A30243:1364
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 7 › Sermon 50
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.
If thou hast bottomed thy self upon any thing but Christ, thou art not a pillar in the temple of the Lord, which cannot be removed, as is promised to the godly Revel. 3. 12.
2. Grace establisheth the heart, by fixing it to one object, so that the main stream 1and current of his heart runneth that way: Its the great corruption in our natures, that we would serve two Masters, God and the Creature: we are divided between these two, and sometimes God and Religion hath our heart, and sometimes the world and earthly comforts have our hearts: Now grace comes and fixeth the heart upon God; whereas before the scales were even, or rather that towards the world did weigh down, now grace weigheth heaviest: This the Scripture calls halting between two, and the Apostle James [Greek or Hebrew] a double minded man, Jam. 1. or a man with two souls, he is even sorry he hath not a soul for God, and a soul for the world also: But this is a notable effect of grace, to make the heart cleave to the Lord; as the Scripture often calls it, even as glue makes things to adhere to one another, so that they become one. A man of Disputes and Notions merely in Religion, is like a ship tossed in the sea, without Pilot or Anchor; whereas a man ballasted with Grace, and anchored on Christ, is not in danger of shipwreck: Oh then let not thy soul be like a Meteor, tossed up and down, but like a fixed Star in its Orb; choose Christ for thy portion so as to leave the world, take up Davids disposition, My heart is fixed, my heart is fixed: Hence the godly soul is said to be married unto Christ, because it leaveth all other objects, and chooseth him only.
2. Grace establisheth the heart, by fixing it to one object, so that the main stream 1