A92141:562
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.
4.1 The spirit that is of God is a praying spirit, Jude. Praying in the Holy Ghost. Of all the Tongues and Languages on earth, the Holy Ghost loves most to speak prayerwise, and in the language of humble supplications. Rom. 8. 29. We know not what we should pray for as we ought. What then? shall the work lie? Nay, the spirit takes it off the poor mans hand; but the Spirit it self maketh intercession for us with sighs that cannot be expressed. And rather or ⟨p. 169⟩spiritual work be at a stand, the Third Person lends a lift to the groaning soul that cannot pray: For the Spirit helps our infirmities. And then praying is a mass of influences for faith, for holy desires, for sense of want; yea, and no man gets the spirit but the praying son, Luke 11. 11. Only this shall bide a question, How shall they pray for the Spirit that want the Spirit? Answ. Yea Magus, though in the gall of bitterness, is commanded to pray, Acts 8. 21. The Law commanded praying to God incarnate when he is revealed to be incarnate. As the first command charges all to know the Lord practically in all the ways of Law and Gospel by which he shall reveal himself; and the Lord hath not abated a whit, and come down from his holy rigorousness, as if the Lord would make amends,2 and give us (as some Pelagians say) a lower and milder Law, which forbids not venials. Et peccata quotidianae incursionis precise sub periculo aeternae condemnationis. Yea but there is not any Law nor Gospel which forbids not sin under the same penalty that the Law forbids; and the Gospel forbids not adultery and murder in David, but he is free from eternal punishment, if he be humbled for these sins, as he must be humbled for lesser and venial sins, Psal. 19. 12. Psal. 51. 5.