A30243:2314
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 91
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 God doth first work the foundations and principles of holiness, and from them men walk and live holily. Thus the Apostle saith, We are his workmanship, created to every good work, Eph 2. 10. We do not first do good works, and so become Gods workmanship; but we are first his workmanship, and then we exercise our selves in good and holy works.
That God doth first work the foundations and principles of holinesse, and from them men walk and live holily. Thus the Apostle saith, We are his workmanship, created to every good work, Eph 2. 10. We do not first do good works, and so become Gods workmanship; but we are first his workmanship, and then we exercise our selves in good and holy works.
This Doctrine hath its great use, both in matter of information, and exhortation; and there is more consequence in it, then an ordinary apprehension will at first conceive. Therefore to clear this, we will first illustrate this Truth, by the opposite of it, or contrary opinions.
And first, Grace doth not come at first into the heart, as sin came into the world; for Adam was not made a bad tree, and so brought forth bad fruit; his person was not made wicked, and his nature, and then that infected his Actions; but God made ⟨p. 539⟩him after his own image, in righteousness and true holiness: So that his soul being furnished with all graces, as the heavens are adorned with several stars, he might have continued in all holy actions suitable to his original perfection. Adams sinful disobedience, did not as outs, flow from a polluted unclean nature, but from the mere liberty of his will: and when he had thus actually transgressed, then that actual sin infected, and poisoned his whole nature. Thus you see the actions of sin were before the habits, and principles of sin: there was a branch before a root; there was a sweet fountain, and yet a bitter stream but God in converting and changing of us, doth take the contrary course; he first sanctifieth our Natures, all the faculties of the soul; layeth a spiritual life as a foundation, and then being thus inwardly enlivened and established, we are carried out to all holy actions: So that all the glorious outward actions of religion, that are visible to the eyes of the world; if they be built without this inward foundation they will prove but a Babel: They are but like Sodoms apples, glorious for show, but indeed dust and Ashes. It is good to observe, How that God in the Creation of the world, both in vegetative, and sensitive creatures, still created the principles first, and that in perfection, Seminative, able to beget and propagate others; and thus it is also in conversion, he worketh these holy and excellent principles, which afterwards are operative and vigorous.