A30243:3020
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 120s
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.
To open and clear this point, consider,
First, That there is a general and common invitation, even of all in the world by 1God; and there is A special gracious one: The former invitation is by the creatures, by the works of God; and as the Psalmist saith, There is nothing hid from the heat of the Sun, Psal. 19. That doth penetrate one way or other to every sublunary thing: So its true of this invitation and call, none is denied it, none are so afar off, but that God thus calls: Now indeed, this is not properly, and in the Scripture sense a calling, I do not remember that the Scripture any where makes the works of Creation and Providence, as a calling of men, unless in a very large sense; as the heavens are said, to declare the glory of God, And the rod of God, or his judgements (though that be spoken of his judgements on the Church) are said to have a voice. Now that God by the works of his Creation and Providence in the world, doth teach and convince men, and so in that general way call men, is plain, Rom. 1. where the creatures made by God, are said to declare those invisible properties of Gods wisdom, power and goodness. Thus Divines speak of a twofold School God hath, the School of the Creatures, and the School of Grace by the Gospel: And though the books in the first School, viz. Of the Creatures, be very dark, and in characters hardly legible, yet God did punish and chastise men with very sore and heavy judgements, yea, spiritual judgements, the worst of all, Rom. 1. because they did not learn this lesson, and were not proficients in that School: So then, the whole world, in the excellent harmony of it, doth necessarily teach a God: Even Tully doth by an excellent similitude demonstrate this: If (saith he) you should see a Book consisting of many letters, and all those exactly set together and orderly, so as to make up a complete sense; no man will say, Those letters and words put themselves together, or that they came together by chance: So it is with the world, This great book, the excellent composition and harmony of all things, do fully declare that these things did not make themselves, or that they came accidentally together, but a great God disposed them by his wisdom and power. This invitation Paul considers of in his Sermon at Athens,