A92141:596
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.
But truly (saith he) I am full of power, by the spirit of the Lord, and of might, and of judgement to declare unto Jacob his transgressions and to Israel his sin. 3. There is little of self in children; the children of God ([Greek or Hebrew], the word given to sucking children of two years old, Matth, 2. 18. Acts 21. 21.) are like such as are learning to walk; there is little self-wisdom or of self-designs in the motions of young children. So doth the spirit act with facility and without resistance in the sons of God; Who may not see the colour of self, and feel some savour of the creature & of self in men? O if we could savour in looking, speaking, acting, of the spirit! The rivers, loths, ⟨p. 180⟩and fountains issue themselves in the Sea and be mixed therewith; its the salt Sea and not the rivers which ebb and flow: the under-acting of sinless nature in spiritual actings hindereth not the work to be denied of the man and affirmed of the spirit; So as we say not the man, but rather God in the man acts and speaks. Indeed things are not denominate from their externals; a vessel of copper washed over with silver, or a cup of brass over-gilded and lustered with gold, is not, nor is named a vessel of silver or a cup of gold. Though we name things by their skin and out-side, yet when the hypocrite prays, the Lord says the man prays, Psal. 18. 41. but the Spirit of God prays not in him. Nor doth the Lord name Magus a true believer from his profession, only the Holy Ghost saith, he believed. It's good when the conversation speaks heaven, and the spirit is visibly seen acting in the behaviour and walk of men. It's true, there is much of renewed self, (as 1 Cor. 15, 9, 10. Gal. 2. 20. Rom. 7. 17, 22. 1 Cor. 9. 20, 21.) in spiritual actings, and this heightens the excellency of the actions: corrupt self renders the act of praying and preaching wider and bigger, but not better and excellenter; especially in public renewed self rendereth it excellenter.