A30243:433
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 17
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.
Therefore observe ⟨p. 92⟩them diligently, whether you find such things in you or no, for notwithstanding all parts and religious duties, if the Spirit of God dwell not and work in you, you are no more a true member of Christ, then an Ape is a man. Rom. 8. 1, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14. where the Apostle speaking of the glorious benefit of Justification, See to whom he appropriateth it, To those who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, whereupon he is industrious to make a difference between the one and the other; and he useth several descriptions, [Greek or Hebrew], Who are after the Spirit, which he explaineth by being spiritually minded: [Greek or Hebrew] denoteth not only acts of the understanding, but chiefly of the will and affections; it seemeth to answer the Hebrew word Jetzer, The imaginations or frame of the heart. So that as the imagination and frame of a carnal heart is wholly upon things of the flesh: Thus the affections, imaginations, designs and purposes of a spiritual man, are upon spiritual things. As the Apostle calls them [Greek or Hebrew], so vers. 9. [Greek or Hebrew], Those that are in the Spirit, that is, Possessed of the Spirit, as if the holy Ghost were as wonderful in gracious operations upon the heart of man; as in those prophetical and extatical Afflatuses, for they were said at those times, To be in the Spirit, and the Grecians call such [Greek or Hebrew]; it is a similitude, saith Grotius, taken from those who are guarded on every side by keepers, and are wholly under their power; so mighty and efficacious is Gods Spirit in believers; and (by the way observe) this is called promiscuously, The Spirit of God, The Spirit of Christ, The Spirit of the Father, and that dwelling in us, which doth prove the holy Ghost to be a person, not a mere virtue and force, or power from God, as some heretics of old would have it; and a person that is one in the Trinity, not the chiefest of the created Angels, as one of late would blasphemously maintain. In Adam, the holy Ghost wrought his holiness, as the third Person in the Godhead; but now he worketh grace in us by another economy or dispensation, as the Spirit of the Father, and of Christ. And that all this operation of Gods Spirit may not be rejected as a fancy, he saith, He dwells in us as in his Temple, which denoteth a fixed permanency, and abiding in us;
Therefore observe ⟨p. 92⟩