A92141:474
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.
2. The more of this image that is left in the souls of men by nature, as the more knowledge, natural justice, and virtue remain in Aristides, Regulus, Seneca, Tullius, &c. the more lovely they are, and so must their [souls have a more natural conformity with the law of nature then other Heathens, who killed their aged Fathers, sacrificed their sons to Devils,1 used wives promiscuously. Then, what God condemns in us, that we should condemn in our selves, and therefore are to be humbled for our state we are in by nature. For we are dead in sins and trespasses, by nature the children of wrath, as well as others, Eph. 2. 1, 4, We our selves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. Psal. 51. 5. Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother warm me. Upon this account the Lord suffers his own to fall and lye in the dust, and to know what beasts they are, as the godly confess, Psal. 73. 23. Prov. 30. 2. themselves to be. Nothing men are more ashamed of then that they are descended of a traitorous and bloody Family, that sucked the paps of the bear or the wolf, that the father and mother were dogs and swine, and they born of leprous parents: the house of sinful Adam, that we lay claim unto, is a botch-house, and leper-house, and worse: And this is more vile then if there were none of the world that we could claim kindred unto but serpents, dogs, swine and wolves.
2. The more of this image that is left in the soules of men by nature, as the more knowledge, natural justice, and vertue remain in Aristides, Regulus, Seneca, Tullius, &c. the more lovely they are, and so must their [souls have a more natural conformitie with the law of nature then other Heathens, who kil'd their aged Fathers, sacrificed their sons to Devils,1 used wives promiscuously. Then, what God condemnes in us, that we should condemn in our selves, and therefore are to be humbled for our state we are in by nature. For we are dead in sins and trespasses, by nature the children of wrath, as well as others,