A30243:203
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 8
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, That by the inherent Grace of Sanctification in us, we come to have a supernatural 1being. So that as natural things have a natural being by that natural form which is in them: Thus also the godly have a spiritual and supernatural by that infused principle of an holy life in them, 2 Pet. 1. 4. we are hereby said to be Partakers of the divine nature, 2 Cor. 5. 17. Such a regenerated man is called a new creature, and indeed the very word of regeneration, or new birth, supposeth a new being not essentially, but in respect of those gracious habits and qualities which the Spirit of God worketh in him; This also is called the inward man, 2 Cor. 4. 16. Nerimbergius the Jesuit thinketh Paul fetcheth that distinction of an inward and outward man from Plato, who maketh such a difference; This work of Grace is that image of God in us, whereby we resemble him, so that godliness is not a notion, a mere fiction, but a supernatural, power full reality, whereby a man hath a new denomination, of ungodly he is become godly, even ⟨p. 38⟩as in natural things by a physical motion there is a real transmutation, as of cold to become hot; or in moral things, as of a fool to become wise. Let not therefore any dream of holiness in themselves, unless there be such a powerful alteration from the state of sin. Hence it is compared to the Resurrection, and indeed Regeneration makes no less glorious change of the soul, then that doth of the body, as by the latter Our vile bodies are made like his glorious body; so our vile and corrupted souls are become like his gracious and holy soul. Tully said, in regard of our souls, which he thought a divine spark from the glorious Essence of God, Scito te esse Deum, Know thy self to be God: This was upon a dangerous foundation; but we may truly say, because of those supernatural principles, even the image of God within thee, what God once did ironically, Behold, man is become like one of us.
First, That by the inherent Grace of Sanctification in us, we come to have a supernatural 1