A92141:577
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.
Hence 1. Since we are mere Messengers, we cannot breath life in the word only, like the Trumpeter that blows his warm breath through a dead trumpet of Brass; but he blows or breaths no valour or courage in the soldiers, that was not in them before. But if the spirit go along and breath life in the hearers they shall live, as speaking and acting are conjoined, Ezech. 2. 1. Son of man stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee. 2. Then the spirit entered into me, when he spake to me, and he set me on my feet. So John 5. 25. Ezech. 37. 7, 8. It not a little concerns Ministers and Hearers to pray that the spirit may go along with the word: otherwise the shepherds singing through an •aten reed shall never feed sheep or lambs, and make them ⟨p. 173⟩fat: and people often receive in their ears, a noise of words and syllables, and are not fed with sounds. It's true, Christ and the Prophets and Apostles preached in the spirit and in the lively power of God,1 and yet nothing but the letter came to the ears of many of their hearers, Isa. 53. 1. Isa. 28. 9. the hearers are but as weaned children: Mat. 13. 13, 14, 15. the hearers are fatted hypocrites. And a poor man speaks the letter of the word, and happily deadly and weakly; yet betwixt the speakers mouth and the hearers heart, the spirit strikes in and the dead man lives.
Hence 1. Since we are meer Messengers, we cannot breath life in the word only, like the Trumpeter that blows his warm breath through a dead trumpet of Brasse; but he blows or breaths no valour or courage in the souldiers, that was not in them before. But if the spirit goe along and breath life in the hearers they shall live, as speaking and acting are conjoyned,