A30243:129
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 1 › Sermon 5
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.
First, The Possibility of it is seen, in that the people of God have enjoyed it. When David doth so often call God his God and his Portion, acknowledging with joy and thankfulness that he had forgiven his sins, doth not this suppose a Certainty? When that man said, O Lord, I believe, Did he speak he knew not what? And Paul, how often doth he manifest such an Assurance! and lest it should be thought he had it by some special Revelation, he doth Rom. 8. infer this Assurance from those grounds, which are common to all the people of God, do not therefore think it impossible, saying, Who will go up to Heaven and bring a Revelation for me, that God is my God? for thou hast the same ways to obtain it, as the people of God have had heretofore.
First, The Possibility of it is seen, in that the people of God have enjoyed it. When David doth so often call God his God and his Portion, acknowledging with joy and thankfulnesse that he had forgiven his sins, doth not this suppose a Certainty? When that man said, O Lord, I believe, Did he speak he knew not what? And Paul, how often doth he manifest such an Assurance! and lest it should be thought he had it by some special Revelation, he doth Rom. 8. inferre this Assurance from those grounds, which are common to all the people of God, do not therefore think it impossible, saying, Who will go up to Heaven and bring a Revelation for me, that God is my God? for thou hast the same wayes to obtain it, as the people of God have had heretofore.
Again secondly, The Possibility of it is seen in that a man may be assured of his 1dogmatical Faith; That is, a man may be assured that he doth believe such Principles of Religion upon a divine ground; and if so, why not also that he loveth God and his children upon true Motives; as also that his Repentance hath all ⟨p. 24⟩true Ingredients into it. And indeed if a man could not tell whether he did believe upon supernatural grounds, he could not truly but upon a bold venture say, he did believe in God in deed, that there is a Church of God, or a Resurrection of our bodies.