A30243:1505
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.
First, Some have thought, and that both of the ancients and latter sort of 1Writers, that many of these Heathens have been saved; that men who in their generation did thus wonderfully, could not be damned. Though these Teachers are divided among themselves; some say, the Law of Nature saved them, as Christ doth Christians, so that they say, they were saved without Christ: Others say, Christ was immediately and extraordinarily revealed to them: but neither of these opinions have any ground in Scripture, which attributes no salvation but unto Christ, and the calling upon his name, which they did not.2
- 1Cautions.
- 2No ground in Scripture for Heathens Salvation.
Secondly, The other Error is, that natural men by improving their naturals, are thereby disposed and prepared for supernaturals; that a man by well using ⟨p. 350⟩of this natural light, God will give him supernatural light: But God hath made no such promise in the Scripture, and the falseness of it is declared in this. That we never read yet of any Heathen, who upon the good improvement of those natural abilities, had grace vouchsafed to him. I shall in the next place come to the Use of this point; And
Secondly, The other Error is, that natural men by improving their naturals, are thereby disposed and prepared for supernaturals; that a man by well using ⟨p. 350⟩of this natural light, God will give him supernatural light: But God hath made no such promise in the Scripture, and the falsness of it is declared in this. That we never read yet of any Heathen, who upon the good improvement of those natural abilities, had grace vouchsafed to him. I shall in the next place come to the Use of this point; And