A92141:494
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.
Yet is there a practise of free grace in this order;1 that the blind men cry, Son of David, have mercy on us; (yet they possibly intend only by the way side to beg) and Christ of free grace gives them seeing eyes. There is no promise of grace that Christ shall heal all blind men begging by the way, who shall pray to the Son of David for seeing eyes, or that the Lord Jesus who is as mighty now as ever, shall send out influences to heal all the blind so crying: for seeing eyes the Eunuch reads Acts 8. the Lord falls on him, with influences of grace to reveal Christ in a saving manner, to ⟨p. 149⟩him; not because he reads, or because there is a promise made to save all who read the word. Upon sinful ends, the multitude, Acts 2. come to hear the word; their intention of hearing, being mocking enemies, was naught; Yet by a practise of grace, not by any promise of grace they are converted. Now in this it may be said, that the natural yea and faithless use of means hath some influence ex natura rei upon the effect, not by promise, yet by the decree of God; and so by no merit, because by no promise (for another merit, then what is founded upon free promise, and not upon the worth and condignity of work and wages, I hope never to acknowledge, by his grace, whom I desire to be my inward teacher) and to me reading, hearing, use of means, have a material influence as to the practise, not to the promise of grace; For according to the Philosophy I learned; six is materially a number nearer of blood and kindred to eight, then four is; yet six and eight are numbers in species and nature no less different then eight and four, or then eight and two which are materially farther different then six and eight, which are different only by two. So the Embryo before life, and the birth now quickened by life differ in nature and species, as living and not living differ: Yet the Embryo the shaped organized body void of life is materially nearer to a living birth, then the seed is to a living birth.
Yet is there a practise of free grace in this order;1 that the blind men cry, Son of David, have mercy on us; (yet they possiby intend only by the way side to beg) and Christ of free grace gives them seeing eyes. There is no promise of grace that Christ shall heal all blind men begging by the way, who shall pray to the Son of David for seeing eyes, or that the Lord Jesus who is as mighty now as ever, shall send out influences to heal all the blind so crying: for seeing eyes the Eunuch reads