A30243:1406
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 52
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.
2. There is Passive Grace, and that two fold, either for to be accepted of God, to be in Grace and favour with him, as the phrase is often, to find grace in a mans eyes. And thus the Virgin Mary is saluted, [Greek or Hebrew], Greatly favoured and beloved, not full of inherent Grace, as the popish writers grossly pervert this place. Or secondly and lastly, Grace is used for those holy qualities infused into the soul, and that heavenly help God vouchsafeth to us in our way to heaven. Thus faith is a Grace, repentance is a Grace, zeal is a Grace, &c. The Papist takes the word Grace in this sense altogether; but we say, this is not the most noble use of ⟨p. 323⟩the word; and the Grace of the Gospel so often magnified, is not any thing within us, but Gods favour and love without us: Yet we deny not, but those holy qualities within us are called grace sometimes in the Scripture. Indeed there are Divers too rigid, who contend that the word Grace, when it relates towards a heavenly sense, is always taken for the favour of God, and that it never signifieth godliness which is in us, or done by us. But there are some places, though not many, wherein is clearly demonstrated this use of the word as it beto kens something inhering, and abiding in us, as 2 Pet. 2. ult. Grow in grace, and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. To grow in grace musts needs be understood of those holy gifts of Gods Spirit in us, which are daily to be improved: so Sing with grace in your hearts, Col. 3. 16. And again, Let your speech administer grace to the hearers, Col. 4. 6. And if it be acknowledged by all, that the common gifts of Gods Spirit, such as prophesying, working of miracles, yea, and offices in the Church, are called [Greek or Hebrew], and [Greek or Hebrew], why should it be thought hard those sanctifying gifts may be also named Graces? And in this sense Grace is taken in this Text: for that holy work of God upon the heart, whereby he doth establish and confirm it in godly ways. From this sense we observe, That there is a work of God upon a mans heart, which is called Grace.1