A30243:2043
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 80
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.
SERMON LXXX.
That our turning to God must be with the whole Heart; Wherein Hearty Conversion consists, with the effects of it.
JOEL. 2. 12. Turn ye, even to me, with all your heart.
The object, or term to which of our Conversion hath been dispatched, we come to the manner how we must turn to God, and that is, With all thy heart. God doth not say only, as in another place, give me thy heart, but all thy heart, Prov, 23. 26. The Scripture doth for the most part make the heart the seat of the rational soul, as if all understanding, reason, and affections were placed there, and herein it doth contradict the opinion of most eminent Philosophers, who make the brain or the head, the seat of the rational soul; now some learned men think that therefore the Scripture makes the actions of the soul to flow from the heart, because God doth not make any account of mere speculative, or brain knowledge; but as it is accompanied with the strong affections, and motions of the heart, which put a man upon practice. Aristotle observeth that loose dissolute practices, do not corrupt the habits of mere speculative sciences, as the Mathematics, &c. but they do quickly destroy practical habits, as prudence and the ability to guide and govern our actions. Now the end of the Scripture being wholly to make us good, and to reform our lives, which cannot be done without the vigorous and strong affections of the heart, doth therefore attribute all to this, in so much that a good heart, or a bad heart, are made the good or bad treasury of a man. So then howsoever in some places of Scripture,