A30243:2220
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 87
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 LXXXVII.
Of Gods making a true Converts heart tender and flexible for every duty. Also what Heart of flesh implies, with the effects and consequents of it.
EZEK. 36. 26. And I will give you an heart of flesh.
WE come in the third place to consider the mercy, as it is positively set down, I will give an heart of flesh. If flesh were taken here properly for a massive part, then it could be no gracious promise, for every mans heart by nature is of flesh; but flesh is taken improperly or metaphorically; for when it is used in the Scripture improperly, it is either taken in a good sense, or a bad sense: In a bad sense, it either denoteth fragility, misery and vanity. Thus All flesh is grass; and thine horses are flesh, not spirit. Or else sinfulness and corruption: Thus, John 3. Whatsoever is born of the flesh is flesh. And In my flesh dwelleth no good thing, Rom. 7. It should greatly humble us, that the Scripture calls sin in us by such names, for it argueth sin to be innate, inbred in us, that we and sin are all one as it were: as if we were not so much sinners as sin it self; it cleaveth to us as the flesh to the bones. But secondly, this word [fle] is used in a good sense, though not so frequently, signifying a tender, pliable and flexible heart to what is godly, and is by way of opposition to a stone. Thus,