A92141:729
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.
So we are 1.1 not to engage in the strength of free-will; and let us know thus much, that when resolutions of relying upon the grace of Christ are taking, and we say this we shall do by the grace of Christ, we but use the name of grace; but there is within 1. A fixedness of relying on nature, and we follow not our resolution with prayer, as David, Psal. 119. 106. I have sworn and will perform, that I will keep thy righteous judgments. He seconds his vow with prayer, v. 108. Accept, I beseech thee, the free-will offering of my mouth, O Lord; and teach me thy judgments. In praying for any mercy, as for grace to keep the way of God, which we have vowed to keep, we are to interpose Christ as Surety for the performing of the vow.
- 1We are to follow holy resolutions with prayer. 2. Godly trembling, and 3. Faith. The falsehood of vows.We are to follow holy resolutions with prayer. 2. Godly trembling, and 3. Faith. The falshood of vowes.
2. There is not godly fear and trembling in distrusting our selves. David, after the Lord makes a covenant with him, and David by the Lords grace had accepted and engaged to stand to it, he casts himself down to the dust, 2 Sam. 7. 18. Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that thou hast brought me hitherto? If we did but consider how cozening and unstable as water our hearts are, we should fear our own bentness to backsliding when we so vow. It speaks honest ingenuity after a man hath borrowed money, and given word and writ to pay it, when he is anxious how to answer the day, and be acquit of the debt.