A30243:204
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.
Secondly, Inherent Grace being thus in us as a supernatural permanent principle 1of holy actions, it hath therefore as all other things have, something that is internal and constitutive of it, and something that is consecutive or flowing from it. That which is constitutive of godliness, is the nature of the habits of graces with all their particular differences, as animal rationale is that which intrinsically makes a man. 2. There are properties which do flow and issue from these, and these are properly the marks and signs, whereby we come to know that grace in us: for as in Philosophy, Formae nos latent, we do not know the forms or internal constitutive differences of things, Vitrum lambimus, pultem non attingimus, as Scaliger said, only we come to know the nature of things by their properties and effects; hence we have few definitions, but many descriptions of things from their properties and effects, all our knowledge being for the most part a posteriori, rather then a priori, as a man that cannot see the Sun it self, because of it's glorious lustre, can behold it in a basin of water. Hence some have denied that we have a demonstrative knowledge of things, which is from the causes to the effects. To apply this to our purpose, the inward principles and immediate nature of grace, is not evidenced unto us, but by the effects and proper motions, even as in a natural life there is no discerning of it, but by the motions of life; hence by inherent grace we are said to live, Gal. 2. 19, 20. Rom. 1. 17. So that as natural motions discern natural life, thus do supernatural a supernatural life; with this difference, that to this latter there is required also a peculiar illumination of Gods Spirit, Rom. 8.
Secondly, Inherent Grace being thus in us as a supernatural permanent principle 1of holy actions, it hath therefore as all other things have, something that is internal and constitutive of it, and something that is consecutive or flowing from it. That which is constitutive of godliness, is the nature of the habits of graces with all their particular differences, as animal rationale is that which intrinsecally makes a man. 2. There are properties which do flow and issue from these, and these are properly the marks and signs, whereby we come to know that grace in us: for as in Philosophy, Formae nos latent, we do not know the forms or internal constitutive differences of things, Vitrum lambimus, pultem non attingimus, as Scaliger said, only we come to know the nature of things by their properties and effects; hence we have few definitions, but many descriptions of things from their properties and effects, all our knowledge being for the most part a posteriori, rather then a priori, as a man that cannot see the Sun it self, because of it's glorious lustre, can behold it in a bason of water. Hence some have denied that we have a demonstrative knowledge of things, which is from the causes to the effects. To apply this to our purpose, the inward principles and immediate nature of grace, is not evidenced unto us, but by the effects and proper motions, even as in a natural life there is no discerning of it, but by the motions of life; hence by inherent grace we are said to live,