A30243:2707
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 108
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.
And first in that the word of God calling men to Faith and Repentance, is 1thus described under the notion of a great Feast, it implieth, There is in it a satisfaction to every soul, that is spiritually hungry and thirsty. Ho every one that thirsteth, saith our Saviour, let him come and drink, Joh. 7. 37. Christ saith, He is the bread that cometh down from heaven, Joh. 6. 35. He was born in Bethlehem. the house of bread.
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Now these expressions imply two things:
1. That there ought to be in all men an hungering and thirsting after Christ, and the privileges he offers. For if you tell a full man of a great feast, he matters it not; because such an one loatheth the very honey-comb; but a thirsty man, as you see by Samson; or an hungry man, as you see by the Lepers, and those that lived in the time of famine in Israel, Oh what would not they do? How did they rejoice to have one drop, or one crumb? Lazarus was glad of a crumb; and thus it is here: A man full of his own righteousness, of his own goodness, He loatheth all this preaching, he preferreth his husks before the fatted calf. But now take a man destitute of all these, and sensible of his leanness: Oh how doth his soul thirst and hunger after Christ! Thus Paul a called one judgeth all things dung and dross for the knowledge of Christ: All his former privileges he renounceth, and None but Christ, none but Christ doth replenish him. Oh while men have their own greatness, their own goodness and righteousness, they will never come to this feast. David likewise he speaketh of his hunger and thirst after God, yea that his soul breaketh for the longing it hath always unto him; such a disposition is supposed, when the grace of the Gospel is compared to a Feast.