A30243:1188
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 43
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.
In the next place let us consider the qualities and properties of this new Creature; 1and first the excellency and perfection of it is very observable, it being a participation of the divine Nature, as Peter stiles it, 2 Pet. 1. 4. and hereby we are like not Angels but God himself. The Schoolmen do ordinarily determine, that grace is more noble and perfect than any Creature: neither the Sun, or the Heavens, or any Creature in the World is comparable to it; for they have only a natural perfection, this a moral: Yea grace in the soul, they say, is more excellent and noble than the soul it self; and if the soul of a man be more worth than a thousand worlds, what ⟨p. 267⟩is grace in that soul worth; and the reason why grace is a more noble thing than any other Creature, is, as Austin saith well: In illis tantum sunt opera a Des, in hâc est imago dei; look upon the glorious Sun, in it is only the work of God; but look upon grace, and in it is the Image of God; so that as we say, Non-potest aliquid esse melius Deo, Nothing can be better than God, so neither can any thing be better than grace the image of God. If therefore this be true, that this now creature is more perfect than any other Creature, no marvel if the wise man say, Riches and Pearls are not to be compared to it; And although this new Creature be an accident, and the soul a substance, and so in modo essendi, in the manner of being, it is more imperfect than the soul; yet because it's an accident that floweth not from the soul, as an effect from the cause, but is caused by an efficient of a more eminent nature, therefore it is more noble than the soul it self. As you see the light, though it be an accident, yet is more glorious than the air in which it is, because it cometh from the Sun a more glorious body than the air: so that the measure of every things perfection, is the near or remoter participation of God, and this new Creature bringeth a man to the nearest participation of God of any Creature. We are not like God in being Rich, Great, Noble, Honoured, but in being holy; and the perfection and nobleness of this Creature is herein unquestion ably seen; because the promise of salvation and eternal life is made only to this. An Angel hath not eternal glory because he is an Angel made of such a glorious nature, but because he is holy.