A30243:297
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 2 › Sermon 12
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.
First, In respect of every unregenerate man, who is dead in sin, not sick or diseased, but dead in sin, and God justly doth require of us under pain of condemnation ⟨p. 63⟩to obey his Law, though we have lost the power. Neither is this as the Arminians say, as if a Judge should sentence a mans eyes to be put out for a former fault, and then afterwards hang him, because he cannot see, for it lieth not as a mortal duty upon a man to see; nor hath any Magistrate such supreme power over a man, as God hath over us. And by these commands of God is demonstrated our duty only, not our ability: hence God makes it his Promise, To give us a new heart, and to make us to walk in all his statutes; and although Arminians think it an absurdity to make the same thing Requisitum and Promissum, a condition required and yet a gift promised; there is nothing more ordinary in Scripture.
First, In respect of every unregenerate man, who is dead in sinne, not sick or diseased, but dead in sinne, and God justly doth require of us under pain of condemnation ⟨p. 63⟩to obey his Law, though we have lost the power. Neither is this as the Arminians say, as if a Judge should sentence a mans eyes to be put out for a former fault, and then afterwards hang him, because he cannot see, for it lieth not as a mortal duty upon a man to see; nor hath any Magistrate such supream power over a man, as God hath over us. And by these commands of God is demonstrated our duty only, not our ability: hence God makes it his Promise, To give us a new heart, and to make us to walk in all his statutes; and although Arminians think it an absurdity to make the same thing Requisitum and Promissum, a condition required and yet a gift promised; there is nothing more ordinary in Scripture.
A second impossibility of keeping the Commandments is, In respect of the Regenerate, 1to whom God giveth not such a measure of grace, as that they are able to keep them according to the perfect obligation of it.