A30243:1389
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.
Fifthly, In Knowledge and Parts there is not a true satisfying, and filling of the 1heart with spiritual content; but Grace only brings Christ into the heart, and makes God our portion and inheritance, in having of whom there is only happiness. He that drinks of me, saith Christ, shall never thirst more. John 4. 14. Eating and drinking of Christ, is more then to dispute about him, to make controversies in Religion about him: Its by saving Grace to be incorporated into him, and to receive Vivifical influence from him. Solomon doth not only discover vanity in riches, and temporal advantages, that they give no true content to the soul, but also in knowledge and learning, that hath a greater vexation with it; therefore he concludes, Of making Books there is no end: The sum or perfection of all is, Fear God, and keep his Commandments, Eccles. 12. 13. Of Controversies and Disputes there is no end, there comes jars and contentions endless about them, but the sum of all is, to get the fear of God in our hearts, and to keep our selves unspotted from the sins of the world: This hath made even some Papists who have employed their whole time in Controversial Divinity, to cry out of it as an heavy burden, thinking they have lost the sweetness of Religion thereby: As Suarez, who wrote so many Tomes of Disputes; yet said, He prized that time which was set apart for the searching and examination of his Conscience, in relation towards God, above all the other time he spent. It was a witty allusion, of Isidorus Pelusiota, As the Israelites, who did gather Manna, were to go out of the Camp where war was, for the Manna did not fall within the Camp; so those that would gather the Manna and Sweetness of Religion, must go out of the Camp, where spiritual war is, by Religious Disputes. As in eating of the Paschal Lambs, they took the flesh, and feasted on that, but threw away the bones; so thou art to take that in Religion, which will feed and nourish thy soul, but cast away hard, unprofitable Controversies.
Fifthly, In Knowledge and Parts there is not a true satisfying, and filling of the 1heart with spiritual content; but Grace onely brings Christ into the heart, and makes God our portion and inheritance, in having of whom there is onely happiness. He that drinks of me, saith Christ, shall never thirst more.