A30243:1224
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.
A Fourth Objection, or Obstruction against this New Creature, Is the strictness and singular exactness of it. Not only gross sins to be cast away, but even all lawful affections to be moderated, and dieted: They must not do as the world, not live as the world: this is to put themselves into a misery, as he said, Qui medicè vivit, miser vivit, because he must be so temperate, and abstemious in those things to which his appetite carrieth him. Now this cavil is wholly unreasonable: for
A Fourth Objection, or Obstruction against this New Creature, Is the strictness and singular exactness of it. Not onely gross sins to be cast away, but even all lawful affections to be moderated, and dieted: They must not do as the world, not live as the world: this is to put themselves into a misery, as he said, Qui medicè vivit, misere vivit, because he must be so temperate, and abstemious in those things to which his appetite carrieth him. Now this cavill is wholly unreasonable: for
First, Thy very Christianity, and the profession of it, carrieth thee not to do as men of the world doth. So that thou must either lay aside thy christianity, or else be 1exact in thy life, and singular to the manners of the world. The Church of God is compared to a woman clothed with the Sun, and the moon under her feet, Revel. 12. 7. Doth not the Apostle exhort us, Not to be fashioned unto the world, Rom. 12. 1. We are not to have their fashion upon us: And why are we called a Church, but because we are called out of the world, and so have not our conversation according to the principles thereof? And the Apostle James calls it Pure religion, and undefiled, to keep our selves unspotted from the World, James 1. 17. If therefore drunkenness, lusts, pride, earthliness, immoderate affections to these things below, be things of the world, thou art no more to conform to them, then light to darkness; and howsoever the world accounts those men of the best fashion, who are rich, great, and honoured, yet the Scripture saith, they are of the best fashion, who are not fashioned to the manners of the world: by this argument thou shouldest still lie in thy Paganism, and Heathenism; For why shouldst thou come out of the world in respect of thy faith, and not also in respect of thy life? Thou wouldest have a better faith then infidels, Why not also a better life? Answer that, if thou canst, God hath not only called us to embrace his Doctrine, but unto holiness.