A30243:587
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 22
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.
For the Explication of this, consider these things;1
- 1Explicatory considerations. 1. Sound Doctrine is the foundation of godliness.Explicatory considerations. 1. Sound Doctrine is the foundation of godlinesse.
First, That true and sound Doctrine is the foundation of godliness. There cannot be a godly life where there is not a true faith; hence the Scripture makes Regeneration to consist in Illumination in the first place, Ephes. 4. 23, 24. There must be knowing before there can be doing; you must not therefore extend this to all Doctrines even fundamental in Religion, as if the believing of Jesus Christ to be God, believing the Scriptures to be the word of God, were nothing, no without faith it is impossible to please God. Therefore to suppose a man godly, and to be saved in any Religion or Opinion, is to deny that there are damnable heresies, which yet the Apostle asserteth. Some have coined a three-fold piety, Judaica, Jewish, Pagana, Heathenish, Christiana, Christian; but as the gold within the Temple was only holy, so is godliness only within the true Church. This therefore is to be observed especially in these times, where men are thought to have godly regenerated hearts, although they pertinaciously hold fundamental errors; whereas the Apostle Gal. 5. reckoning up heresies, as the manifest works of the flesh, with other gross sins, concludeth, He that doth these shall never inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Although therefore orthodoxy be not presently a sign of the state of grace, yet wilful perseverance in heresy even as in adultery and drunkenness, may make us conclude these are the fruits of the flesh. Be therefore informed, that although sound Doctrine be not necessarily godliness, yet it is a necessary foundation to it. Ubi malè creditur, nec benè vivitur, A good Faith, and a good Conscience, the Apostle couples together. And as the Spirit of God is called an holy Spirit, because it worketh holiness in his children, so it's also the Spirit of truth, because it guideth them into truth; and first the Spirit of truth to them, before the Spirit of holiness to them; hence the Scripture doth so often commend a sound mind unto the godly.