A30243:622
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.
Fifthly, As the Devil in a Church corrupted, and defiled with Idolatry and Superstition, doth there prevail by humane Traditions, and Forms of will-worship, 1whereby all spiritual worshipping of God is wholly neglected: so in times of reformation, then he seduceth men in another Temptation, under the pretence of setting up the spirit, and its revelations, it crieth down the word of God, and all the ordinary Ministerial Officers Christ hath appointed. The first worthy Reformers, and glorious instruments of God, found a bitter conflict herein; so that they were exercised not only with Formalists, and Traditionary Superstitious Papists on one side, but men that pretended themselves to be more enlightened, then the Reformers were, on the other side: hence they called those that did adhere to the scripture & would try revelations by it, Vocalistas & Literistas Let•erists & Vowallists, as men acquainted with the words and vowels of the scripture, having nothing of the spirit of God. And wheresoever in any Town the true Doctrine of the Gospel brake forth to the displacing of Popery, presently such opinions, like Tares, came up among the good Wheat, whereby great divisions were raised, and the Reformation made abominable, and odious to the world; as if that had been the Sun to give heat and warmth to those Worms and Serpents to crawl out of the ground. Hence they inveighed against Luther, and said, He had only promulged Carnal Evangelium, a carnal Gospel. And that the Protestant Doctors did only Carnalia sapere, by them indeed aliquot fr•ndes de Antichristianismo succis•, s•d arborem & radices adhuc superesse. They burnt all books but the Bible, and said, That happy time was come when all should be taught of God. Many remarkable passages I might further relate but this may suffice to show, That as the Devil in one time of the Church in the deformation of it, deceiveth by superstitious, pompous, and visible worship; so at another time, in the reformation of it, doth he delude by revelations, and pretended high Teachings of the spirit of God, even above the Scripture.
Fifthly, As the Divel in a Church corrupted, and defiled with Idolatry and Superstition, doth there prevail by humane Traditions, and Forms of will-worship, 1