A30243:321
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.
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.
1. Because the Scripture propounds heaven and salvation as a motive to obey 1him, now no Scripture-motive can draw out any unlawfull affection, and whatsoever Gods Word requireth, the Spirit of God worketh in the heart of beleevers, which could not be if this desire of salvation be a sinne: therefore we reade of Moses, yea, and Christ himself, that they had an eye (yea, a sixed, 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 supernaturall principle, whereby they love God, and holy things, because of the excellency of them: Even as a carnall man loveth sinne, because of the suteablenesse of it with his own heart, but yet this is not exclusive of the love of our own happinesse: some make Gods glory and our happinesse, to differ as the supreme and subordinate ends, some as coordinate end• only; but to be sure, God hath so infallibly conjoyned them together, that one cannot be without the other.