A30243:2626
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 105
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, Wisemen after the flesh as they savour only the things of the flesh, so 1they have an irreconcilable enmity to the things of God. The more fleshly wisdom and humane craft a man hath, the more wretched enemy and adversary he is always to what is good; they are the great politic wise men that do most abhor and scorn Religion. Thus the Apostle Rom. 8. The wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God; what a brand and black infamy doth this Text cast upon all subtle wise men; Their wisdom (that which they boast of, they glory in, the best they have, which the world admireth them for) this is enmity, not dislike, not distaste or averseness, but enmity the highest degree of opposition; and enmity in the abstract, nothing but enmity: There is not a crumb or a drop of any love or compliance with the things of God. That as the Serpent, though a wise creature, yet is full of poison and venom; such are all men of parts, and wit, and quick abilities, if not sanctified; They have wisdom but against God; they have wit but against godliness; they have craft but to oppose godliness: So that many men would have had easier condemnation at the day of Judgment, if they had been fools and mad men, rather then such wise men; better thou wert a man driven out of thy wits, raving and talking thou dost not know what, then to be so advisedly and deliberately opposing of the ways of God: O then consider, whether the more wisdom and the more parts thou hast, thou art not the more atheistical, the more crafty adversary to what is holy. Whether that be not the only obstacle, why thou dost not submit to the ways of God; Thy lusts do not hinder thee, thy profaneness doth not hinder thee, but thy carnal policy, and thy fleshly wisdom, because godliness is a way of self-denial, of danger and opposition in this world; therefore thy heart cannot comply with it.
Secondly, Wisemen after the flesh as they savour only the things of the flesh, so 1they have an irreconcilable enmity to the things of God. The more fleshly wisdome and humane craft a man hath, the more wretched enemy and adversary he is alwayes to what is good; they are the great politick wise men that do most abhor and scorn Religion. Thus the Apostle Rom. 8