A30243:651
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.
Now that it may more plainly appear, our sufferings though for a good cause 1may be corrupted, we may take notice of what sinful ingredients there may be which will make these sufferings unprofitable.
Now that it may more plainly appear, our sufferings though for a good cause 1may be corrupted, we may take notice of what sinfull ingredients there may be which will make these sufferings unprofitable.
- 1What sinful in gredients make sufferings unprofitable? I. When men suffer for truth as their interest
First, A man may suffer for the truth, or a good cause, not as it is true or good, but as his interest is in it, and as it is that way he hath engaged himself in. Thus a man may die for Protestantism against Popery, not so much because it's the truth of God, but because it is that truth he hath lived in, it is that wherein all his outward interest lieth. O beloved! This cursed corruption is too common and frequent, not to look upon the truth of Christ, the cause of Christ, as his, but as it is ours, and so we become sufferers or Martyrs for our selves, and not for Christ. Among the Corinthians, some said they were for Paul, others for Apollo, others for Christ. ⟨p. 138⟩It is judged by some Interpreters, those were indeed for Christ, but they set him up by way of a party and faction, as their Christ, rather then Christ. Although therefore imprisonments, persecutions, are terrible and dreadful to flesh and blood, and they may be thought great testimonies of love to God and his cause? Yet be not too confident here, make diligent search of thy heart, whether that which moveth thee in all these sufferings, be not thy interest, thou art engaged in this way; And so an argument from thy propriety, not Christs propriety, prevail over thee. We may observe of Christs kindred, how desirous they were that Christ should do miracles; now their motive was not spiritual, that hereby he might be demonstrated the true Messiah, and so men graciously receive him, but from carnal pride, because he was their kinsman, and this might exalt their glory among others, such carnal self-seeking affections men may have to the truths of Christ, desiring they may be exalted, because hereby themselves shall be exalted.