A92141:737
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.
AS to natural powers, the God of nature hath prepared influences to seeds and plants apt to grow. There are prepared of God also influences for their actual growing: So to the Sun, fire, clouds, he hath in readiness such influences, though he freely let them out; so to supernatural powers and habits he must let out and prepare supernatural influences.
AS to natural powers, the God of nature hath prepared influences to seeds and plants apt to grow. There are prepared of God also influences for their actual growing: So to the Sun, fire, clouds, he hath in readinesse such influences, though he freely let them out; so to supernatural powers and habits he must let out and prepare supernatural influences.
The habit of grace is a sort of new nature, a heavenly power, a kind of seed of spiritual actings, and a weight that inclines the soul to acting, and by a sort of a pleasantly refreshing disposition sways and draws habitually the man to supernatural acting. In nature suitable influences are due to the powers;1 as the habit of music inclines the man to singing, and a natural instinct draws the bird to build its nest; and the Lord hath ordained suitable influences for this instinct: so this habit of grace as a weight inclines the soul to act, not by any necessity of exercise, but by necessity of specification; it inclines not by determining to the act, but only habitually. Therefore influences suitable to this habit must be some way due; as in nature, so also in grace. A habit of grace in the renewed man, does not determine him continually to pray, believe, praise God, while the habit is in him. Hence
The habit of grace is a sort of new nature, a heavenly power, a kind of seed of spiritual actings, and a weight that inclines the soul to acting, and by a sort of a pleasantly refreshing disposition swayes and drawes habitually the man to supernatural acting. In nature suitable influences are due to the powers;1