A30243:1334
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 49
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.
Good works (you have heard) are the inseparable and necessary fruit of this 1New creature. It hath also been informed you, what a good work is. I shall at this time lay down some distinctions, or necessary Axioms to clear this Doctrine about Good works, and so proceed to application.
GOod works (you have heard) are the inseparable and necessary fruit of this 1New creature. It hath also been informed you, what a good work is. I shall at this time lay down some distinctions, or necessary Axioms to clear this Doctrine about Good works, and so proceed to application.
- 1Divers explanatory rules to be considered of about good works. 1. The Scripture speaks sometimes in dispraise of them.
And first, This is worth your observation, That the Scripture speaketh sometimes in praise and worth of them, sometimes again by way of diminution, and debasing of them. When good works are compared with the righteousness of Christ, or have relation to justification, then they are rejected as unable for any such use. Thus the Prophet saith, Our righteousness is like a menstruous cloth, Isa. 30. 22. How loathsome is that? and so are our holy duties if God should enter into judgement with us. Justitia nostra est indulgentia tua Domine, O Lord, our righteousness is thy indulgence: Our justification consists in pardon; therefore we have no perfection to justify us, but imperfection to be forgiven us. Thus the Apostle also, He doth account (and that is an act of judgement and deliberation) all things but dung and dross in comparison of the righteousness by faith in Christ, Phil. 3. 8. So then when the best works we do are considered in the Court of justification, there they are damnable, and have so much dross in them, that God doth reject them as insufficient. They are not good, but bad works in that sense. Therefore a man in justification is looked upon as a sinner, without a righteousness answering the Law, though at that time also he doth repent and believe. But then at other times the Scripture speaks of good works in respect of sanctification, and as they relate to the glory of God, and are an ornament to our holy profession. And in this sense the word of God doth often commend them, and exhort to them. So that if thou hast got so much skill as to know in what sense the Scripture debaseth them, and in what sense it commends them, bless God for that knowledge, and look upon it as a star to guide thee. The Apostle in this Chapter, attributing our whole salvation to grace, lest he should be thought therefore to exclude good works, and it were all one whether we were profane or godly, he addeth, That we are created to good works. Take heed of Popery to make thy good works a ground of justification; take heed of Antinomianism, to deny the presence of them.