A30243:2128
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 83
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.
To explain this, consider:
First, That God hath firmly and immovably set Ministers and Pastors, or their Office in the Church, for glorious and supernatural effects. That although God was pleased to make the world, the old Creature, by his own word immediately, using no Angels, or other things as instruments (nay they could not be used instrumentally to that infinite work of Creation) yet he is pleased to appoint spiritual Officers in the Church, To be co-workers, as the Apostle saith, with him, 2 Cor. 6. 1. Not that they co-operate with God in the infusing of grace in the soul, (no, that is Gods sole work) but they prepare and dispose the subject in a moral way, by convincing and instructing the Consciences of their hearers. That God hath thus firmly appointed such spiritual Offices is plain, 1 Cor. 12. 28. God hath set some in his Chnrh, set as he hath set the Sun and Stars in the Firmament: and then he reckons up extraordinary and ordinary Offices; and these are called gifts given to men, and the fruits of his Ascension,