A30243:1585
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 8 › Sermon 60
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.
Fourthly, God will have some of the worst of men sometimes converted, that the Ministers of God, who are sometimes cast upon such a people, might not sow without 1hope, nor preach without hope: Even a wilderness may become a pleasant river, even a Mary Magdalene, a Publican, may be converted by preaching; What then may not the Ministers of God expect? though their soul (as David saith) lieth down among Lyons: We may not always say, Woe be to us, because we live in the tents of Kedar, for God may make that like Jerusalem. A place where nothing but briars and thorns came up, may be made a pleasant garden: Christ told his Disciples, He sent them like sheep amongst wolves, Mat. 10. 16. and yet these sheep made many wolves sheep like themselves: Though therefore we catch nothing, when we cast our nets; yea, though we catch scorpions instead of fishes, yet these scorpions may be made fishes: With God all things are possible, saith our Saviour, Mat. 19. 26. speaking of this very thing, to convert men, which is to make a Camel go through the eye of a needle: Though therefore humane reason may tell a man, there is no success to be expected, no good to be done, because a people so and so vicious; yet we must not regard the dead womb, but the power of God: Its he that opens the barren womb, and makes those that were fruitless to bring forth.
Fourthly, God will have some of the worst of men sometimes converted, that the Ministers of God, who are sometimes cast upon such a people, might not sow without 1hope, nor preach without hope: Even a wilderness may become a pleasant river, even a Mary Magdalene, a Publican, may be converted by preaching; What then may not the Ministers of God expect? though their soul (as David saith) lyeth down among Lyons: We may not always say, Wo be to us, because we live in the tents of Kedar, for God may make that like Jerusalem. A place where nothing but bryars and thorns came up, may be made a pleasant garden: Christ told his Disciples, He sent them like sheep amongst wolves, Mat. 10. 16. and yet these sheep made many wolves sheep like themselves: Though therefore we catch nothing, when we cast our nets; yea, though we catch scorpions instead of fishes, yet these scorpions may be made fishes: With God all things are possible, saith our Savior,