A30243:1591
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.
That where converting grace is vouchsafed to a man, it makes a great change, he is not the man he was once.1
- 1Observ.
We may say of every regenerate man, Such wicked men you were once, profane as others, negligent as others, senseless of sin and Gods wrath as others, but now this dark night is turned into a glorious day. The Prophet spake of some, Amos 6. 12. That they turned righteousness into hemlock and wormwood: That was a wicked turning, but this turneth hemlock into righteousness. The Prophet complained of Jerusalem, fallen from her mercies, That her gold was become dross, and her wine water, Lam. 4. but here is the contrary, dross is become gold, and water wine. Ego non sum ego, said an unclean person once converted, to the whore that solicited him to the same courses still: So do thou say to all thy former wickedness, catching hold on thee as Josephs mistress did on him; I am not I, I have not the same judgement, the same affections, the same desires that once I had, and therefore cannot embrace what I once so dearly loved. The exact handling of this point will be, when we come to those Texts that call it ⟨p. 373⟩conversion, or a change, or a turning to God; then the term from which, and the term to which, may more largely be considered: Only I shall now give you some qualities of this turning, and change from our evil ways, truly to stir you up immediately to the practise thereof. We see God hath wrought many changings and turnings of things in our days: O how happy, if in all these, we might see this spiritual change, men formerly profane, now holy; men heretofore guilty of notorious sins, now as exemplary and zealous of what is godly.
We may say of every regenerate man, Such wicked men you were once, prophane as others, negligent as others, senseless of sin and Gods wrath as others, but now this dark night is turned into a glorious day. The Prophet spake of some,