A30243:1484
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 55
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.
but when I know they are sins, when I see as clear as the Sun, that they are iniquities forbidden by the Law of Nature, then how presumptuously ⟨p. 344⟩wicked must I needs be? Thou therefore who dost constantly walk in ungodly, profane courses, thou art a shame and reproach to heaven and earth; God from heaven, and God by all the Creatures doth condemn thee herein. This stupidity of Conscience the Scriptures calls [Greek or Hebrew], which is, when men through much labour and manual exercise have brought such a callousness and senselessness upon the palms of their hands, that they feel no pain at all. Thus men by frequent repressions of the beams of this light, do at last become altogether stupid; as the Dogs that lie by the Smiths Forge, through custom, fear not those sparks of fire that fly about them.
but when I know they are sinnes, when I see as clear as the Sun, that they are iniquities forbidden by the Law of Nature, then how presumptuously ⟨p. 344⟩wicked must I needs be? Thou therefore who dost constantly walk in ungodly, prophane courses, thou art a shame and reproach to heaven and earth; God from heaven, and God by all the Creatures doth condemn thee herein. This stupidity of Conscience the Scriptures calls 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, which is, when men through much labour and manuall exercise have brought such a callousnesse and senselesnesse upon the palmes of their hands, that they feel no pain at all. Thus men by frequent repressions of the beams of this light, doe at last become altogether stupid; as the Dogs that lie by the Smiths Forge, through custome, fear not those sparks of fire that flye about them.
We may conclude, A fifth cause of the suffocating of these natural Dictates to be 1a just judgement of God upon men, because of the abuse of Natural light: when men have not lived as they have known, nor walked as they have known, God as a just judge hath delivered them up to their own unnatural lusts, which hath been more grievous than to be delivered up to Lions and Bears, and to be torn in pieces by them. This is evidently set down,