A30243:1115
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.
Sixthly, This new Creature is looked after, rather than any outward duty, Because 1in this true Christianism doth consist. A man is not really and properly a Christian, because Baptized, because he professeth Christ, and worshippeth him, but because he hath this new Creature in him, and this is the scope of Paul in the Text: So that as in the time of the Old Testament, true Judaism, or the true being ⟨p. 249⟩of a Jew did not consist in being outwardly Circumcised, but it was in that of the heart, and he was a Jew which was so inwardly, Romans 2. Thus he is a Christian, not who is outwardly baptized, but who is inwardly anointed with the graces of Christ; for to be a Christian is to be an anointed one; and then of this inward Jew see what the Apostle saith, Whose praise is of God, not of men. It's God that is a Father of spirits, that looks to the hearts of men, that praiseth this Jew, this Christian. The denomination of every thing is from its chief and better part. We call a man reasonable, because of his soul the chief part of him; so a man is called a Christian, not so much because he prayeth, heareth, cometh to Church, which is but like the body; but because these are done by a renewed nature within, which is like the soul. O then know, as every Profession hath its Art, its Skill, its Mystery, which a stranger hath not; so hath Christianity; there is a Mystery of praying, a Mystery of hearing, which the natural man understandeth not.
Sixtly, This new Creature is looked after, rather than any outward duty, Because 1in this true Christianism doth consist. A man is not really and properly a Christian, because Baptixed, because he professeth Christ, and worshippeth him, but because he hath this new Creature in him, and this is the scope of Paul in the Text: So that as in the time of the Old Testament, true Judaism, or the true being ⟨p. 249⟩of a Jew did not consist in being outwardly Circumcised, but it was in that of the heart, and he was a Jew which was so inwardly,