A92141:595
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 Much of self-denial speaks much of the spirit: he who will be least his own is most God's, and partakes most of the divine nature. The spirit loves the room of self; I live not, but Christ (by his Spirit) lives in me, Gal. 2. and the spirit, to speak so, is the full predominant element in the acting (not that nature sinless is wholly dead and passive, as Familists and others tea•h) and self appears to be sunk into nothing, and is denied: as Matth. 10. 20. It's not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaks in you. Though they be living persons in their nature and being, Peter and John speaks: and yet the spirit so discourses and lays aside the creature called self, and sets up God, that as if self were ⟨p. 179⟩annihilated and not there at all (I mind no Libertine annihilation) the spirit as the predominant speaks in the man and acts in him, rather then the man. And the Spirit of the Father, prayeth, preacheth, reigneth, acteth, disputeth, confesseth in the believer. 1 Cor. 15. 10. But I laboured more abundantly then they all; then must I in Paul be preferred and exalted above John the beloved Disciple, and all the eminent Apostles? O not; I laboured more abundantly; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Acts 6. 10. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which Steven spake. He saith not they were not able to resist and dispute against the sinful man Steven. Acts 4. 8. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, & made answer to the persecuting Rulers; this is a far other thing then if he had said, then answered Peter the Apostle; for Peter was before this, filled with the Holy Ghost, but now the Holy Ghost in a new fullness and flowing of heavenly influences in the man Peter is Master-speaker. In the Prophets this is clear from