A30243:502
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 3 › Sermon 19
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.
1. To cry down the very being and use of these external Ordinances, as being but forms, and the spiritual frame of the heart is made all in all. Thus there are blasphemous Heretics that cry down the Sacraments, the Ministry, yea, the Scripture it self, yea Christ himself, as being but forms, and we ought to have communion with God immediately. But it is elsewhere to be showed, that Christ hath appointed an external form of communion in his Church, which consisteth in reading, and preaching of the Word, Administration and receiving of Sacraments, Prayer, and Church-government, and Censures, with a Ministry from him, all which are of a perpetual institution for the substantials of them, and to cry down these forms, which God hath appointed as means to beget and increase grace, which are in the gracious use of them a solemn acknowledging and owning of God, is a Beelzebub error as I may so say, and a false doctrine in the first magnitude: we are therefore to sail between these extremes neither resting upon Externals in religion, as enough without Christ, and regeneration, or on the contrary abolishing and neglecting the use of them.
1. To cry down the very being and use of these externall Ordinances, as being but forms, and the spirituall frame of the heart is made all in all. Thus there are blasphemous Hereticks that cry down the Sacraments, the Ministry, yea, the Scripture it self, yea Christ himself, as being but formes, and we ought to have communion with God immediatly. But it is elsewhere to be shewed, that Christ hath appointed an externall form of communion in his Church, which consisteth in reading, and preaching of the Word, Administration and receiving of Sacraments, Praier, and Church-government, and Censures, with a Ministry from him, all which are of a perpetuall institution for the substantials of them, and to cry down these forms, which God hath appointed as means to beget and encrease grace, which are in the gracious use of them a solemn acknowledging and owning of God, is a Beelzebub errour as I may so say, and a false doctrine in the first magnitude: we are therefore to sail between these extreams neither resting upon Externals in religion, as enough without Christ, and regeneration, or on the contrary abolishing and neglecting the use of them.