A30243:1113
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 5 › Sermon 40
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.
Fourthly, therefore no outward Duty or Privilege is accepted without a new 1Creation, Because justification and this new Creature are inseparably united together, and cannot be one moment divided from each other, Rom. 8. There is no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ, (there is Justification:) Who walk not after the Flesh, but after the Spirit, (there is Sanctification:) Now seeing that justification is the ground of all acceptance both of our persons and duties, and this is always concomitant with a new Creature; therefore without this, that hath necessarily adjoined to it a ground of all acceptance, we can never be regarded by God. Oh therefore think with thy self, The prayer of a justified person is only approved of, God hath first respect to Abel, and then to his Offering: You must not think by praying and hearing to get your persons accepted, but they must be first accepted, that your duties may; now this justification is of none but this regenerated person: Why should ye not hearken diligently to these things, for if all thy duties hitherto have not been accepted, thou art to begin anew, to lay a new foundation; and certainly it is the necessary duty that lieth upon many persons, though Christians, to raze the very foundation they have built all their hopes upon; they have trodden in a road, judge of acceptance with God according to the principles of Reason, and the light of Nature, but have not informed themselves out of Gods Word, for by that we must attain to those two great works of God, Justification and Sanctification; Justification to reconcile our Persons; Sanctification to make holy our Natures and spiritualize all our Duties; and if these two be not in us, God rejecteth all our Duties, as the Artificer in, his building doth some crooked stone that he cannot make straight.
Fourthly, therefore no outward Duty or Privilege is accepted without a new 1Creation, Because justification and this new Creature are inseparably united together, and cannot be one moment divided from each other, Rom. 8. There is no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ, (there is Justification:) Who walk not after the Flesh, but after the Spirit, (there is Sanctification:) Now seeing that justification is the ground of all acceptance both of our persons and duties, and this is alwayes concomitant with a new Creature; therefore without this, that hath necessarily adjoyned to it a ground of all acceptance, we can never be regarded by God. Oh therefore think with thy self, The prayer of a justified person is onely approved of, God hath first respect to Abel, and then to his Offering: You must not think by praying and hearing to get your persons accepted, but they must be first accepted, that your duties may; now this justification is of none but this regenerated person: Why should ye not hearken diligently to these things, for if all thy duties hitherto have not been accepted, thou art to begin anew, to lay a new foundation; and certainly it is the necessary duty that lyeth upon many persons, though Christians, to raze the very foundation they have built all their hopes upon; they have trodden in a road, judge of acceptance with God according to the principles of Reason, and the light of Nature, but have not informed themselves out of Gods Word, for by that we must attain to those two great works of God, Justification and Sanctification; Justification to reconcile our Persons; Sanctification to make holy our Natures and spiritualize all our Duties; and if these two be not in us, God rejecteth all our Duties, as the Artificer in, his building doth some crooked stone that he cannot make straight.