A30243:1033
Spiritual refining
Spiritual refining: or A treatise of grace and assurance Wherein are handled, the doctrine of assurance. The use of signs in self-examination. How true graces may be distinguished from counterfeit. Several true signs of grace, and many false ones. The nature of grace under divers Scripture notions or titles, as regeneration, the new-creature, the heart of flesh, vocation, sanctification, &c. Many chief questions (occasionally) controverted between the orthodox and the Arminians. As also many cases of conscience. Tending to comfort and confirm saints. Undeceive and convert sinners. Being CXX sermons preached and now published by Anthony Burgess sometime fellow of Emanuel College in Cambridge, and now pastor of the church of Sutton-Coldfield in Warwickshire.Spiritual refining: or A treatise of grace and assurance Wherein are handled, the doctrine of assurance. The use of signs in self-examination. How true graces may be distinguished from counterfeit. Several true signs of grace, and many false ones. The nature of grace under divers Scripture notions or titles, as regeneration, the new-creature, the heart of flesh, vocation, sanctification, &c. Many chief questions (occasionally) controverted between the orthodox and the Arminians. As also many cases of conscience. Tending to comfort and confirm saints. Undeceive and convert sinners. Being CXX sermons preached and now published by Anthony Burgess sometime fellow of Emanuel Colledge in Cambridge, and now pastor of the church of Sutton-Coldfield in Warwickshire.
London: printed by A. Miller for Thomas Underhill, 1652
Title page typeset from the transcription.
A TREATISE OF GRACE and ASSURANCE; Being CXX. SERMONS. › Section 4 › Sermon 37
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.
First, In those travels, and agonies of soul which commonly it goeth through with 1ere grace be formed. The spirit of God doth convince of sin, and causeth bondage in the heart: we hear some crying out, What shall we do to be saved? For although a man be in this work of regeneration altogether passive, yea obstinate and rebellious, therefore compared unto a stone, and a dead man; yet in other respects God works in us suitably to reasonable men, by enlightening our understanding, by opening our eyes to see our misery that we are under; as Dives when his eyes was opened, saw he was in hell, which made him cry out for ease: so these perceive themselves even dropping irrecoverably therein, and thereupon they cry out, What shall we do to be saved? When there is this discovery in the heart, then there are commotions, and Earth-quakes in the soul.
First, In those travels, and agonies of soul which commonly it goeth through with 1er'e grace be formed. The spirit of God doth convince of sin, and causeth bondage in the heart: we hear some crying out, What shall we do to be saved? For although a man be in this work of regeneration altogether passive, yea obstinate and rebellious, therefore compared unto a stone, and a dead man; yet in other respects God works in us sutably to reasonable men, by enlightning our understanding, by opening our eyes to see our misery that we are under; as Dives when his eyes was opened, saw he was in hell, which made him cry out for ease: so these perceive themselves even dropping irrecoverably therein, and thereupon they cry out, What shall we do to be saved? When there is this discovery in the heart, then there are commotions, and Earth-quakes in the soul.
- 11.
Now come to any natural man, speak of these pangs and troubles of the soul, he knoweth not what they mean, he understands not the meaning of them: as Job said to his miserable comforters, Would your souls were in my souls stead, then you would feel what that wormwood and bitterness is, which I do undergo: so had thy soul been ever in those depths of God, then thou wouldst have known what it is to be in a spiritual travel. The Apostle speaking of the groans which Gods spirit worketh in his children, he calls them groans unutterable,