A30243:2338
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 92
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.
First, That there are many in the world, who flatter and bless themselves with the goodness of their heart, when yet their lives are full of noisome lusts. You would wonder men should be so bewitched; and yet how often is it? Take the profane man, and the most ungodly wretch that is, yet he will say, He hath as good an heart as the best of men; not considering how impossible it is to divide a good heart, and a good life one from another. As men do not gather Grapes of Thorns, nor Figs of Thistles: so neither can Thorns be gathered from Grapes, or Thistles from Figs. As we cannot expect a clean thing from an unclean; so neither an unclean thing from a clean: so that the lives and constant wicked actions of most men, do declare it to their faces, that there is no new heart or spirit within them: and as there are such kind of Self-Deceivers: so there are another sort of Persons, called Nicodemites, such who thought they might lawfully communicate in any raise or Idolatricall Worship, or might deny the outward profession of the truth of Christ, if so be that they kept their Conscience clear to God. This grievous error did much prevail when the outward profession of Christ and his Truth was accompanied with great and imminent dangers: they thought they might give up their bodies to any outward pollution: so that they kept their souls for God; but God will be glorified in soul and in body also, 1 Cor. 6. 20. And as we must with the heart believe, so we must with the mouth make Confession to salvation. Rom. 10. 10.
First, That there are many in the world, who flatter and blesse themselves with the goodnesse of their heart, when yet their lives are full of noisome lusts. You would wonder men should be so bewitched; and yet how often is it? Take the prophane man, and the most ungodly wretch that is, yet he will say, He hath as good an heart as the best of men; not considering how impossible it is to devide a good heart, and a good life one from another. As men doe not gather Grapes of Thorns, nor Figs of Thistles: so neither can Thorns be gathered from Grapes, or Thistles from Figs. As we cannot expect a clean thing from an unclean; so neither an unclean thing from a clean: so that the lives and constant wicked actions of most men, doe declare it to their faces, that there is no new heart or spirit within them: and as there are such kind of Self-Deceivers: so there are another sort of Persons, called Nicodemites, such who thought they might lawfully communicate in any raise or Idolatricall Worship, or might deny the outward profession of the truth of Christ, if so be that they kept their Conscience clear to God. This grievous error did much prevail when the outward profession of Christ and his Truth was accompanyed with great and imminent dangers: they thought they might give up their bodies to any outward pollution: so that they kept their souls for God; but God will be glorified in soul and in body also,