A92141:687
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.
2. In the same prayer the spirit and the flesh speak at once or by turns, Jer. 15. 15. prays in the spirit, O Lord thou knowest me, remember me, and visit me, and revenge me of my persecutors; take me not away in thy long-suffering; know that for thy sake I have suffered rebuke. 16. Thy words we•e found, and I did eat them: and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart. But in the same prayer the spirit in his suspended influences, as it were resting, lies by, and the flesh mixes in it self, v. 18. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, 1which refuseth to be healed? wilt thou be altogether to me as a liar, and as waters that fail? Calvin saith we must distinguish betwixt the doctrine, yea I add the prayer that is from the spirit, and the sinful complaint in the prayer from the flesh. So Job complains spiritually, 10. he acknowledgeth and adoreth the power of God, which poured him out as milk, and curdled him like cheese, clothed him with skin and flesh, and fenced him with bones and sinews, and gave him life and favour, v. 9, 10, 11, 12. Yet the flesh almost casts all down, and makes him to lose his thanks, v. 18. Wherefore hast thou (saith he) brought me forth out of the womb? O that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me! Compare Jobs sad complaint with his triumphing faith, in looking through so many hundred years to his living Redeemer and Kinsman, who shall stand the last man upon the earth, v. 25, 26. Then are we taught to difference betwixt influences from our sinful flesh and his holy Spirit, and to beware of mixing our clay with the Lords pure fountain actings of his Spirit, and not to adulterate and vitiate his wine with our rotten water. It looked like the zeal of God in the disciples to desire to call for ⟨p. 251⟩fire from heaven to burn the Samaritans old and young; it was a cruel end merciless thing to refuse Christ and his disciples lodging. O but saith Christ, rebuking them, Luke 9. 55. Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. Pray that God would rebuke the flesh while ye pray; and try your own spirit, and take heed to it.
2. In the same prayer the spirit and the flesh speak at once or by turnes,