A30243:110
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.
Estius the Papist would make this exhortation of the Apostle in the Text, to be only for trial, Whether they were a true Church, and whether Christ dwelt in them by true Doctrine, Miracles and his Ordinances? But that cannot be the total meaning, partly, because every believer had not Christ dwelling in him by Miracles, and therefore such an one could not have acknowledged Pauls ministerial power; and if so, then Paul would not have provoked to that, partly because this place, and that of Ephes. 3. 17. may explain one another; now there Christ is said, To dwell in their hearts by faith, where it must needs be justifying faith; and certainly Christ is in us, as we are in Christ, for Joh. 14. 10. ⟨p. 19⟩these are put together, now we are not in Christ by a faith of Miracles, and therefore he is not in us by such a faith.
Fourthly, No man can by any natural light or evidence in him, come to be assured 1of the grace wrought in his soul. Hence I shall show you, that it is Gods Spirit which doth seal to us what we are; and that as a man cannot see the Sun but by the light of the Sun, so neither can he see Christ or his graces in him but by the Spirit of Christ. Hence a man may be in the state of grace and not know it, even as the child in the womb may be an heir to a great inheritance, and not understand it; and therefore as it is not the power of a mans free-will to subdue and conquer sin, but that belongs to the Spirit of God sanctifying, so it is not the light of a mans natural understanding that can assure us of the things of God in us, but it belongs to the spirit of Adoption in us. Hence it is that a man naturally is destitute of all comfort, as well as grace, his heart is like an hell; as there is the unquenchable fire of lust, which never goeth out, so there are worms of doubts and fears perpetually gnawing which never die. For the Promises being divine and supernatural, we have no more inclination to them, or compliance with them then the commands of God, which require holiness. Hence it is that as a man while unconverted doth resist the Spirit of God, convincing and sanctifying; so when converted and humbled for sin he doth often refuse Gods Spirit comforting and witnessing his love to him. And hence is the spiritual combat and conflict the people of God have, which is not only between corruption and holiness, but also between doubting and faith. Assurance therefore doth not follow the work of grace in us by a necessary consequence, as heat doth the light of the fire, but is separable from it, as we see in many of Davids Psalms, who though full of grace and holiness, yet was in darkness, and felt not Gods presence with him, or his love of him; and this should make us keep with all fear and trembling any measure of Assurance that we have, seeing if we sin it away we are no more able to call it into our souls again, then we can bid the Sun stand still in its race.