A30243:2583
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 12 › Sermon 103
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, Consider also, That the persons called, are many times the worst of men, great and heinous sinners: As they are the meanest for their external condition, 1so the worst for their Moralities, that all the world may be convinced, and say, It was not such a mans goodness, his ingenuity, his honest endeavours, his willing desires, but God spake unto him, while wallowing in hit blood, To live. The Pharisees, who gloried in an external strictness, and knew no further then an outward godliness, did upon this consideration, labour to defame Christ and his Doctrine, that he kept company with publicans and sinners; as the Israelites murmured that Moses married a Blackamoor, and as the contemptible and vilest of men followed David; so it was a great stumbling block, that Christ called great sinners to repentance, that he rejected the Pharisees, the seeming glory of the world. Our Saviour in many places he discovers, that profane and open sinners, did sooner obtain the kingdom of heaven, then those civil, moral men; and if you diligently eye Gods way, you shall find it still true, That the rich he sendeth empty away, and the hungry he fills with good things; that none are further from being effectually called, then such who say, They are full, rich, and want nothing; their own righteousness, their own goodness, their own self-sufficiency, is that which beareth up their hearts; and being thus whole in their own apprehensions, they seek out for no physician: Oh its worthy of our serious consideration, to take notice of how many thousands are forsaken and passed over by God, who are persuaded all is well with them. Despairing men are but few to presuming men, they are like the sands upon the sea shore; go from one man to another, and you shall find them all contented in themselves; there are no groans for Christ, there are no pantings for a ⟨p. 602⟩[…] ⟨p. 603⟩[…] ⟨p. 604⟩Saviour; there are no restless and unquiet complaints of the soul, Oh who will ease me, who will clothe my nakedness, who will satisfy my hungry soul! Oh that this truth might burn like fire; you that have the best thoughts of your selves, are, it may be, in the worst condition; you that have no trouble, deserve to have the greatest; you that eat, and drink, and live without any inward checks of conscience, have the greatest cause to fear and tremble: