A30243:1195
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.
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, Matth. 5. What singular thing do ye? Do not even the Heathens and Publicans the same? so that although a vain proud singularity be a part of the old Creature, and a plain demonstration of pride and folly, yet a godly singularity is a fruit of this new Creature; he doth not such things, as wicked men do, as natural men do, as he himself once did; so that every man is bound to be singular in this sense, else he cannot be a new Creature.
Fourthly, As the necessity of it is considerable, so another quality observable, is, 1the exactnesse and strictnesse of it: For you heard that this new Creature doth not onely make a man forsake his old sins, and so he is a new man then, but it new moldeth and stampeth all his lawfull 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 exactnesse, necessarily floweth a singularity, as to the common customes and ways of the world: you despise men for their strictnesse, for singularity; this argueth your ignorance of grace, for this new Creature necessarily makes a man singular; as to wicked and worldly men,