A30243:114
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.
Seventhly, Consider that the soul of man hath two kinds of acts or workings. The former are direct acts, such as go immediately to their object; as when by faith I 1take Christ and adhere to him; the latter are reflex acts, which are only in reasonable subjects, and this is when a man doth perceive and discern those direct acts in him, as when I perceive that I do thus adhere to Christ, that I do love God. Now Certainty or Assurance is properly in this latter way, when we know that 2we believe; and therefore this Assurance it is called by some Sensus fidei, the feeling or perceiving of Faith. Now you must know that this feeling or perceiving of Faith is from Gods Spirit as well as Faith it self; so that it is not a mere humane sense or discerning, which is subject to falsehoods and delusions, but is infallible, even as faith is; for as the Spirit of God cannot externally witness any thing that is false; so neither can it inwardly in the soul of a man persuade of that which is false, so that as a man knoweth by the help of Gods Spirit, His word to be the word of God, and is never fully confirmed till that come, so though a man may have probable hopes and conjectures of grace in his heart, yet he never comes to be settled, till the Spirit of God doth thus corroborate him.
Seventhly, Consider that the soul of man hath two kinds of acts or workings. The former are direct acts, such as go immediatly to their object; as when by faith I 1take Christ and adhere to him; the latter are reflex acts, which are only in reasonable subjects, and this is when a man doth perceive and discern those direct acts in him, as when I perceive that I do thus adhere to Christ, that I do love God. Now Certainty or Assurance is properly in this latter way, when we know that 2we believe; and therefore this Assurance it is called by some Sensus fidei, the feeling or perceiving of Faith. Now you must know that this feeling or perceiving of Faith is from Gods Spirit as well as Faith it self; so that it is not a meer humane sense or discerning, which is subject to falshoods and delusions, but is infallible, even as faith is; for as the Spirit of God cannot externally witness any thing that is false; so neither can it inwardly in the soul of a man perswade of that which is false, so that as a man knoweth by the help of Gods Spirit, His word to be the word of God, and is never fully confirmed till that come, so though a man may have probable hopes and conjectures of grace in his heart, yet he never comes to be setled, till the Spirit of God doth thus corroborate him.