A30243:1410
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.
Secondly, Grace within us cannot justify us, because the Scripture layeth that 1wholly on God and Christ. God the Fathers grace, as the efficient cause of it; and God the Sons merits, as the ground of it; and by faith we are to put it on as a garment: so that we are still in a passive sense said to be justified, and not in an active to justify our selves, unless in that ill sense as the Pharisee is said to justify himself. None doth so Divinely, and admirably prove this point by several arguments, as Paul in his Epistles doth, insomuch that one would wonder how any Popish writer can make Commentaries upon his Epistles, and not be convinced of their error. So that our happiness, and the ground of all our peace, lieth not in what we have done, but what we have received, and in what Christ hath done for us. This doctrine is like the honey Sampson found in the dead Lyon, in Christ crucified, which we are to instruct all burdened sinners in. Bellarmine comes off at last with his Tutissimum est, It is most safe to rest wholly upon Christ, not our righteousness. I know it is hard to call godliness grace, and not to think that it must be all in all; and how prone we are to leave the fountain, Christ, and to run to the Cisterns, our own graces, every mans heart can easily suggest. This stumbling-stone being removed out of the way.
Secondly, Grace within us cannot justifie us, because the Scripture layeth that 1wholly on God and Christ. God the Fathers grace, as the efficient cause of it; and God the Sons merits, as the ground of it; and by faith we are to put it on as a garment: so that we are still in a passive sense said to be justifyed, and not in an active to justifie our selves, unlesse in that ill sense as the Pharisee is said to justifie himself. None doth so Divinely, and admirably prove this point by several arguments, as Paul in his Epistles doth, insomuch that one would wonder how any Popish writer can make Commentaries upon his Epistles, and not be convinced of their errour. So that our happinesse, and the ground of all our peace, lyeth not in what we have done, but what we have received, and in what Christ hath done for us. This doctrine is like the hony Sampson found in the dead Lyon, in Christ crucified, which we are to instruct all burthened sinners in. Bellarmine comes off at last with his Tutissimum est, It is most safe to rest wholly upon Christ, not our righteousnesse. I know it is hard to call godlynesse grace, and not to think that it must be all in all; and how prone we are to leave the fountain, Christ, and to run to the Cisterns, our own graces, every mans heart can easily suggest. This stumbling-stone being removed out of the way.