A30243:2016
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 78
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.
Secondly, Another cause is long custom in sinning. This makes a mans Conscience 1like Leviathans scales, as Job speaks of; this doth not only make a man dead in sin, but burieth him in the grave, and rolls a great stone over him: this makes a man like the fat beast prepared for the slaughter, and yet fills us for the present with all joy and content: These often say, There is no hope, We have lived thus long in the pleasures of our sin, and they are so habituated in us, that we cannot do otherwise. Hence experience tells us, that many men sin, and that grievously; yet they do not so much as think they are sinners, because custom hath taken away all feeling from them.
Secondly, Another cause is long custome in sinning. This makes a mans Conscience 1like Leviathans scales, as Job speaks of; this doth not onely make a man dead in sin, but burieth him in the grave, and rolls a great stone over him: this makes a man like the fat beast prepared for the slaughter, and yet fils us for the present with all joy and content: These often say, There is no hope, We have lived thus long in the pleasures of our sin, and they are so habituated in us, that we cannot do otherwise. Hence experience tels us, that many men sin, and that grievously; yet they do not so much as think they are sinners, because custome hath taken away all feeling from them.
- 12. Long custom in sinning
Thirdly, Prosperity and abundance of ease and plenty in the committing of their sins, doth also make men lift up themselves presumptuously against God: Thus God 1by Jeremiah, I spake unto thee in thy prosperity, but thou wouldst not hear: and Solomon observeth it, because judgement was not presently executed, Therefore the heart of man was set in him to do wickedly,