A92141:449
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.
Suppose Naaman had seven times and seventy seven times washed himself in Jordan, some days before the Prophet of the Lord commanded him to wash, it had been to no purpose, he had not been cleansed from his Leprosy. It were good we prize more that which men call the foolishness of preaching: the Spirit breaths in, and through his own ordinance, when we know not.
Suppose Naaman had seven times and seventy seven times washed himself in Jordan, some days before the Prophet of the Lord commanded him to wash, it had been to no purpose, he had not been cleansed from his Leprosie. It were good we prize more that which men call the foolishness of preaching: the Spirit breaths in, and through his own ordinance, when we know not.
Quest. How can it stand with justice to command us, to make our selves a new heart and a new Spirit, since we are unable to make to our selves a new heart? Ezech. 18. 51. for saith Pelagius, inability to obey cannot be both a sin and a punishment of sin.
Ans. 11. The commands of circumcising our selves to the Lord, and of making a new heart, which are laid upon us, are materially Evangelic; but as they are charged upon unrenewed men they are formally legal, upon the Lord's intention also Evangelic to the chosen to fit them for Christ: Nor can these commands have this sense; I command and enjoin to you the omnipotent infusion of a new heart. 1. God lays no acts of the infinite and omnipotent God upon the finite creature. 2. It is not his intention, nay nor his will, that reprobates create in themselves, new vital principles of life, since no such supernatural principles of the life of Christ, was merited to them by the death of ⟨p. 134⟩