A92141:438
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. 4. Hence to have, or not to have the influence of God, is not commanded in the Word nor have we any physical power over the Lord's acts of Omnipotency; for we do not formally love God and keep his Commandments, in a way commendable (if we speak of the moral cause of obedience) because he works in us both to will and to do, but because he hath commanded us to love him, and to keep his Commandments, John 14. 15. Psal. 119. 4, 5, 6.
Prop. 4. Hence to have, or not to have the influence of God, is not commanded in the Word nor have we any physical power over the Lord's acts of Omnipotency; for we do not formally love God and keep his Commandments, in a way commendable (if we speak of the moral cause of obedience) because he works in us both to will and to doe, but because he hath commanded us to love him, and to keep his Commandments, John 14. 15. Psal. 119. 4, 5, 6.
Hence 1. The Libertine is blasphemously wide, the creature can do (says he) nothing good or evil, God worketh all sin, all obedience immediately in us; its in vain to read, pray, hear the word, meditate, confer, or go about works of reforming abuses in religion, because all these are to no purpose, without the spirit. 2. We are not to do any thing, because God in his word hath commanded us to do it,1 but because the Spirit immediately acts in us to do, and immediate impulsion of the Spirit is now instead of the Law and of the word of God, either written or preached; but this is a wicked confounding of the efficient real cause and the strength of which we obey, with the objective cause and morally directing, commanding and persuading rule according to which we are to regulate and order our obedience; yea, and children can contradict this who know that the Mason who employs his strength to build, must be differenced from the Masons Rule and the Art, plummet and line according to which he works: for otherwise its all one as to say the power or faculty visive of seeing were light were colours that are seen, and the soldiers force and strength