A92141:603
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.
8. A watching condition is a spiritual condition. The Spirit of God is much seen in keeping the soul watching. Ephes. 6. 18. Praying with all prayer and supplication in the spirit is joined with watching; For it's added, and watching thereunto with all perseverance: and Jude conjoins praying in the Holy Ghost, with ver. 21. looking for or watching after the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. The spirit is willing (Matth. 26. 4. forward, watchful, so is the renewed part,) but the flesh is weak, sleepy, and lazy; And as much as the man hath of the spirit, so much holy watchfulness hath he; and Matth. 25. 26. the evil servant that digged his Masters talent in the earth, is called wicked and slothful, [Greek or Hebrew] sleepy, in opposition to the watching and painful servant, who ver. 20. gained five talents to five talents. Drowsiness counter-works the knockings and gracious influences of the Spirit of Christ's calling, Cant. 5. and answers Christ's piercing words Open to me, my sister, my love, &c. with a carnal excuse from drowsiness; it's not time of night for Christ to seek lodging; I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? Cant. 5. 3. The flesh is a sleeping thing, and a dead:1 were we more diligent and painful we might be richer; lesser motions closed with become the seed of larger motions. The moving of the bowels at Christ's spiritual stirrings that he makes upon the heart grows to this, I rose to open to my well-beloved. Watching guards against sleeping, and watchfulness puts the soul upon a resolution to watch: sleeping guards no more against watching, then ⟨p. 185⟩then the privation fences off the habit, or doth set a man to work against life. We sit not watchfully upon the motions of the spirit, to warm them and to draw life out of them, as the Hen by careful sitting upon dead Eggs bringeth forth living birds. Who would think a tree and a huge tree can come from a sorry plant? or sixty or an hundred grains of wheat in harvest to be in one single grain cast in the earth in sowing time? Can the flesh wait for the Lord? is not hope an act of life? Yea, it's lively hope opposite to a dead and rotten hope: and waking is nearer to life, and influences of life, then sleeping, which is the death of the man as touching the exercise of the sensitive life: