A30243:444
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.
Fifthly, Lest this Spirit should be a delusion, therefore in the next place, The 1workings of Gods Spirit are orderly, not inordinate, but exactly to the Rule. I build this particular on the Greek word, Gal. 5. 25. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit, that is as the word implieth, orderly, methodically, as when it's said, As many as shall walk by this canon or rule, Peace be on them. The Spirit of God putteth a man upon nothing that is against the principles of nature and sound reason, nor against the word of God; but verbum est vehiculum spiritus, the word is that fiery chariot in which the Spirit of God cometh. When the Apostle in the Chapter before, vers. ult. had given us this as a sign of our being in God, that we have of his Spirit, presently he addeth, Believe not every Spirit. Whosoever pretends operations, instincts and revelations from the Spirit for duties not justifiable by the Word, sets up a false and unholy spirit, for the pure and holy Spirit of God: But of this more largely in the false signs. All the motions and operations of Gods Spirit are soft, quiet, ordered and consonant to Gods word.
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Sixthly, Where spiritual operations are, there is a free and spontaneous inclination 1unto the duties God requireth. As there is in an hungry man to eat, and a thirsty man to drink. Gal. 5. 18. If ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the Law. The Apostle meaneth not the Antinomian sense, as if they needed not the Law to direct, guide and excite them, for he presseth with commands in the same Chapter to mortify sin; and they may as well deny the use of the whole Scripture, as the Law in that sense, for all the word of God is a rule and a guide; but he speaks of the terrifying threatening and extorting power of the Law, whereby a man doth that which is good with the same Spirit, as the Israelites made brick under Pharaohs oppression; of this the Apostle speaks, and that so far as they are regenerate, for the unregenerate part finds the Law a Pharaoh to it, commanding brick and giving no straw, enjoining work and giving no strength. Therefore where the Spirit of God is, there they are a willing people, yea willingnesses, as