A92141:781
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.
3. There is much nearness of heavenly habits, dispositions, and heavenly influences; and they are like other, as life and breathing,1 fire and the flaming of the fire. get heavenly dispositions, and influences of grace to pray, to praise, to believe, almost connaturally follow. When the tide of the Spirit flows, Steven and the Apostles must prea••, and boldly confess their precious Master Christ Jesus; and this is great condescension of love, that the spirit and the sinful believer are fellow-workers; for the Spirit to act in the man Christ, or in the elect Angels, is not so much a wonder, for they never •inned: influences upon us, who have but a sort of obediential power, as we are sinners, such as is the power of swimming in iron, is lowliness of love. What is it for the Spirit of grace and glory to beat upon such broken and mistuned harps, and to bring forth such excellent actings, as praying, praising, confessing, believing, rejoicing in God, in such unhandy tools? What holy trembling is required in us, that we offend not such an honourable and glorious help, and that we neglect not to join his own habit to his own influences, when he renders the work sweet and easy! O let us lend our heart, and give organs, and a work-house to the Spirit, who comes down to sigh in sinners! He mourns like a dove, and weeps like a father who hath lost his first-born in heirs of glory.
3. There is much nearness of heavenly habits, dispositions, and heavenly influences; and they are like other, as life and breathing,1 fire and the flaming of the fire. get heavenly dispositions, and influences of grace to pray, to praise, to believe, almost connaturally follow. When the tide of the Spirit flows, Steven and the Apostles must prea••, and boldly confess their precious Master Christ Jesus; and this is great condescension of love, that the spirit and the sinful believer are fellow-workers; for the Spirit to act in the man Christ, or in the elect Angels, is not so much a wonder, for they never •inned: influences upon us, who have but a sort of obediential power, as we are sinners, such as is the power of swimming in iron, is lowliness of love. What is it for the Spirit of grace and glory to beat upon such broken and mistuned harps, and to bring forth such excellent actings, as praying, praising, confessing, believing, rejoycing in God, in such unhandy tools? What holy trembling is required in us, that we offend not such an honourable and glorious help, and that we neglect not to joyn his own habit to his own influences, when he renders the work sweet and easie! O let us lend our heart, and give organs, and a work-house to the Spirit, who comes down to sigh in sinners! He mourns like a dove, and weeps like a father who hath lost his first-born in heirs of glory.