A30243:2303
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.
Secondly, This inward work of grace is seen, when the work of humiliation is 1laid low enough: We read of the Parable of him that built an house, and when the tempests and storms arose, all fell to the ground immediately; and why? because this was not digged deep enough: Now our repentance and humiliation is then deep enough, when its for sin as sin, when its for sin because its an offence to God, and displeases him; when they loath themselves, and count themselves abominable in this respect. To be humbled for sin, as Ahab and the Israelites were often times, because of the temporal judgements following sin, was not to go deep enough: Oh! herein people come too short, they cry out of their sins, in the fear of death, in the extremity of pain: Alas, this is not to go to the bottom; there is a worse thing in sin, then all the temporal calamities it brings with it; and that is, to offend God, to separate between his favour and thy soul: Its therefore very meet, that thy humiliation should be for that which is the worst evil in sin. Again, in humiliation men go deep enough, when they do not only stay upon actual sins, but go to the very original and fountain of all: Thus David, Psal. 51. he went deep, when beyond his actual sins of Murder and Adultery he also bewailed the native corruption of his soul: Oh! the grace of God must indeed have a close and inward work in that man, who discovers the root of sin, as well as the branches; the fountain, as well as the stream. God in the universal destruction of the world, did not only look to the actual impieties then committed, but to the imagination of the thoughts of a mans heart, which were only evil, and that continually, Gen. 6. and thus he that will make a sure and good issue of his humiliation, must still dig deeper and deeper; and see more and more abominations, till he go to the foul and bitter root of all.
Secondly, This inward work of grace is seen, when the work of humiliation is 1laid low enough: We read of the Parable of him that built an house, and when the tempests and storms arose, all fell to the ground immediately; and why? because this was not diged deep enough: Now our repentance and humiliation is then deep enough, when its for sin as sin, when its for sin because its an offence to God, and displeases him; when they loath themselves, and count themselves abominable in this respect. To be humbled for sin, as Ahab and the Israelites were often times, because of the temporal judgements following sin, was not to go deep enough: Oh! herein people come too short, they cry out of their sins, in the fear of death, in the extremity of pain: Alas, this is not to go to the bottom; there is a worse thing in sin, then all the temporal calamities it brings with it; and that is, to offend God, to separate between his favor and thy soul: Its therefore very meet, that thy humiliation should be for that which is the worst evil in sin. Again, in humiliation men go deep enough, when they do not onely stay upon actual sins, but go to the very original and fountain of all: Thus David,