A92141:503
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.
IF the meaning of some be by requiring a moral command to fit us for duties, that such a command is enough, because it's a Gospel-command. Then is it false that a moral command, as such, can fit or ripen us for duties: For Eph. 5. 14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest (and its more then sleeping, there being life in a sleeping man) and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light. Here is both precept and promise given to the dead, who of themselves cannot live: Yet it's morally required that they live; and John 5. 25. The dead in the graves are to hear the voice of the Son of man. And the Lord binds the command on these that were as the men of Sodom, 1Isa. 1. 5. A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, the seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters. v. 10. Wash you. v. 16. Make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Isa. 42. 18. Hear ye deaf, and look ye blind, that ye may see. So the Apostle Peter chargeth Simon Magus, Acts 8. 22. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thoughts of thy heart may be forgiven thee. And Jeremiah speaking to a hardened Prince, speaks as to the earth that hath no ears, Jer. 22. 29. O earth, earth, earth, hear the Word of the Lord. And it's a vain thing to think that these are to be confounded, the obligation to obey, and the impotency and indisposition to obey. For mans ⟨p. 153⟩wicked weakness cannot remove the obligation which the Lord in his holy Law lays on us: For wasting that brings on inability to pay, makes neither the debt to be unjust, nor does it loose the creditor from his right to crave and pursue the broken man, except we say that poverty may pay all the debts in the world.
IF the meaning of some be by requiring a moral command to fit us for duties, that such a command is enough, because it's a Gospel-command. Then is it false that a moral command, as such, can fit or ripen us for duties: For