A30243:1270
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 6 › Sermon 46
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.
Secondly, That it is a woeful thing to be the workmanship of God by Natural creation, and not his workmanship by gracious Renovation. It had been better for thee never to have been born, never to have been Gods creature in the first making, if thou art not his creature in the second making. Thus our Saviour said of Judas, It had been better for him he had never been born, Mark 14. 21. Some Scholastical ⟨p. 286⟩heads have thought the very natural being of a man, to be so great a good, as that in reason a man would choose rather to be damned, then not to be at all: And therefore they expound that speech of our Saviours concerning Judas, to be true only in regard of the sensitive part of a man, but not his rational. But this cannot hold: for
Secondly, That it is a wofull thing to be the workmanship of God by Naturall creation, and not his workmanship by gracious Renovation. It had been better for thee never to have been born, never to have been Gods creature in the first making, if thou art not his creature in the second making. Thus our Saviour said of Judas, It had been better for him he had never been born, Mark 14. 21. Some Scholastical ⟨p. 286⟩heads have thought the very natural being of a man, to be so great a good, as that in reason a man would chuse rather to be damned, then not to be at all: And therefore they expound that speech of our Saviours concerning Judas, to be true only in regard of the sensitive part of a man, but not his rational. But this cannot hold: for
1. Damnation is the inflicting of an infinite evil upon a man, so far as he is capable of it, and the depriving him of an infinite good. Now to be, or to have a 1