A30243:2300
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 11 › Sermon 90
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.
Lastly, The mere external cleansing of a mans life, from former lusts and gross 1impieties, is not this putting the spirit within us? As the Angels, when they took humane bodies, they did but seem to eat, and seem to do vital actions of life; they could not indeed, because they were not personally united to the assumed body: so all men who have their lives cleansed, and they set up a form of Religion, they do not these things as vital actions of grace; they move, as the wheel of the mill is moved, by the force of the water, not by an inward principle of life: These are compared to Swine washed in the water, but returning afterwards to the mire: Though the Swine be made as white as the sheep, yet because not inwardly made a sheep, therefore she turneth at last to her former impurity; but I hint only these things, because treated on before.
Lastly, The meer external cleansing of a mans life, from former lusts and gross 1impieties, is not this putting the spirit within us? As the Angels, when they took humane bodies, they did but seem to eat, and seem to do vital actions of life; they could not indeed, because they were not personally united to the assumed body: so all men who have their lives cleansed, and they set up a form of Religion, they do not these things as vital actions of grace; they move, as the wheel of the mill is moved, by the force of the water, not by an inward principle of life: These are compared to Swine washed in the water, but returning afterwards to the mire: Though the Swine be made as white as the sheep, yet because not inwardly made a sheep, therefore she turneth at last to her former impurity; but I hint onely these things, because treated on before.
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Let us in the next place come to consider positively, what this inward deep work 1