A30243:1215
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.
To Answer this, consider it is no new thing for many men to be such foolish 1master builders in matters of religion, as that all must be taken down again; there is nothing more ordinary then to have some crack in the foundations: our Saviour doth fully clear this, when he speaks of one who built upon the sand, the winds blew, and tempests arose, and then the fall of that house was great, Mat. 7. 26. Thus also the Apostle chargeth the Galatians, Have ye suffered so many things in vain, Gal. 2. So that it is very ordinary for a people to go on many years in a rode of religion; and in the practice of holy duties, yet they do all these things in vain: All must be undone and a better foundation laid. If thou hast built hay and stubble, the fire will consume it all at last: Do not therefore do in thy spiritual condition, as bankrupts use to do in their temporal, never care to look to their accounts, afraid to consider of their debts, but still hope to rub it out, till at last all be too late: So many a man hath inwards thoughts and fears that his estate is not right, that this will never hold when he comes to account, but he is unwilling to dwell in his thoughts upon these things.
To Answer this, consider it is no new thing for many men to be such foolish 1master builders in matters of religion, as that all must be taken down again; there is nothing more ordinary then to have some crack in the foundations: our Saviour doth fully clear this, when he speaks of one who built upon the sand, the winds blew, and tempests arose, and then the fall of that house was great, Mat. 7. 26. Thus also the Apostle chargeth the Galatians, Have ye suffered so many things in vain, Gal. 2. So that it is very ordinary for a people to go on many years in a rode of religion; and in the practice of holy duties, yet they do all these things in vain: All must be undone and a better foundation laid. If thou hast built hay and stuble, the fire will consume it all at last: Do not therefore do in thy spiritual condition, as bankrupts use to do in their temporal, never care to look to their accounts, afraid to consider of their debts, but still hope to rub it out, till at last all be too late: So many a man hath inwards thoughts and fears that his estate is not right, that this will never hold when he comes to account, but he is unwilling to dwel in his thoughts upon these things.