A30243:1782
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 68
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.
Fourthly, Those that have enjoyed the means of grace for a long season, and yet are briars and thorns: These give little hopes of conversion. The ground that 1hath often received rain, and brings forth nothing but weeds, is nigh unto cursing, Heb. 6. 7. Those that refused the Prophets, The dust of their feet was to be shaken off, in testimony against them, Mat. 10. 14. The word of God doeth most good, and hath the greatest effects, at its first coming to a place; as you may read in the several plantations of the Church at first, whereas the longer men live under it, the authority and majesty of the word is abated: Ye did for a ••ason rejoice in his light, as our Saviour told the Jews concerning John Baptist, John 15. 35. When God hath sent his Ministers and Prophets one after another, admonishing, instructing, and vehemently exhorting and charging you, to part with your lusts, saying, You cannot have them and Christ too; you cannot hold them an heaven too: Its a sad presage, (and yet thou hardenest the neck against all these reproofs) that Christ hath said of thee, as of that fig-tree, Never fruit grow more on thee. As there are ears of corn that are blasted, that never thrive, or come to any good; so there are many blasted sinners, impenitent and obstinate, which after many remedies applied, yet continue under the power of their disease: O then, consider how much this concerneth you! you may by your unfruitfulness and barrenness under the means of grace, make your conversion less possible, then that of Pagans and Heathens. Did not our Saviour say? Mat. 11. 21. That the Tyrians and Sodonians would have showed more effects of a conversion, then the Jews to whom there had been so much preaching, if God would have vouchsafed the Gospel to them? Certainly you are in a more dangerous estate, then any people that sit in darkness, and have no light: If so many Sermons, so many Sabbaths, so many Exhortations, have done no good? who can but think it is in vain to plant and water any more?
Fourthly, Those that have enjoyed the means of grace for a long season, and yet are bryars and thorns: These give little hopes of conversion. The ground that