A30243:249
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 1 › Sermon 10
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, We say not the Graces of Gods Spirit, can or do witness of themselves, 1The sealing and witnessing is efficiently from the Spirit of God, they are only the means by which Gods Spirit makes known it self. And therefore as colours, though they be the object of sight, yet they cannot actually be seen without light shining upon them: so neither are we able to behold the good things God hath wrought for us without the Spirit of God.
Secondly, We say not the Graces of Gods Spirit, can or do witnesse of themselves, 1The sealing and witnessing is efficiently from the Spirit of God, they are only the means by which Gods Spirit makes known it self. And therefore as colours, though they be the object of sight, yet they cannot actually be seen without light shining upon them: so neither are we able to behold the good things God hath wrought for us without the Spirit of God.
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Thirdly, The Graces of God thus collustrated, are not an humane testimony, but divine 1and infallible. For its a supernatural testimony, both in the efficient cause, and in the means by which; so that as the godly actions we do are not humane, or by the power of free-will, but divine arising from a supernatural principle of grace within us; so neither is this testimony or consolation flowing from it, to be ⟨p. 52⟩attributed to our reason and understanding, but unto God only. The Papist indeed makes these experimental works of grace within us to be only moral conjectures, and probable indications of Gods Spirit dwelling in us: only they say, it is such a certainty as may morally exclude all doubting, for they instance, that we may be as sure that we are in the state of grace, as that there is such a City as Rome or Constantinople (if we have not seen those places) but this is not enough, because they deny them to be the infallible witness of Gods Spirit.