A30243:1194
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.
Again, This only is true peace, happiness and comfort: Thus the Apostle, As many as walk after the rule, peace on them. Where this new Creature is not, there is no true peace, no true joy▪ they may in the midst •f all their jollity, read many Texts of Scripture, which will be like the hand-writing in the wall, filling them with terror and horror. If then only wisdom, only riches, only joy be in this new Creature, how is it, that men seek not after it in the first place? why is it not the first thing that all people begin with?
Again, This onely is true peace, happinesse and comfort: Thus the Apostle, As many as walk after the rule, peace on them. Where this new Creature is not, there is no true peace, no true joy▪ they may in the midst •f all their jollity, read many Texts of Scripture, which will be like the hand-writing in the wall, filling them with terror and horror. If then onely wisdome, onely riches, onely joy be in this new Creature, how is it, that men seek not after it in the first place? why is it not the first thing that all people begin with?
Fourthly, As the necessity of it is considerable, so another quality observable, is, 1the exactness and strictness of it: For you heard that this new Creature doth not only make a man forsake his old sins, and so he is a new man then, but it new moldeth and stampeth all his lawful actions and comforts; it keeps a man exactly to his bounds, so that the water doth not over-flow the banks lest it get soil; he loveth, but not over-loveth; It sets the heart of a man like a Watch, to strike when, and no more than, it should. Hence the Apostle calls it, Walking exactly and circumspectly, Ephes. 5. 14. so that from this exactness, necessarily floweth a singularity, as to the common customs and ways of the world: you despise men for their strictness, for singularity; this argueth your ignorance of grace, for this new Creature necessarily makes a man singular; as to wicked and worldly men,