A30243:320
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 13
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, It is unwarrantably pressed when uprightness is urged to the exclusion of all 1respect unto any reward. For thus some do teach, Unless thou love God for himself, so that thou lookest neither at heaven or hell, unless in thy humiliation for sin thou art so far debased as to be willing to be damned, thy heart is not right. Hence I have read of one who passionately wished, there were neither heaven or hell, that so the party might know whether there was love to God purely, because of God. Whereupon many godly people are much troubled, and think the serving of God with eye to our salvation, is nothing but unlawful self-love. But the pressing of uprightness to such a strain and measure is unlawful and uncomfortable.
First, It is unwarrantably prest when uprightnesse is urged to the exclusion of all 1respect unto any reward. For thus some do teach, Unlesse thou love God for himself, so that thou lookest neither at heaven or hell, unlesse in thy humiliation for sinne thou art so farre debased as to be willing to be damned, thy heart is not right. Hence I have read of one who passionately wished, there were neither heaven or hell, that so the party might know whether there was love to God purely, because of God. Whereupon many godly people are much troubled, and think the serving of God with eye to our salvation, is nothing but unlawfull self-love. But the pressing of uprightnesse to such a strain and measure is unlawfull and uncomfortable.
- 11. How Sincerity may be unsafely prest as a sign by an ill managing it on the right hand.
1. Because the Scripture propounds heaven and salvation as a motive to obey 1him, now no Scripture-motive can draw out any unlawful affection, and whatsoever Gods Word requireth, the Spirit of God worketh in the heart of believers, which could not be if this desire of salvation be a sin: therefore we read of Moses, yea, and Christ himself, that they had an eye (yea, a fixed, constant eye, and firm, as the word signifieth) upon the reward: yet these cannot be denied to have upright hearts, all amor mercedis is not amor mercenarius: let not therefore the people of God condemn themselves for hypocrites, because of such affections. It is true there is in the people of God an ingenuous and supernatural principle, whereby they love God, and holy things, because of the excellency of them: Even as a carnal man loveth sin, because of the suitableness of it with his own heart, but yet this is not exclusive of the love of our own happiness: some make Gods glory and our happiness, to differ as the supreme and subordinate ends, some as coordinate end only; but to be sure, God hath so infallibly conjoined them together, that one cannot be without the other.