A30243:3025
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.
Thirdly, This call could not be saving, for the furthest and utmost effect it had 1upon men, was only outwardly to reform their lives: It restrained many from gross sins, and kept them in the exercises of temperance and justice, and such Moral virtues; which though named virtues by Aristotle, yet the Fathers did upon Scripture-grounds call them vices and splendida peccata, glistering sins; for so indeed all that Piety and Morality which is out of the Church of God, is a Sodom apple, fair to the eye, and inwardly nothing but ashes; for there is no true Sanctification, no true and right principles of holiness, but within the Church of God. As typically every vessel was unclean, that was not in the Temple, and sanctified thereby. The heathens much boast of one Palaemon, a profane beastly man, that came to hear Socrates at his Lectures, with a purpose to scoff and deride him, but went away wholly changed in his mind, and made sober; but what is this one external change, to those many thousands and thousands of changes which have been made both internally and externally by the word preached? But you may say, To what purpose is this call of God by the Creatures, and the work of his providence, if it be not to salvation? Yes, it is much every way:
Thirdly, This call could not be saving, for the furthest and utmost effect it had 1upon men, was onely outwardly to reform their lives: It restrained many from gross sins, and kept them in the exercises of temperance and justice, and such Moral vertues; which though named vertues by Aristotle, yet the Fathers did upon Scripture-grounds call them vices and splendida peccata, glistring sins; for so indeed all that Piety and Morality which is out of the Church of God, is a Sodom apple, fair to the eye, and inwardly nothing but ashes; for there is no true Sanctification, no true and right principles of holiness, but within the Church of God. As typically every vessel was unclean, that was not in the Temple, and sanctified thereby. The heathens much boast of one Palaemon, a prophane beastly man, that came to hear Socrates at his Lectures, with a purpose to scoff and deride him, but went away wholly changed in his minde, and made sober; but what is this one external change, to those many thousands and thousands of changes which have been made both internally and externally by the word preached? But you may say, To what purpose is this call of God by the Creatures, and the work of his providence, if it be not to salvation? Yes, it is much every way: