A30243:608
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 23
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.
SERMON XXIII.
Declaring what deceits men lye open to in judging those things to be works of the Spirit, which indeed are not.
Declaring what deceipts men lye open to in judging those things to be works of the Spirit, which indeed are not.
1 JOHN 4. 1. Beloved, believe not every Spirit, but try the Spirits whether they be of God.
The Apostle having asserted immediately before, in the verse precedent of the former chapter, a true and sure sign of our state of Grace, viz. The saving and sanctifying operations of Gods Spirit, by which the Spirit discovers it self, as the sun doth it self by its beams and heat, or as the rational soul manifests it self by rational operations: He doth in this verse regulate us in our proceeding about this sign, advertising us not to be too credulous, or overhasty in believing every thing that may seem to be of the Spirit. Where by the way you may see it's no good argument against the use and truth of signs, That men may be deluded, and think they have them, when they have them not: For the Apostle at the same time saith, We know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us, and yet addeth, believe not every spirit, taking Spirit in both places Metonymically, the effects of the Spirit either real or pretended, for the efficient cause, the Spirit it self: So that in the words you have a cautionary admonition, set down