A30243:2785
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 111
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 if you object, saying, All is of Gods mere pleasure, and its wholly of God, 1that one is left, and another is taken; then a mans damnation and destruction is wholly to be imputed unto God; then a man is no more in fault; for who hath resisted his will?
And if you object, saying, All is of Gods meer pleasure, and its wholly of God, 1that one is left, and another is taken; then a mans damnation and destruction is wholly to be imputed unto God; then a man is no more in fault; for who hath resisted his will?
- 1Object.
To this we answer: That howsoever it be Gods Sovereign good pleasure to 1choose some and not others, yet a mans damnation is wholly of himself in respect of the meritorious cause; for no man is damned precisely, because God hath not chosen him, because he is not elected, but because he is a sinner, and doth wilfully refuse the means of grace offered: insomuch that there is no sinner, but he doth as willingly and readily sin with as much choice and delight, as if he were not at all left by God; and therefore the Scripture doth wholly attribute a mans destruction to his own self: Let no man think then to evade Gods Justice under this pretence. No, God will be justified, and every man will be found to be a sinner. Neither may this be thought injustice in God, for if he had not saved one man, none could have blamed him; we see he did not spare one of the Apostate Angels; Thus also might he have done with all man-kind. Let us therefore admire the goodness of God that chooseth any to eternal life.
To this we answer: That howsoever it be Gods Soveraign good pleasure to