A30243:1685
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 64
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.
2. This Covenant is dispensed in an external, and visible administration, by 1the Word and Sacraments. The preaching of the Gospel is the solemn promulgation of this Covenant, and invitation to enter therein: The Sacraments are seals to ratify and confirm this holy and sacred agreement. Now because all know not the work of Grace, to whom this Covenant is externally administered, hence ariseth that necessary distinction of an external Covenant, and an internal. The external Covenant is that whereby in an outward visible manner God doth own a people, and they externally profess their owning of him; but yet in ⟨p. 392⟩[…] ⟨p. 393⟩[…] ⟨p. 394⟩their hearts and souls they do not steadfastly cleave unto God, and faithfully keep this Covenant in the Conditions thereof. The internal, or inward Covenant, i• that whereby God doth in a Spiritual powerful manner take a people to him, working in their hearts all those gifts and graces promised in the Covenant, as regeneration, remission of sin, adoption, and the like: And in this sense only the truly godly are in the Covenant, and they are only Gods people, and he their God. This distinction of a Covenant into outward and inward, is not a distinction of a Genus into it's Species, so much as a distinction of a thing into the several administrations and dispensations of it. If Adam had stood firm in that state of integrity, there had not been this distinction of an external and internal Covenant: for all then would have been godly; and the outward dispensation of Gods love would have been to none, but those that were indeed his. But since the fall, even in Gods own garden, there are weeds as well as flowers, there is Chaff as well as Wheat in his Floor: and therefore some are partakers of the Covenant only externally, some both externally and internally also.
2. This Covenant is dispensed in an external, and visible administration, by 1