A30243:1711
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.
Sixthly, If thou hast no comfort from sanctifying grace, then make the more of justifying grace. God many times hides those works of his in us from our own eyes, 1that so we may the more esteem his grace without us. The hungry will prize the Honey-comb, and the sick the Physician. Those that sit in darkness, they long for light. Thus David, when he was in many sad and spiritual exercises, gets into this Ark, in the midst of those waters that did over-flow. There is a time when God will put a christian to the life of faith, and make dependence and adherence the greatest honour a Christian can bring to him; and this is most eminently seen, when to his own sense and feeling he is a barren Wilderness; the sense and discovery of grace in us makes much indeed for our comfort; but dependence on the promise and adherence to it, even while we are ready to sink and to be damned, is the greatest honour to God.
Sixtly, If thou hast no comfort from sanctifying grace, then make the more of justifying grace. God many times hides those works of his in us from our own eyes, 1that so we may the more esteem his grace without us. The hungry will prize the Honey-comb, and the sick the Physician. Those that sit in darknesse, they long for light. Thus David, when he was in many sad and spirituall exercises, gets into this Ark, in the midst of those waters that did over-flow. There is a time when God wil put a christian to the life of faith, and make dependance and adherence the greatest honour a Christian can bring to him; and this is most eminently seen, when to his own sense and feeling he is a barren Wildernesse; the sense and discovery of grace in us makes much indeed for our comfort; but dependance on the promise and adherence to it, even while we are ready to sink and to be damned, is the greatest honour to God.
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Seventhly, Consider this also, that as the heart is very deceitful in a presumptuous man, flattering him upon false grounds to believe in God; so its as deceitful in a