A30243:1499
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 56
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.
3. This Law is declared by an acknowledgement of a God, and the solemn worshipping 1of him. Their Polytheism or multitude of gods, though it discovereth horrible blindness and ignorance upon them, yet withal it argueth, a sense of Deity. The Romans had a [Greek or Hebrew], a Temple for all gods, thinking themselves herein Religious, that they did not refuse the Religion of any nation: Their Temples, their Altars, their Sacrifices, their Reverence to their Priests, the excessive charge and cost they were at in keeping up their Religious Worship, though they bespake miserable madness and confusion upon their spirits; yet they also demonstrate innate apprehensions about a God, and that Divine homage we owe to him. And as for some, who were called Atheists, its thought therefore they had that brand on them, not that they were against a God, but because they derided the multitude, and the superstitious observations of the gods then worshipped. Its plain, Seneca thought the Romans guilty of much ridiculousness in their Divine Worship, and wrote a Book about it, as Austin saith, which is lost; and although he thus was convinced of their vanity, yet he diligently performed that external Worship, Tanquam legibus jussam, non Diis gratam; As a thing commanded by the Laws and Customs of men, not at all acceptable to the gods. As they were frequent thus in Adoration, so they performed it after a grave and solemn manner; witness that cry of the Priests, Hoc age, mind this only: and certainly the reverence, attention and diligence of Heathens to their Idols, will condemn the sluggishness, dullness and drowsy irreverence, which Christians show to the true God, in their Worship of him.
3. This Law is declared by an acknowledgement of a God, and the solemn worshipping 1of him. Their Polytheism or multitude of gods, though it discovereth horrible blindeness and ignorance upon them, yet withal it argueth, a sense of Deity. The Romans had a 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, a Temple for all gods, thinking themselves herein Religious, that they did not refuse the Religion of any nation: Their Temples, their Altars, their Sacrifices, their Reverence to their Priests, the excessive charge and cost they were at in keeping up their Religious Worship, though they bespake miserable madness and confusion upon their spirits; yet they also demonstrate innate apprehensions about a God, and that Divine homage we owe to him. And as for some, who were called Atheists, its thought therefore they had that brand on them, not that they were against a God, but because they derided the multitude, and the superstitious observations of the gods then worshipped. Its plain, Seneca thought the Romans guilty of much ridiculousness in their Divine Worship, and wrote a Book about it, as Austin saith, which is lost; and although he thus was convinced of their vanity, yet he diligently performed that external Worship, Tanquam legibus jussam, non Diis gratam; As a thing commanded by the Laws and Customs of men, not at all acceptable to the gods. As they were frequent thus in Adoration, so they performed it after a grave and solemn maner; witness that cry of the Priests, Hoc age, minde this onely: and certainly the reverence, attention and diligence of Heathens to their Idols, will condemn the sluggishness, dulness and drowsie irreverence, which Christians shew to the true God, in their Worship of him.