A30243:327
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.
In the next place, let us consider what this uprightness is, and so wherein it is a sign.
In the next place, let us consider what this uprightnesse is, and so wherein it is a sign.
And 1. There is no sincerity, but where there is a full and powerful change of the whose man by the grace of God. For every mans heart is naturally full of 1guile, and doth uti not frui Deo, referre God to humane ends and himself, but not himself and all his ends to God, Omnes homines sunt latrones & quotidiè latrocinantur gloriam Dei: It was a saying of one which Cassianus doth much approve: The heart of a man naturally is said to be deceitful above all things, who can know it? There is no truth, no integrity, till God hath changed it. It is as Tertullian said of the Peacock, versicolor, multicolor, semper idem & nunquam idem. If therefore thou wouldest have a plain and even heart, desire it may be polished by grace, for till this be, a man makes himself the centre, and all lines to meet in him, but this is inward, and so cannot be perceived but by the motions and actions which flow therefrom; As Lazarus perceived he had life, not by the principle of life put in to him, but by the effects thereof: and Saul perceived he had another spirit by the operations that did flow from it: so in conversion a man doth not perceive the immediate habits and principles of grace, but by the effects and fruits of them he comes to know he hath such.
And 1. There is no sincerity, but where there is a full and powerfull change of the whose man by the grace of God. For every mans heart is naturally full of 1guile, and doth uti not frui Deo, referre God to humane ends and himself, but not himself and all his ends to God, Omnes homines sunt latrones & quotidiè latrocinantur gloriam Dei: It was a saying of one which Cassianus doth much approve: The heart of a man naturally is said to be deceitfull above all things, who can know it? There is no truth, no integrity, till God hath changed it. It is as Tertullian said of the Peacock, versicolor, multicolor, semper idem & nunquam idem. If therefore thou wouldest have a plain and even heart, desire it may be polished by grace, for till this be, a man makes himself the center, and all lines to meet in him, but this is inward, and so cannot be perceived but by the motions and actions which flow therefrom; As Lazarus perceived he had life, not by the principle of life put in to him, but by the effects thereof: and Saul perceived he had another spirit by the operations that did flow from it: so in conversion a man doth not perceive the immediate habits and principles of grace, but by the effects and fruits of them he comes to know he hath such.