A30243:105
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 1 › Sermon 4
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.
Again, There is a certainty of Science or Knowledge, and that is either of first principles which are assented unto by all, without any discourse or debate at all, or else of such conclusions as are deduced from those principles.
Lastly, There is a certainty arising from the Authority of those who do declare or witness such things; for the testimony of him whom I believe to be the supreme truth and infallible about such or such things, doth beget a firm and sure persuasion that they are true; now this Authority is two-fold, either Humane; and as the men who witness are for number few or less, or for quality more or less worthy of credit, so more or less is that Certainty; and this breeds an humane faith, or moral certainty only (now it is much to be feared that the greatest part of Protestants even in matters of Religion, have no more then this humane faith, believing upon no higher a motive then humane tradition, or the authority of man,) or else it is Divine, from Gods authority and revelation, and this begets an undoubted assent, which cannot be over-mastered by any contrary temptation. Hence it is that this certainty of faith is above all certainty of sense or reason, because the ground of it is more firm and immutable; and although the nature of things believed be far above our understandings (as in the doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation of Christ) yet the testimony of them is clear and evident, so that the certainty of faith may not be called obscure, as Papists term it, but clear and evident; for that is true which Aquinas saith, No man believeth that which he doth not see to be credible, and therefore in every thing believed there is evidentia credibilitatis, a clearness and evidence of the grounds why I do believe, though there be not always evidentia rei, a clearness of the thing assented to; now if you ask, To what kind of certainty is that reduced, which the people of God have about their being in Christ, and in the state of grace; I answer it is a mixed or compounded certainty, partly a certainty of faith, and partly of sense and in experience, which sense is spiritual, and wrought by ⟨p. 18⟩the Spirit of God in us, so that it doth far transcend probable conjectures and moral persuasions arising in us, because of such bodily affections or dispositions of joy and grief, which we sometimes find in our selves, and hypocrites also are many times made partakers thereof.