A30243:1763
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.
The true Answer therefore lieth in this; That the former kind of places of our duty and obligation, what we ought to do; They are not a measure of our power what we can do. When the Prophet saith, Turn ye, turn ye; He doth not here declare what we are able to do, but what we ought to do; and yet this is not in vain, because by this we are convinced of our impotency, and are humbled under our infirmity; and withal God makes this a practical command to turn us: Even as that word at first, Let there be light; or that of Christ to Lazarus, Lazarus come forth; and the latter kind of places they argue the work of Conversion to be wholly of God, in which we are subjects receiving; not agents co-working. This is to be ⟨p. 412⟩understood in respect of the initial working of Grace; for this phrase, Turn ye, doth also imply that we act and work; being first acted and wrought upon by God; Actiag•mus, & hoc bene agimus, quod a bono agamur. So that to speak properly, turning to God, or conversion, is not so much that work of grace infused in us, which we receive, as Adam had the breath of life breathed into him; but its the actual motion and turning of the soul, which floweth from the fo•m••: So that this is rectus secundus, the other is actus primus, as they say. Hence a man is not said to turn to God, because he hath the habits and principles of grace, but because they are actuated, and by them the soul doth move to God, as is more largely to be showed. Thus then you see how those places are consistent together.
The true Answer therefore lyeth in this; That the former kind of places of our duty and obligation, what we ought to doe; They are not a measure of our power what we can do. When the Prophet saith, Turn ye, turn ye; He doth not here declare what we are able to do, but what we ought to do; and yet this is not in vain, because by this we are convinced of our impotency, and are humbled under our infirmity; and withall God makes this a practical command to turn us: Even as that word at first, Let there be light; or that of Christ to Luzarus, Lazarus come forth; and the latter kind of places they argue the work of Conversion to be wholly of God, in which we are subjects receiving; not agents co-working. This is to be ⟨p. 412⟩