A30243:1240
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 45
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.
4. This new name thou hast got by being a Christian, and a baptized person, cannot 1be a new Creature, for then every one who is baptized, and of the Orthodox Religion, should be saved; for every new Creature, whether Jew or Gentile, bond, or free, shall be saved; there is none that is a new Creature here, that shall not have new Robes of glory hereafter, but the Scripture doth terribly, yet plainly set down this position, that but few only of those who enjoy the outward privileges of the Church shall be saved. Many are called; and few are saved, Mat. 20. 16. it's a sentence, though full of terror, yet worthy to be written on your Pew doors, or your Chamber doors, yea rather upon your hearts with a Pen of Iron, to think that few of those who come in our assemblies and hear, and sit within those walls, shall yet have a Crown of glory upon their heads; who art thou then that boastest of thy Church-privileges, of thy Protestant Profession? Thou art no Atheist, no Papist, ⟨p. 278⟩but if no new Creature neither, heaven is not a place prepared for thee. The paucity and little number of those that shall be saved even of Christians, and baptized persons, should always make us tremble and quake. O Lord are we in the number of those few or not! But eight persons in the whole world were preserved in the Ark; but two persons of those many thousands that came out of Egypt, entered into Canaan. If the Scripture were not plain in this point, you might cry out, It was an hard speech, and not to be born. But heaven and earth shall sooner pass away, than one •ot or tittle of that sentence: say not then every thing that groweth in Gods garden is a flower, every thing in Christs field is good seed, every called man is an elected man, every baptized man a new Creature, for this is directly repugnant to Gods Word.
4. This new name thou hast got by being a Christian, and a baptized person, cannot 1be a new Creature, for then every one who is baptized, and of the Orthodox Religion, should be saved; for every new Creature, whether Jew or Gentile, bond, or free, shall be saved; there is none that is a new Creature here, that shall not have new Robes of glory hereafter, but the Scripture doth terribly, yet plainly set down this position, that but few onely of those who enjoy the outward priviledges of the Church shall be saved. Many are called; and few are saved,