A30243:1064
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.
Secondly, A Miscarriage through defect is, When there are some inward 1Affections and Workings of God upon the heart, but they come to no Perfection. Such a monster was Agrippa, Thou hast almost persuaded me to be a Christian, Acts 26. 28. If therefore the Lord at any time cause trouble and fear to rise in thy soul about sin, pray that thou mayest not miscarry: Oh Lord, say, I fear all this pain may give over again; we see nothing more ordinary then such miscarriages; What is become of those Troubles, Resolutions and strong Purposes that were once in thy heart? Are they not all vanished? But this was touched upon before.
Secondly, A Miscarriage through defect is, When there are some inward 1Affections and Workings of God upon the heart, but they come to no Perfection. Such a monster was Agrippa, Thou hast almost perswaded me to be a Christian, Acts 26. 28. If therefore the Lord at any time cause trouble and fear to rise in thy soul about sinne, pray that thou maiest not miscarry: Oh Lord, say, I fear all this pain may give over again; we see nothing more ordinary then such miscarriages; What is become of those Troubles, Resolutions and strong Purposes that were once in thy heart? Are they not all vanished? But this was touched upon before.
- 12. When affections on the heart come to no perfection.
Thirdly, A third Miscarriage is, Want of Perseverance, when men for a great while have gone on with much Fervency and Delight in Gods ways; Who seemed more Zealous then they, more Religious then they? but afterwards prove wretched Apostates, and return to their old vomit again: Oh these are terrible and dreadful monsters! The Apostle chargeth some, That began in the Spirit, but ended in the flesh. Is not this to make the Poets monster, Humano capiti, &c. To add a Serpents body to a mans head, &c? A godly man e groweth up further and further into a full stature. Paul thought himself not to have apprehended yet. As a man on the bottom of an high hill, thinks if he were on the top, he were then able to touch the Heavens, but when he comes up he seeth himself infinite short still. Thus it is in the way of Grace. A natural man thinketh, if he could do thus and thus, he then should be complete, but if once God change his heart, and he come to such a stature, he seeth so far into the way of Grace, and so much more is still to be done, that he judgeth himself even at the highest, but to begin to be a Christian.