A30243:405
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 16
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.
5. In natural growth, the progress is carried on by natural strength, with the general concourse of Gods providence. But in this spiritual progress, the increase is of God. At our first conversion we being wholly dead in sin, God puts into us supernatural principles of grace, wherein man is not cooperant, but merely a subject recipient, but afterwards the heart of man being enlivened and healed thus by grace, he doth cooperate with the grace of God, yet so as that a further degree of any grace is wrought by God: Hence he is said in those that are already converted to work the will and the deed, and that good man prayed to God to increase his grace, and Gods promises are also frequent in the Scripture, to complete and perfect that grace already begun in us. God doth not believe or repent in us, these flow immediately and formally from a man regenerated, but Gods grace doth efficiently excite and stir up the will to do these good actions: hence it is that when the people of God have through negligence or any corruption grieved the spirit, that doth forsake him, and so his Sun goeth many degrees backward; for that assertion is no ways justifiable, that a godly man cannot fall from any degree of his grace; for its plain David did, who therefore prayeth to have a new heart created in him; and the Church is blamed for falling from her first love, and so is commanded ⟨p. 88⟩to repent, and to do her first things, to strengthen the things that are ready to die. The ordinary comparisons are, that a godly man may be like the tree in winter, that hath life in the root, but yet the branches and outside discover none, or as the fire that lieth buried up in ashes.
5. In naturall growth, the progresse is carried on by naturall strength, with the generall concourse of Gods providence. But in this spirituall progresse, the encrease is of God. At our first conversion we being wholly dead in sinne, God puts into us supernaturall principles of grace, wherein man is not cooperant, but meerly a subject recipient, but afterwards the heart of man being enlivened and healed thus by grace, he doth cooperate with the grace of God, yet so as that a further degree of any grace is wrought by God: Hence he is said in those that are already converted to work the will and the deed, and that good man praied to God to encrease his grace, and Gods promises are also frequent in the Scripture, to compleat and perfect that grace already begun in us. God doth not beleeve or repent in us, these flow immediatly and formally from a man regenerated, but Gods grace doth efficiently excite and stir up the will to do these good actions: hence it is that when the people of God have through negligence or any corruption grieved the spirit, that doth forsake him, and so his Sunne goeth many degrees backward; for that assertion is no waies justifiable, that a godly man cannot fall from any degree of his grace; for its plain David did, who therefore praieth to have a new heart created in him; and the Church is blamed for falling from her first love, and so is commanded