A30243:2365
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 93
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.
Thus you have the sense of the Doctrine; let us observe the grounds: And1
- 1Grounds of the Doctrine. 1.
First, Its clear, that God doth not only give a new heart, but cause us also to walk in the ways of holiness, because these are two distinct mercies, and are very separable one from the other: It may be, and experience tells us, it doth too often fall out, that where the former mercy is of Gods spirit, and a new heart in his people, yet the latter may not be. David you heard, even while he committed those foul and gross sins, yet had not the principle and seeds of Grace quite dead within him; no more then the tree in winter, that is stripped of all its ornaments, is dead at the root; yet he was far from this latter mercy in the Text, To walk in the statutes of God: And so at any time, when the children of God fall into sins of lusts, or carelessness and negligence, they are not fallen from the Root Christ; but yet this exciting and quickening grace they have lost for the present. Seeing therefore, that this latter is separate from the former, and you may see even one of Christs sheep for the time, wallowing like the Swine in filthy mire, it is necessary that God should not only do the one, but the other also for us: Therefore the people of God are to consider this: please not your selves that you have had the experience of conversion upon your souls; you can tell, that God hath made a wonderful change in you; for how doth God accompany you with this exciting, acting grace? Are ye not all over rusty, as it were, are you not very often unfit for holy duties, unprepared to hear, to pray? Are not your hearts like a barren mountain, yea, like a noisome dunghill sometimes? Do you not refuse to open the door, that Christ may come in, who hath stood all night knocking at the door, while his locks are full of dew? Is it not thus, and far worse with you many times, who yet hope of your conversion to God? And whence is all this? you have not this acting, this exciting grace, and so thou art like one in a deep sleep.