A30243:440
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.
First, The nature of them is different from all mere humane actions. The acts of faith, love, and other graces, are above the whole sphere and power of nature; Jannes and Jambres were able to do some wonderful things, as well as Moses, but there were others again, in which they had no power at all. Thus there are many humane actions of prudence and justice, that make men very lovely and admirable in the eyes of others; but then there are other actions, such as the operations of habitual graces, and to this they can no more reach, then a dwarf can touch the heavens. Hence the Scripture sometimes addeth the word Spirit, when it would difference grace from humane actions, 2 Cor. 4. 13. Having the same Spirit of faith, Ephes. 6. 18. Supplication in the Spirit. Phil. 3. 3. Which worship God in ⟨p. 94⟩the Spirit. Col. 1. 18. Your love in the Spirit. Now this addition [in the Spirit] implieth that there are many actions that are done by us, but unless they be performed in the Spirit, they come short of that divine and excellent nature, which God looketh at. Gratia non tollit, sed attollit naturam, Grace doth not destroy the natural faculties and actions of the soul, but it elevateth or sublimateth them to a more noble consideration; and this is the reason why a natural man can do nothing that is truly and theologically good, because of the transcendent excellency of it's nature, but this is hardly discerned; and if there be many, yea most things in nature, whose essence we perceive not, it is no wonder if we be so dull in supernatural.
First, The nature of them is different from all meer humane actions. The acts of faith, love, and other graces, are above the whole sphear and power of nature; Jannes and Jambres were able to do some wonderfull things, as well as Moses, but there were others again, in which they had no power at all. Thus there are many humane actions of prudence and justice, that make men very lovely and admirable in the eyes of others; but then there are other actions, such as the operations of habitual graces, and to this they can no more reach, then a dwarf can touch the heavens. Hence the Scripture sometimes addeth the word Spirit, when it would difference grace from humane actions,