A30243:1949
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 75
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, The sooner thou turnest to God, thou wilt prevent the more sin, and so the 1more shame and trouble of heart. Those that have gone far in the ways of wickedness, they have the greater falls, and so their broken bones put them into the more pains ere they can be healed. Oh what a deal of peace would Manasseh, and Mary Magdalen have enjoyed, if they had been converted in their younger years! So if Paul had been betimes drawn home unto God, he had not had all that trouble and grief of spirit for persecuting the Church of God. Those that are aged women, they say, have the sorer and more dangerous travails, if they had never any Children before: and thus they have the more difficult conversions, the greater anguish and pain of Conscience, who have lived long in sin, and committed great ones. Hence is that, Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth: and it is good to bear the yoke in the youth; so it is here, it is good to feel the bitterness of sin betimes; it is good in our younger years to feel how sad a thing it is to displease God; this advantage hath early conversion. So then, let young ones hearken to sermons, let them attend to what the Ministers of God exhort; for conversion doth not only belong to the old, but to the young; yea commonly conversion is sooner wrought upon the younger sort of people, for they have not resisted the grace of God so much, they have not provoked God to give them up to their own hearts lusts and desires, as many aged persons have.
Sixthly, The sooner thou turnest to God, thou wilt prevent the more sin, and so the 1more shame and trouble of heart. Those that have gone far in the waies of wickednesse, they have the greater falls, and so their broken bones put them into the more pains e're they can be healed. Oh what a deal of peace would Manasses, and Mary Magdalen have enjoyed, if they had been converted in their younger years! So if Paul had been betimes drawen home unto God, he had not had all that trouble and grief of spirit for persecuting the Church of God. Those that are aged women, they say, have the sorer and more dangerous travails, if they had never any Children before: and thus they have the more difficult conversions, the greater anguish and pain of Conscience, who have lived long in sin, and committed great ones. Hence is that, Remember thy Creator in the daies of thy youth: and it is good to bear the yoke in the youth; so it is here, it is good to feel the bitternesse of sin betimes; it is good in our younger years to feel how sad a thing it is to displease God; this advantage hath early conversion. So then, let young ones hearken to sermons, let them attend to what the Ministers of God exhort; for conversion doth not onely belong to the old, but to the young; yea commonly conversion is sooner wrought upon the younger sort of people, for they have not resisted the grace of God so much, they have not provoked God to give them up to their own hearts lusts and desires, as many aged persons have.