must in these suits (incline my heart unto thy testimonies) (lead us not into temptation) pray the Lord for that which is not in his power to give. 3. If God do carry free will whithersoever he pleaseth, then we must not defer the only praise of our obedience, and of our victory over temptations, to the grace of God, but to free will which made the discriminating difference. 1. Hence we are to commit our free will to the Lord's dominion of grace, and not to believe that such a tottering Goddess as free will which hath lost and destroyed Angels and the first man Adam, can guide well enough; Yea, 2. we are to bless the Lord for that impotency (if so it may be called) that the sovereign Lord's heavenly influences are not in the creatures coffers, to be husbanded by the creature; how false is it that Christ hath bought free will to himself. 3.