A30243:1211
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 44
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.
2. Stick not at this to shame and condemn thy former life: For this is the only 1necessary qualification for thy admission into grace. Thou must come with a sacrifice of atonement if thou wilt be accepted: That is, Christs blood which is only shed for those that feel themselves lost. If we confess our sins, is often the condition expressed, for the Sceptre of Grace to be held out to us, Levit. 5. 5. 1 John 1. 9. And the Apostle Paul, If we would judge our selves, we should not be judged of the Lord, 1 Cor. 11. And David, He confesseth and bewaileth his folly, that God may be justified and cleared when he is judged, Psalm 51. God will receive a Publican, not a Pharisee. If thou givest glory to God, by judging thy own ways, clearing him, though he should damn thee, this is the most compendious way to obtain grace. Plutarch saith, Some heathens in their supplications to their gods, would not carry either Gold, or Iron, or a staff into the Temple with them, but lay all aside when they went to pray, to signify they did not trust in earthly wealth or greatness, but Gods goodness and power only. And thus it ought to be in our spiritual supplications to the true God, we must lay aside our own righteousness, and go to Christ, as the menstruous woman who had spent all she had upon Physicians, yet could not be cured: Oh therefore be so far from fearing this duty, that rather thou wilt forwardly offer thy self thereunto: say the way to get honour and praise with God, is to dishonour my self, and magnify him. His mercy in pardoning, his grace in forgiving, will be so much the more admirable, by how much unworthy and vile I am in my own eyes.
2. Stick not at this to shame and condemn thy former life: For this is the only 1necessary qualification for thy admssion into grace. Thou must come with a sacrifice of atonement if thou wilt be accepted: That is, Christs blood which is only shed for those that feel themselves lost. If we confesse our sins, is often the condition expressed, for the Scepter of Grace to be held out to us,