A30243:2081
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 81
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, There may be a superstitious and Popish advancement of tears, and a Christian Scripture-acknowledgement of them. This must be also remembered, a 1Popish commendation of tears is, when any Merit, Causality or Worth is attributed to them. Thus in Popery they make them have a spiritual effect, they attribute the washing away of sin to them, they are judged satisfactory: But how arrogant is this Doctrine, to make our tears and Christs blood equal? If the blood of Christ only doth purge us from our iniquity, then cannot our tears, which themselves need washing, as he said, Lava Domine Lachrymas meas, O Lord wash my tears, they are so foul. Could we therefore weep an Ocean of tears, yea blood, yet this could not blot out one debt of ours to God. We do not then require mourning and weeping, as Friars and Popish Writers do: And yet on the other side we abhor those Antinomian Doctrines, that make all sorrow and weeping for sin to be legal, and unbeseeming the spirit of the Gospel. No, the Scripture carrieth a mean between these two extremes.
Secondly, There may be a superstitious and Popish advancement of tears, and a Christian Scripture-acknowledgement of them. This must be also remembred, a 1Popish commendation of tears is, when any Merit, Causality or Worth is attributed to them. Thus in Popery they make them have a spiritual effect, they attribute the washing away of sin to them, they are judged satisfactory: But how arrogant is this Doctrine, to make our tears and Christs bloud equal? If the bloud of Christ only doth purge us from our iniquity, then cannot our tears, which themselves need washing, as he said, Lava Domine Lachrymas meas, O Lord wash my tears, they are so foul. Could we therefore weep an Ocean of tears, yea bloud, yet this could not blot out one debt of ours to God. We do not then require mourning and weeping, as Friers and Popish Writers do: And yet on the other side we abhor those Antinomian Doctrines, that make all sorrow and weeping for sinne to be legal, and unbeseeming the spirit of the Gospel. No, the Scripture carrieth a mean between these two extreams.
- 1II. A Popish advancement of tears.