A30243:154
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 1 › Sermon 6
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.
IN the next place we are to consider, What are the Characteristical Differences between Assurance and Presumption? You have heard it to be the greatest delusion and madness that can be, to have a false persuasion of our estate, as if sound and godly, when its the contrary; and yet the greatest part of Christians are delivered up to such a carnal confidence, and are like that mad Athenian who thought all the Ships on the Sea were his. How many are there, who when they hear the exact Discoveries that are made of Grace, whereby they may evidently conclude, That they are for the present shut out of this Kingdom, do yet bless themselves, as if all were well with them! It is therefore worth the while to ransack such false Evidences, to discover between Dross and Gold, Honey and Gall, what is of the Flesh and what is of the Spirit.
IN the next place we are to consider, What are the Characteristical Differences between Assurance and Presumption? You have heard it to be the greatest delusion and madness that can be, to have a false perswasion of our estate, as if sound and godly, when its the contrary; and yet the greatest part of Christians are delivered up to such a carnal confidence, and are like that mad Athenian who thought all the Ships on the Sea were his. How many are there, who when they hear the exact Discoveries that are made of Grace, whereby they may evidently conclude, That they are for the present shut out of this Kingdom, do yet blesse themselves, as if all were well with them! It is therefore worth the while to ransack such false Evidences, to discover between Drosse and Gold, Honey and Gall, what is of the Flesh and what is of the Spirit.
In the first place, We may find a vast Difference in the efficient cause or principle 1that is procreant of the one and the other. And although causes are like the root under the ground, not so visible, yet they make much to the differencing of things. Assurance is a Fruit, whose Root is in Heaven, the Spirit of God in a two-fold act, Enlightening or Revealing, and Adopting or Corroborating the heart with Filial Evangelical Affections; but carnal presumption is a rush that groweth in the puddled mire of our own hearts; There being these internal causes that give life and breath to it.