A30243:1386
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 51
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.
Fourthly, Its better to get Grace, then to be exercised in these Disputes, because many times head-Disputations are used for to make Parties and Schisms in the Church; 1To draw many Disciples after them, and so to stand a divided body from others. The Apostle, how careful was he to prevent schisms and divisions? therefore he daily pressed love, and to think the same thing, and to speak the same thing, commanding all things to be done in charity, and nothing through contention and vain glory. It would be a sad story, to tell you what rents the Leaders of any false Opinions have made, which could not be cured in some hundreds of years afterwards; and which is the greater wonder, while the Apostles were alive, who were infallible Judges, and could have determined any doubt of Religion, yet in their days weeds did come up in Christs Garden, and the envious one did sow tares amongst the good wheat.
- 1IV.
Fifthly, Therefore it is better to exercise our selves in Grace then in Parts, because ⟨p. 319⟩1a man may take a great deal of delight in his Opinions and Notions, and be as inordinately in love with them, as the Adulterer is with his unlawful object. The Scripture many times useth this expression, To go a whoring after the imaginations of their own hearts: When the false Prophets and seduced people committed any Idolatry, they took a great deal of pleasure and content in their imaginations and carnal reasonings, so that there may be contemplative fornication, as well as real. Men may fall into inordinate love with the conceits of their own brain, as unclean men with a beautiful face; or as Pygmalion, grow enamoured with his own face; so that a man may think he preacheth for God, liveth and dyeth for God, when all the while, its but for the apprehension of his own mind, which is like a Delilah to him: A fearful thing its thus to be deluded, but its a judgement foretold that shall befall those, who receive not the truth in the love of it, That they shall be delivered up to believe a lye,