A30243:1962
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 76
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.
First, Custom and use in some kind of sin. Frequent custom doth at last breed an habituated delight, and becomes a second nature; so that men who have been in long Captivity and service to lusts, they willingly have their ears bored, and are never willing to leave that Service. We see daily sad experience of this truth. Men who through long continuance in sin, have now turned it into their nature, They say of that sin, as Christ of grace, One thing is needful; They add Drunkenness to Thirst, as Moses calls it, Deuteronomy 29. 19. That is, after they have committed sin, they are vehement and fervent for it again.
First, Custome and use in some kind of sinne. Frequent custome doth at last breed an habituated delight, and becomes a second nature; so that men who have been in long Captivity and service to lusts, they willingly have their eares boared, and are never willing to leave that Service. We see dayly sad experience of this truth. Men who through long continuance in sinne, have now turned it into their nature, They say of that sin, as Christ of grace, One thing is needfull; They add Drunkennesse to Thirst, as Moses calls it, Deuteronomie 29. 19. That is, after they have committed sinne, they are vehement and fervent for it again.
Secondly, A darling Sin may arise from the condition, or relation we are in. There may be some temptations suitable to the inward lusts of an heart, that we cannot leave such sins, unless we quite forsake such a condition, or calling. Judas his beloved sin was Covetousness; and his condition he was in, carrying ⟨p. 460⟩the Bag, that was a continual blast to blow up the fire of lusts; so if ambitious men get to the pinnacle of honour; if covetous men to places of profit and gain, here the Serpent in their breasts gets the warm beams of the Sun, there is a daily incentive to add many Cubits to the stature of their lusts; and its a very ill and malignant constellation, when a mans outward condition, and his peculiar sin meet together, he had great need to pray to be delivered from the mouth of such Lions.