A30243:207
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.
Fourthly, The Scripture speaks of such marks of grace, whereby others may know that we belong to God, and of such as we may in our own hearts be evidenced thereof. 1Of the first see Joh. 13. 35. By this shall all men know ye are my Disciples, if ye love one another; He doth not say, If ye work miracles, if ye raise up the dead, but if ye love one another; now what a kind of love this ought to be, the Scripture in other places describeth, viz. not a love in word, but in deed and in truth; now the knowledge we have of other mens graces is but charitative and conjectural; The Apostle expresseth it by a supposing and a persuasion that faith is truly in such; Though men may give clear and undoubted signs of their wickedness and naughtiness, yet they cannot of their godliness and piety; because there is not any thing in Religion which may be expressed to another, which may not flow from an hypocritical heart, as well as a sound; yet the Scripture 1 Cor. 11. speaks of the end of heresies, That the approved may be made manifest, viz. to others: So 2 Cor. 3. 3. the 2Corinthians are said to be manifestly declared To be the Epistle of Christ; but this in respect only of a moral certainty, so far as men can perceive, otherwise it is made Gods prerogative to know who are his: Therefore the Apostle calls the inwards of a man, [Greek or Hebrew], The hidden things of the heart. In the second place, The Scripture makes such signs, whereby we may know in our selves that we are of God, and his Spirit dwelleth in us, 1 John 2. 3. Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments; and John is very frequent in describing grace by way of signs, in his Epistles, as is more largely to be showed; now this knowledge and evidence which the godly have in themselves of their own grace, is far more clear and certain, then what they have of another's; Insomuch that it is made by some to be a certainty of faith, or at least the sense and experiment of faith, howsoever such a knowledge it is that it cannot deceive us, or be deceived.