A92141:576
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. The spirit is referred to the word as the soul to the ⟨p. 172⟩body; the body is but a lump of dead clay if the soul be removed, and the word is so many sounds, syllables, and letters, if the spirit act not; this is a similitude and would be well exponed.1 There is a two-fold power, one subjective and material, which comes from the Author the holy Ghost; in which regard the word of God from the Author the Holy Ghost hath actu primo as touching the matter and efficient cause, holiness, liveliness, divinity, majesty of style even as contradistinguished from the spirit acting with it; there is no word, no book, no speech of Angels or Men comparable to it.2 There is 2. A formal power which agrees to the word actu secundo as the spirit going along with the word makes it effectual, to enlighten, to teach, to rebuke, to convince, to persuade; so our Divines say (a modern Lutheran widely mistakes) the efficacy of the word is from the spirit, 2 Cor. 10. 4. the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty; how mighty, not of themselves, but mighty through God. We make not the word of it self, a dead inky letter, as Papists and Libertines both do. The like distinction is clear in a Sword or an Axe of steel, both the one and the other from the matter and artificer that made them hath actu primo sharpness and aptness to cut: Suppose the Artificer that made both be dead, yet the sharpest two-edged sword that is, except it be wielded by the arm of a valiant man can do no good in war: And the like may be said of the Axe, both are dead things of themselves.
3. The spirit is referred to the word as the soul to the ⟨p. 172⟩body; the body is but a lump of dead clay if the soul be removed, and the word is so many sounds, syllables, and letters, if the spirit act not; this is a similitude and would be well exponed.1 There is a two-fold power, one subjective and material, which comes from the Author the holy Ghost; in which regard the word of God from the Author the Holy Ghost hath actu primo as touching the matter and efficient cause, holiness, liveliness, divinity, majesty of style even as contradistinguished from the spirit acting with it; there is no word, no book, no speech of Angels or Men comparable to it.