A30243:186
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 1 › Sermon 7
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 next Question shall be, What ought a man to do, who hath indeed the truth of Grace in him, but he knoweth it not? Though God hath wrought supernatural cures upon his soul, yet he doth not believe any such mercy is done for him. And as when a man hath Assurance of the truth of grace in his soul, there is also a complication of the Assurance of Election, Justification, Perseverance and Glorification; so when the soul is in darkness about the former, and hath no knowledge 1of that, it is also involved in ignorance about the other things. Now howsoever carnal men know not the sadness of such an estate, yet Davids Psalms make mention of the heaviness of such a condition, expressing it by all those similitudes which may make it to appear very horrid, He compareth it to broken bones, not one broken bone, but all his bones broken, What intolerable pain was that? Christ who wanted the light of Gods favour in his Agony, though no corporal bone was broken, yet was full of these broken bones.
The next Question shall be, What ought a man to do, who hath indeed the truth of Grace in him, but he knoweth it not? Though God hath wrought supernatural cures upon his soul, yet he doth not believe any such mercy is done for him. And as when a man hath Assurance of the truth of grace in his soul, there is also a complication of the Assurance of Election, Justification, Perseverance and Glorification; so when the soul is in darkness about the former, and hath no knowledge 1of that, it is also involved in ignorance about the other things. Now howsoever carnal men know not the sadness of such an estate, yet Davids Psalms make mention of the heaviness of such a condition, expressing it by all those similitudes which may make it to appear very horrid, He compareth it to broken bones, not one broken bone, but all his bones broken, What intolerable pain was that? Christ who wanted the light of Gods favour in his Agony, though no corporall bone was broken, yet was full of these broken bones.
- 1How sad a condition it is for a truly godly man to want the sense of Gods favour.