A30243:1315
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 48
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.
For the understanding of this point, let us consider what the phrase implieth, Created to good works; and that comprehends,
First, An inclination and propensity to a godly life. For as God created all creatures with an inclination to their proper operations, thus this spiritual man is endued 1with a willing tendency unto those actions that are heavenly. Thus as the sparks fly upward, and the stone falls downward from an inward inclination of nature, so they are carried out to faith, repentance, holiness, from a free principle within. Aristotle defineth that to be the nature of every thing, which is the principle ⟨p. 297⟩of its motion, for its self sake, and not by accident: And thus natural motions differ from violent, which are from a principle without, and by accident. Oh its a matter worthy of all your consideration, to attend to the principle of your motions in holy things, whether it be natural or violent. You may read of Ahab's good works in some sense, he prayed, and humbled himself, but he was not created to them, because they were from a violent principle without, the judgements of God; not a natural principle within, which is a sanctified and renewed heart: Yea, if you look upon Judas, you may see in some respects also his good works: there was his contrition, his confession, and his satisfaction, but he was not created to these good works, because extracted by slavish horror of conscience, not sweetly inclined thereunto by faith in God, and love of him. There is a great difference between the nurses care of the child, and the mothers: The former doth it because hired, and betrusted with it, but the latter from an inward storgy, and maternal bowels: So then is it thus with thee? dost thou pray, hear, live in all Godliness, as one that is created thereunto? One who hath a free voluntary inclination? in which respect the law of God is said to be written in their in ward parts.
First, An inclination and propensity to a godly life. For as God created all creatures with an inclination to their proper operations, thus this spiritual man is endued