A30243:2026
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 79
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.
JOEL 2. 12, 13. Therefore also now saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping and mourning: And rent your hearts, and not your garments, &c.
The former part of the Chapter is very elegant and copious in describing a day of darkness, of thick darkness; that is, a day of Gods judgements, and his fierce anger. The Prophet is very Rhetorical and Metaphorical, in setting this judgement before their eyes. Some understand these Verses conjoined together, of the Army of the Assyrians, or some other potent Enemy, that God would raise against the Israelites: But Piscator from Verse 25. doth probably gather, that this whole destruction in several Verses, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. is not to be applied to any Army of men and horses, but to that numerous company of Vermin, Locusts, Caterpillars and Cankerworms, that God sent among them to devour their fruit and corn; which the Prophet calls verse 25. Gods great Army; and indeed the Prophets phrase seemeth to conclude this; for saith he of this Army, verse 4. The appearance of them, is as the appearance of horsemen, and like the noise of chariots upon the mountains shall they leap: Thus God many times useth the vilest and most loathsome creatures, to punish the stoutest and most lofty men; for as they say of Gods providence and wisdom in making of the creatures, he is Maximus in minimis, the greatest in the least; so is he most dreadful and terrible, in the most contemptible instruments. It troubled Abimelech to be killed by a woman; & what a debasement was it to Pharaoh and Herod to be overmastered by Frogs and Lice? Oh how greatly is God to be feared! who hath thousands of invisible Armies, that he can raise to destroy those that oppose him. After the solemn and magnificent description of this dreadful judgement, the Prophet adviseth the Israelites, what is the duty God requireth of them, their case is not yet desperate. Caterpillars and Locusts are loathsome to them; let their sins be so, which are indeed the true Cankerworms that destroy their mercies: This judgement would make the earth and heavens to tremble, verse 10. let it work so upon their hearts. As God would punish them with the vilest of creatures, so let them be more vile in their own eyes, then monsters and beasts: If they would have God turn away his judgements, let them turn from their sins.