INFLUENCES OF THE LIFE OF GRACE.

BY SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.

CHAPTER XI.

Doth our impotency to pray and believe justify any that they believe

Not at all for one and the same cannot be a just excuse, and a due rebuke; but the Holy Ghost rebukes our cannot as a sinful cannot, and so our impotency cannot be a just excuse. So Joshua xxiv. 19, "Ye cannot serve the Lord." Jer. vi. 10, "Their ear is uncircumcised, they cannot hearken." The Lord grievously challengeth the people, verse 11, "I am full of the anger of the Lord," and denounceth wrath against this rebellious cannot; for not only is the tree rejected, as bearing evil fruit, but also because the sap is sour, and the bulk rotten. Christ speaks rebukingly of some impotent cannot of the world. John xiv. 17, "I will send you the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive." Rom. viii. 7, "The wisdom of the flesh is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be." Verse 8, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." 1 Cor. ii. 14, "The natural man cannot know the things of God."

And he is condemned as one who judgeth the things of the Gospel foolishness. John vi. 44, "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him." And that is a most wicked shift of him who married a wife. Luke xiv. 20, "Therefore I cannot come." We excuse such wicked weakness with this: "God help us : we cannot without His grace do better."

The very sinful habit and power is reproved in the Word, the habitual blindness and hardness of heart that may be in sleeping men, the state of non-regeneration, and the state of death and uncircumcision of heart, is condemned: Eph. ii. 1-3; Col. i. 13-14; Ps. xiv. 3; their poison of nature, Ps. lviii. 4; the uncircumcision of heart, Jer. ix 26; the sinful frame of the heart, Gen. vi. 5. viii. 21. The sleeping man, or swooning man, acting and committing no actual guiltiness, and making no use of freewill, is guilty and rebukable before God; as the sleeping wolf is bloody, the sleeping lion is cruel, because of the bloody and cruel nature that is inherently in both, when neither of them do actually devour; so though influences to the material acts of sin be not in our power, yet, since we lodge that sinful power, and virtually (as is said) consent to want the breathings of God, and consent that the sinful acts have house-room in the sleeping man, we are thence guilty upon that account; though we sleep and

are patient in carrying sinful powers and sinful acts now inherent in us; and the withdrawing of influences of grace upon the same account, cannot be an honest excuse. Yea, the wicked impotency and indisposition, and the three disciples' drowsiness and sleepiness (Matt. xxvi.) is a new guiltiness (for Christ commanded watching then), and their actual not praying is another guiltiness.

Under withdrawing of influences of grace we are guilty (1), In not considering the temptation, the signs, and wonders which we see and hear (Deut. xxix. 3); yea though the Lord's not giving a new heart be not our sin formally, yet our not having nor receiving a new heart is our sin. The sourness and naughtiness of the earth in bringing forth poisonous weeds is the earth's own indisposition; the sun and clouds extract these poisonous herbs; the natural dryness of some rocky earth, and the not raining of the clouds, meet both in one, to wit the barrenness of the earth; yet this takes not away the faultiness of this earth so rocky.

2. Our guiltiness is very evident in our yielding to original and natural malice; for acquired depravity meets with natural and original corruption, like two floods to make a sea; or as when a man forceth a wound to bleed, which of itself would bleed. And again, whatever may be said of the result of the Lord's withdrawing of influences, we, add an impulsion to His withdrawing, as the adding of the heat of an oven near the root of a fruit tree, to cause it to ripen, adds something to the heat of the sun and the influences of the heavens; and when the "the heart walketh after the heart of our detestable things," as it is Ezek. xi. 21, and with the intended bensil of the freewill, we put our seal and consent to the Lord's withdrawing, there is no ground to complain of His withdrawing.

Qu.-But does not the Lord's withdrawing of His influences, since without His concurrence of that kind, our actings are impossible, do violence to freewill, which must be indifferent to act or not to act, to do or not to do?

Ans. This is a weak reason; for to our nilling, the influence of God is natural, and so is it to our willing: the Lord makes His influences and the withdrawing thereof, connatural to all our actions, to both nilling and to willing. Dryness and barrenness is as connatural to the tree as budding and fruit-bearing, if God add His influences either to the one or the other; yea, since the Lord's concurrence is suitable to the nature of second causes, the fire leaves not off to be fire, nor is its nature destroyed, if the Lord withdraw His influence, so that the fire burns not the three Children: nor is violence done to nature by the Lord's joining of His influence to the fire to burn.

3. To have dominion over the Sovereignty of God, is no part of the

creature's liberty; but only it is free in order to its own actings; nor is it essential to the free-will of men or angels, or any creature, to have the influences of God in its power or at hand.

We yield that the Lord's active drawing, calling, inviting of sinners to come to Christ, is His holy and sinless work; and our passive, not being drawn, and not being effectually called and invited to come to Christ, is our sin of unbelief, and our refusing and rebellious rejecting of His call, Is. lxv. 1, 2; Prov. i. 24, 25, 26; John v. 40; and that He so calleth and hath mercy on whom He will, because He will, whereto it is but flesh and carnal wisdom that objecteth. But God so calling some, as they must come, because so He willeth; and so calling other some, as they must be hardened, because He willeth, gives a seeming ground to two great objections.

"Why then doth God find fault?”

