A92141:482
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.
There be some actings even in renewed men,1 partly from the Spirit, partly from nature, custom or formality. The question is thus framed, because it is a disputable question; Whether justified ones do any actions morally good from an only principle natural, without any influence of the indwelling spirit at all, since their sins, after their being in Christ, are not committed with the full bensil of the will; for the Spirit in some measure retards and weakens the motion of the flesh, Rom. 7. and the habit of sin original is weakened and remitted or slacked in its strength in the regenerate; and therefore it would seem, if the spirit do weaken, retard and blunt the actions of the flesh, that far more there is in all moral actions that are good morally, some influence of the Spirit less or more. So the Question is, whether or no the children of God may safely set to work, though their actions proceed from conscience, ⟨p. 143⟩natural power, custom or a mere office, with little influence of habitual grace, to works of grace that they may fetch influences of grace.
THere be some actings even in renewed men,1 partly from the Spirit, partly from nature, custome or formality. The question is thus framed, because it is a disputable question; Whether justified ones doe any actions morally good from an only principle natural, without any influence of the indwelling spirit at all, since their sins, after their being in Christ, are not committed with the full bensil of the will; for the Spirit in some measure retards and weakens the motion of the flesh, Rom. 7. and the habit of sin original is weakned and remitted or slacked in its strength in the regenerate; and therefore it would seem, if the spirit do weaken, retard and blunt the actions of the flesh, that far more there is in all moral actions that are good morally, some influence of the Spirit less or more. So the Question is, whether or no the children of God may safely set to work, though their actions proceed from conscience, ⟨p. 143⟩