A92141:561
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.
3.1 Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, 2 Cor. 3. 17. Uphold me with thy free Spirit, Psal. 51. 12. It's proper to natural men in whom the spirit dwells, not to be vile slaves to lusts; and the more of the spirit in any, the more active are they in the Lords ways; and hardly can the spirit be where there are not influences of grace. For it's the Spirits office to be stirring and active (as the horses of Egypt are flesh and not spirit, that is, lumpish, dead, feeble, unable to save, not spirited & active to deliver) and in this especially the actings of the spirit appear in the fiery spiritness of heavenly influences. Would ye be carried on and helped in duties; get the spirit and ye cannot miss heavenly influences; the dryness of the earth speaks the suspending of rain and dew in the clouds, and a heaven of brass; the man is dead, and under bands, and straitened in prayer, then must the showers of influences be restrained. Psal. 51. 12. Uphold me with thy free spirit. What then? v. 13. Then Isle teach transgressors thy ways. Take a work where there are an hundred wheels, of which the higher moves the lower; then when the first and highest moves not, all the ninety and nine must stand. When the spirit breathes not, and influences are restrained, what wonder if the soul be deadened? For the Marigold lowers and weeps, in its kind, and droops when the Sun is down: our prayers would blow upon the North and South wind that they may blow: The breathing and blowing of prayer do readily waken up the spirit, though he must stir in praying also, else we are dead and breathless.
3.1 Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, 2 Cor. 3. 17. Ʋphold me with thy free Spirit, Psal. 51. 12. It's proper to natural men in whom the spirit dwels, not to be vile slaves to lusts; and the more of the spirit in any, the more active are they in the Lords wayes; and hardly can the spirit be where there are not influences of grace. For it's the Spirits office to be stirring and active (as the horses of Egypt are flesh and not spirit, that is, lumpish, dead, feeble, unable to save, not spirited & active to deliver) and in this especially the actings of the spirit appear in the fiery spiritness of heavenly influences. Would ye be carried on and helped in duties; get the spirit and ye cannot misse heavenly influences; the drinesse of the earth speaks the suspending of rain and dew in the clouds, and a heaven of brass; the man is dead, and under bands, and straitned in prayer, then must the showres of influences be restrained.