A30243:1756
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 9 › Sermon 67
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.
Thirdly, This phrase of turning to God, and from sin, implieth thus much, That while we live in sin, we make sin our Lord and Master; and therefore follow 1that, turn up and down after that, as the Servant after his Master: but when we cast off these transgressions, then we follow the Lord our Master, and go after him; so that all men in the world are divided into those two ranks, either they are such as go after their lusts, turn after them, as the shadow after the body, or else such as cleave unto the Lord, and as the herb Heliotropium, turneth up and down after the Motion of the Sun, so do they in obedience and affections after the commandments of God. Now this service and obedience to the lusts of the flesh, is a tedious and toilsome life indeed, though to the corrupt heart it may seem otherwise: Come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, Matth. 11. 22. A man that turneth into the way of sin, is like a traveller that should turn into a way full of Quick-sands and Bogs, and dangerous Precipices, having also a sore and intolerable burden on his back, pressing him down with exquisite pain.
Thirdly, This phrase of turning to God, and from sin, implyeth thus much, That while we live in sinne, we make sinne our Lord and Master; and therefore follow 1that, turn up and down after that, as the Servant after his Master: but when we cast off these transgressions, then we follow the Lord our Master, and go after him; so that all men in the world are divided into those two ranks, either they are such as goe after their lusts, turn after them, as the shadow after the body, or else such as cleave unto the Lord, and as the herb Heliotropium, turneth up and down after the Motion of the Sun, so doe they in obedience and affections after the commandments of God. Now this service and obedience to the lusts of the flesh, is a tedious and toilsome life indeed, though to the corrupt heart it may seem otherwise: Come unto me all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, Matth. 11. 22. A man that turneth into the way of sin, is like a traveller that should turn into a way full of Quick-sands and Bogs, and dangerous Precipices, having also a sore and intollerable burden on his back, pressing him down with exquisite pain.