A30243:1615
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 61
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.
Secondly, To be washed, is required godly sorrow, and morning for sin. David washed his Bed with tears, and so he did his soul also. Not that our tears or sorrow 1can wash away the guilt of sin. No, there can be no remission without blood, Heb 9. 22. and the blood of Christ; but they may in some sense wash the filth and defilements of sin away. Therefore there is Gods washing, which the Scripture speaks much of, and that is the remission of the guilt of sin; and there is our washing, which is the godly, sorrow and mourning for the iniquities we have committed: so then if thou wouldst be a man washed from thy sinful pollutions, consider, That thy head must be like a fountain of tears, thy eyes must be […] the Pool of Bethesda in this sense, that thy filthiness may be washed away. ⟨p. 379⟩How then canst thou persuade thy self, that thou hast received this privilege, when thy heart was never melted for thy sins: Godly sorrow is wholly a strange thing to thee, thou dost not know what it means. Alas! those sudden exclamations, The Lord forgive me, God pardon me, I should not have said so, or done so: This is not the godly sorrow commanded in the Scripture; why then dost thou lie with thy filth and unclean abominations upon thee? why dost thou not mourn and lament over thy wretched condition? What hast thou tears for the loss of wife, children, goods and estate, but none for the loss of God? Tears in thy eyes are better Jewels than those on thy ears.
Secondly, To be washed, is required godly sorrow, and morning for sinne. David washed his Bed with tears, and so he did his soul also. Not that our tears or sorrow 1can wash away the guilt of sin. No, there can be no remission without bloud, Heb 9. 22. and the bloud of Christ; but they may in some sense wash the filth and defilements of sinne away. Therefore there is Gods washing, which the Scripture speaks much of, and that is the remission of the guilt of sinne; and there is our washing, which is the godly, sorrow and mourning for the iniquities we have committed: so then if thou wouldst be a man washed from thy sinfull pollutions, consider, That thy head must be like a fountain of tears, thy eyes must be 〈…〉 the Pool of Bethesda in this sense, that thy filthinesse may be washed away.