A30243:1246
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 man comes short it may be of a new Creature, because the work of grace is not deep enough. He is an outward new creature, but not an inward new creature. That foolish builder our Saviour speaketh of, who lost all his pains and cost, miscarried in this, because he did not dig deep enough: Thy heart is throughly wounded ⟨p. 280⟩for sin, and slightly cured again: It hath not been a deep wound, or a sure cure again: so then as Planters of trees are careful about the root and builders wary about the foundation; so when thou beginnest to set upon a new course of life, remember that thou go low enough into thy soul, that it may take root downward as well as fruit upward. The heart is full of hardness and stoniness, and so thou canst not get into the bottom of it presently; the love of God, the fear of God rooted in the heart would make thee hold out a new man always.
4. This new man comes short it may be of a new Creature, because the work of grace is not deep enough. He is an outward new creature, but not an inward new creature. That foolish builder our Saviour speaketh of, who lost all his pains and cost, miscarried in this, because he did not dig deep enough: Thy heart is throughly wounded ⟨p. 280⟩for sin, and slightly cured again: It hath not been a deep wound, or a sure cure again: so then as Planters of trees are careful about the root and builders wary about the foundation; so when thou beginnest to set upon a new course of life, remember that thou goe low enough into thy soul, that it may take root downward as well as fruit upward. The heart is full of hardnesse and stoninesse, and so thou canst not get into the bottome of it presently; the love of God, the fear of God rooted in the heart would make thee hold out a new man alwayes.
I might now speak of other Counterfeits of this new Creature, As a man affecting new and strange opinions, he is very prone to judge the better of himself because of