A30243:640
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 24
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.
A second is of Prophecy and understanding of all Mysteries, all Knowledge, and 1all Faith. This place doth not prove justifying Faith to be separable from Charity. But either it is a conditional, hyperbolical speech, like that Gal. 1. If an Angel from Heaven, &c. as not only some later Divines, but even the Ancients have thought: or else it may very well be restrained to miraculous Faith, in this sense, If I had all miraculous faith, so that I were able to work the greatest miracle. And thus it is plain, such a faith may be severed from true love.
A second is of Prophecie and understanding of all Mysteries, all Knowledge, and 1all Faith. This place doth not prove justifying Faith to be separable from Charity. But either it is a conditional, hyperbolical speech, like that Gal. 1. If an Angel from Heaven, &c. as not onely some later Divines, but even the Ancients have thought: or else it may very well be restrained to miraculous Faith, in this sense, If I had all miraculous faith, so that I were able to work the greatest miracle. And thus it is plain, such a faith may be severed from true love.
- 1All faith.
The Apostle having thus instanced in Gifts, he further proceeds to give two glorious instances of the external works of grace, which are most admirable amongst men, whereby he would teach us, That the most specious and glorious external acts of grace, if seeming only, are nothing, if grace it self doth not inwardly animate them; so that inward grace in respect of those external actions, is like the soul to the body, like art to the instruments of Music, without which an uncertain sound is made.