A30243:2627
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.
Thirdly, The wise men after the flesh they are subtle to invent distinctions and excuses 1to palliate and cover their sins. God tells the Israelites by the Prophet, That they dug deep, and did hide their counsels low, covering themselves, but not with the covering of Gods Spirit, Isa. 30. 1. This wisdom after the flesh, Adam immediately upon his fall gave a testimony of, when he put off his sin from himself to Eve, and Eve again upon the Serpent. It was Sauls wisdom after the flesh that made him disobey Gods Commandment, making fair pretences; And the Prophet Hosea bringeth in the Israelites, who by unjust and unlawful ways did heap up treasure, comforting himself with this, There should no iniquity be found in him, Hos. 12. 8. And those false teachers who brought in the worshipping of Angels, They had fleshly wisdom, as the Apostle calls it, Col. 2. 23. All the evasions, distinctions and palliations that men have either to cover their sins, or to extenuate them, or to make them no sins, are the sole issue of fleshly wisdom; Therefore you are exceedingly deceived, if you think drunkenness, fornication and such sins of the flesh are only damnable; no there is the wisdom of the flesh; There is a fleshly mind, a corrupt mind, which the Scripture makes damnable as well as these. Those many distinctions in Popery about worshipping of Images, ⟨p. 613⟩which are so subtle that a Papist himself saith, A man must have Ingenium valde metaphysicum that can tell how to understand them, are nothing but wisdom after the flesh. All superstitious worship is a wisdom after the flesh. And as in matters of Religion, so in matters of morality, all subtle pretences, all specious evasions that men have, when they commit any sin, or do any unlawful actions, these are poisoned streams from that poisoned fountain of fleshly wisdom. Oh then take heed of pleading for thy sins, of distinctions in sinning, of endeavouring to make that lawful which thy conscience tells thee is unlawful! This seeming carnal wisdom will turn at last to horror and despair of soul. Thou wilt then see thou didst but mock God, and delude thy own conscience.