A92141:487
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.
but the use of the very exercise it self, the very particular act, which is of the same kind with the exercise, is the best thing to fit him for it. So in this duty of prayer; it's true, to be strong in the inner man, to have much knowledge, to have much grace, makes a man fit and able for the duty: But if you speak of the immediate preparation for it, I say, the best way to prepare us for it, is the very duty it self, as all actions of the same kind increase the habits, so prayer makes us fit for prayer: and that is a rule. The way to godliness is the compass ⟨p. 146⟩of godliness it self; that is, the way to grow in grace, is the exercise of that grace. I wish this man of God, and others more experienced then I, had said more of this unknown subject; and that the Lord would sit builders in both Kingdoms to draw up a body of Theologia practica, that Divinity were more in our hearts, its too much in the heads of many; only I speak here of preparation to receive influences, D. Preston of the preparation to duties, to praying under indisposition. But I would not be understood so, as if I thought acts of influences, which are acts of Omnipotency, might be sharpened and facilitated by our actings; Only my meaning is that the passive capacity of the soul may be widened and enlarged to receive showers of quickening influences from the Lord by frequent acts. Experience, in my weak apprehension, may speak influence of grace oils the wheels of the soul. Prov. 1. 5. A wise man will hear, and increase learning: and a man of understanding, shall attain unto wise counsels. We grow hot, like hot iron redded in the fire, by praying, and are softened and macerated like dry and parched ground, by frequent showers; and though the heart be frozen and cold, when we begin to duties of praying, praising, meditating, conferring of the word, hearing, yet incalescimus, we grow warm by acting: the rising of the Sun causeth the Ice to drop off the houses. Its a naughty heart that is in the same case after frequent prayer, that it was in before; It says that the man hath been sweating at the letter and bark of the duty; little of the bark or letter of the duty takes gluing with the heart, but hardly can the grace of the duty go along with the heart, but there is much that cleaves to the heart; so that influences thaw the heart. Luke 24. 32.