A92141:471
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.
Q. But what Law is there that we should have the power of believing, or the image of God? The covenant of works doth presuppose that image to be in man; otherwise he is not in a capacity to be in covenant with God, therefore it could not be enjoined and commanded in the covenant of works that Adam should have this Image of God. And if so, the want of it must be a mere punishment, not a sin.
Q. But what Law is there that we should have the power of believing, or the image of God? The covenant of works doth presuppose that image to be in man; otherwise he is not in a capacitie to be in covenant with God, therefore it could not be injoyned and commanded in the covenant of works that Adam should have this Image of God. And if so, the want of it must be a meer punishment, not a sin.
Ans. 1The Lord in creating Adam must necessarily have a two-fold Consideration. One 1. of a Creator. 2. Another of a Law-giver. In the first the Lord creates Being; but in the latter he is such a special Creator, to wit, a ⟨p. 139⟩Law-giving Creator, who, while he creates Being, does concreate these noble Principles, and write and by nature engrave the Law of the Image of God, the natural knowledge of God, his holiness, justice, mercy, &c. and of right and wrong, and a natural holiness and innate conformity of the heart to the eternal Law of God in mans soul. A Painter draws the portrait of a living beautiful heroic King, according to the living man; the Painter both gives being to the painted image, and such a being, according to the law and art of painting; he follows exactly and accurately his copy and living sampler, and so gives a law to his own acts of painting. And therefore God, in one and the same act, both creates man, and gives him a being, even holiness, his image, and holy being; and in creating of man, gives, and concreates, and engraves the image of GOD, sound knowledge, right inclinations; and while the Lord creates, he gives and engraves a Law; and while he gives and engraves a Law, he creates man. And therefore it follows not that the covenant of works does not presuppose the image of God in man; and it does not follow but the very act of God in stamping and engraving his image in Adam, is also a giving of him a Law. Yea, God in creating any creature of nothing, does also concreate, as a sort of Law-giver, such a natural Law. Every creature, Sun, Moon, Heaven, Earth, Sea, Man, Angel, ought to be subject as a creature to God Creator in being and operation. Here is both the act of a Creator, and also the act of a Law-giver.