A30243:1704
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 65
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.
A second doubt therefore may be, what a true godly man, who is indeed sanctified, should do, when he finds no evidences of his sanctification. All 1the Sermons he heareth preached about it, put him into fear and tremblings of heart: for alas! he goeth home, and looketh in his soul, compareth himself and the symptoms and properties of sanctification together, and O the disproportion he presently discovers! Insomuch that he hath little joy in himself, and none knoweth but his own soul, what sad temptations, and heavy anxieties of spirit he lieth under.
A second doubt therefore may be, what a true godly man, who is indeed sanctified, should doe, when he findes no evidences of his sanctification. All 1the Sermons he heareth preached about it, put him into fear and tremblings of heart: for alas! he goeth home, and looketh in his soul, compareth himself and the symptomes and properties of sanctification together, and O the disproportion he presently discovers! Insomuch that he hath little joy in himself, and none knoweth but his own soul, what sad temptations, and heavy anxieties of spirit he lyeth under.
- 1II. What a truly sanctified man should do when he finds noevidences of sanctification.II. What a truely sanctified man should doe when he findes noevidences of sanctification.
To Answer this: First, it cannot be denied, but that even a sanctified person 1may be in great darkness, and heavy blackness of soul, that he cannot but judge himself for the present to be a Reprobate and a Cast away; to be an hypocrite, and all that he had done, in hypocrisy. David sometimes casteth forth despairing words in his Psalms about his condition, as if he had no hopes of God: Heman the Psalmist complains of the terrors of God, that made him even distracted thereby,