A30243:2206
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 10 › Sermon 86
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.
That every man naturally in respect of any divine or spiritual good, hath a very 1heart of stone.
- 1Observ.
The disease of the stone in the body is an exquisite and unexpressible torment, how much would men give to be eased of it. But this stone in the heart, whereby we are wholly senseless and stupid about heavenly things, moved neither with love or fear, or grief, is above all this torment, if men did rightly judge of it. It was the Poets fiction, that men were made of stones, Inde genus durum sumus: to be sure, there is this spiritual stone on the heart; whereby we are an hard, tough, rugged, and untractable people; insomuch that wheresoever God converts men by the Ministry, there he raiseth up children to Abraham out of stones, there he makes water to gush out of rocks, there he makes dry bones to gather together and live. To amplify this, let us consider how much wickedness this 1Epithet (stony) doth imply to be in every man naturally.
The disease of the stone in the body is an exquisite and unexpressible torment, how much would men give to be eased of it. But this stone in the heart, whereby we are wholly senseless and stupid about heavenly things, moved neither with love or fear, or grief, is above all this torment, if men did rightly judge of it. It was the Poets fiction, that men were made of stones, Inde genus durum sumus: to be sure, there is this spirituall stone on the heart; whereby we are an hard, tough, rugged, and untractable people; insomuch that wheresoever God converts men by the Ministry, there he raiseth up children to Abraham out of stones, there he makes water to gush out of rocks, there he makes dry bones to gather together and live. To amplifie this, let us consider how much wickednesse this 1