A30243:1044
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 38
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.
SERMON XXXVIII.
Laying open the Counterfeits of a new Birth.
JOHN 3. 3. Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.
Having in way of digression observed some remarkable particulars in this excellent Dialogue between Christ and Nicodemus: I do now re-assume this Text, wherein a new Birth is so vehemently and indispensably asserted: And because we have already demonstrated the nature of it; the next thing to be insisted upon is the Counterfeit of it, that so no more any may deceive themselves, as if they had it, when they had it not. For who is there who hath heard the nature of it laid open, and the necessity of it pressed, doth not believe he hath it, although the work be so rare and supernatural? for a man would wonder, when Christ who is truth it self, presseth this upon every man, let him be never so self-righteous and self-holy, what men think of themselves; for certainly either they do not attend to, or believe these things, or else they make no reflection upon themselves, saying, Am I such a man; or else they vainly delude themselves with hopes, concluding that to be the work of regeneration in them, which indeed is not.