If God so call some asthey obey, and others as they obey not, because He will, who can resist His will? His will is as Himself: then do we reject God's calling, and eternally perish, because God doth 80 will? Now not any ever breathing, moved any such objections, but the carnal Jew in Paul's time, and the Socinians, Jesuits, and Arminians in the age we now live in, and stumblers at the Word; for all such enemies to grace, turn the objections into an argument against the absolute will and invincible grace of God; and answer not with the Holy Ghost, who, (Rom. ix.) calls it a bold, fleshy, replying unto God, (verse 20). For the Holy Ghost asserts the Sovereignty of God, as the potter over the clay, and the guiltiness of vessels of wrath, (verse 22,) and their disobedienee in refusing the call of God, (verse 29). Some may say, "If God would give me the grace He bestowed on David, I should be a man according to God's heart." True. But what is this to one who still dwells in nature? Should the sleeper say: "Had I laboured more, and slumbered and lain in my bed less, I should have been richer." But that supposition will neither be bread to feed him, nor a web to clothe him: there is nothing here but only idle wishing. “Oh, if I had bread!" and such empty desires cannot feed a hungry man, who is both idle and hungry. Were the objector a seeker, and did he seek for wisdom as silver, and dig for her as for hid treasures, it were real or rational hunger; but there is not a right esteem of bread, there is no wise life-hunger, such as is in living men.

It were good that the objector were humbled, and did lie at the water side, and complain, "Oh, if His ship would fetch me over, and His wind would blow! Who shall deliver me? What shall I do?” Were he loathing his own ways it were good. Join despairing in self. and feeling of a wretched condition, with some desires of David's

grace, that should be liker a laying hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: "We will go with you." But the objector is full and rich, and self-righteous and whole, and needs not the Physician, and his own civil hell torments him not. A heaven of work, holiness and law-righteousness is the lie that is in his right hand : he feeds upon such ashes.

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The objector should be convinced of his backward desires: "Oh if I had grace, I would then labour and run." Is it not (1,) a contradiction: he loves to be watered with the streams and dewings of Christ, and hates and loathes the Fountain. "But now have they both seen and hated me and my Father" (John xv. 24). The world cannot receive the Spirit, (John xiv. 17,) and so must hate the Spirit and all His influences. Fools hate wisdom. And (2,) every species and kind of being is delighted with its own being. serpent hath not a desire or a real love to be turned into a man, nor would a lion be turned into a lamb, nor a devil into an elect angel; that desire is contrary to the malice he hath to the image of God in the elect angels. The withered earth loves rain and dew-it would be perfected in its kind; but a body of sin fights to keep its own being, and would not be destroyed by a habit of grace; nor doth an heir of wrath, and a limb of Satan, seriously desire to be a child of God; nor one tormented in hell, really will to be a holy saint in heaven. He only would be an eased and painless man, and seeks not to be free of blaspheming God. See Balaam's and the rich man's desire: Nnm. xxiii. 10; Luke xvi. 24. 3. True it is, we love not moral influences, and to be actors in holiness, for that spoils and robs the man of his sweet lusts. We would be content to be passive, and have the breathings of the Spirit come upon us sleeping and without toil, that we might feel only the sweetness and delight of duties, not the duty and the gracious acting itself: as a man loves to have been made holy, not to be holy; nor to be made holy by acting and toiling. For the man who hates the Spirit and hates Christ, as the unrenewed objector doth, how can he love unfeignedly either the gracious habit of holiness or the gracious influences of Christ? So speak the enemies of our Lord, who love not gracious influences (as Christ is a well-governing, a sweetly-awing Lord in all His influences). Ps. ii. 3, "Let us break their bands, and cast away their cords," though they be silken cords. So the citizens of Christ (Luke xix. 14) hate Him, and set man's will on Jesus Christ's throne: "We will not have this man to reign over us." The world hates a ruling and reigning Christ; and so we hate His holy actings, and the wishing to have grace and gracious influences ruling in us is a dream. We really desire no such thing, but love an inde

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pendence of our own, as was the unlucky prayer of the son who loved not to be under His heavenly Father. Luke xv. 12, "The younger son said to his father: Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.'" And so hate men the Lord in His influences of the Word, rebuking them: Isaiah xxx. 11, "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us." Andso this objector : Oh that He would give me the double of David's grace!" is an empty wish; as if hot fire would say: "Oh that I were quenched with cold water!" A lover of grace must be a gracious man.

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Doth any man say, "If I had grace and much riches, I would build churches, bridges, hospitals, entertain many poor, erect schools and colleges." Now, have the loins of the poor and naked blest you for any you have clothed, even according to what you have? God seeks of no man above that he hath, or according to what he hath not and if you fail in what you have, what can you say for what have not?

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But, "Had I more grace, I would not deny Christ for fear of men, nor sell Christ for money, as did Peter and Judas." Now just so spake the Scribes and Pharisees. Matt. xxiii. 30, "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets." And yet they slew the apostles, and beat the prophets, and killed the precious heir, Christ,-Matt. xxi. 33-38. Would ye have forsaken all, and followed Christ? Your own heart must be dear and precious to you, when you undertake so much in its name. And yet many that so speak in our age, persecute godliness, and hate Christ in His members and many go off that way many miles on the north side and the south side of the Cross, when the Holy Ghost saith there is not a bridge over this river, but we must wade and swim through at the nearest; and the road-way is -"that through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God,"-Acts xiv. 22.

"By God's grace I should walk more closely with God than Noah: more sincerely than he, for I would not have been drunken with wine, as he." But believe you that God, who gave the habit of grace to Noah, to Moses, to David, to Hezekiah, would have given you all the actual influences to eschew the slips and infirmities which these men committed? And except you suppose this, you must lean upon the habit of grace, which is but a creature, and so must not have the room of God. Now, if you have not any such habit, your hope must be a broken tree, and you leaning on a cipher, and upon nothing.

"Had I extraordinary helps of a teacher sent from Hell, I would believe."