A30243:676
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 25
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.
Pray therefore, Lord give me to understand what I am by nature, make me to know how sinful and loathsome it is, and let not this be a general, speculative, barren knowledge, but let it be a close, particular applicative, and practical knowledge, whereby the whole heart may be set on fire, and powerfully wrought upon, even to bid all creatures, all comforts, all businesses stand aloof till thou be redeemed from this thraldom.
Pray therefore, Lord give me to understand what I am by nature, make me to know how sinfull and lothsome it is, and let not this be a generall, speculative, barren knowledge, but let it be a close, particular applicative, and practicall knowledge, whereby the whole heart may be set on fire, and powerfully wrought upon, even to bid all creatures, all comforts, all businesses stand aloof till thou be redeemed from this thraldome.
2. Another cause of this bold persuasion is, An ignorance of the spiritual exactness 1and obligation of the Law. It was the received opinion of the Jews, and the Pharisees they so explained it, as appeareth, Mat. 5. that the Law commanded only external acts, and that we satisfied it, if we did keep it in the outward man. Therefore our Saviour seemed to bring new doctrine into the world, when he explained the Law of heart-sins, and showed that men might be adulterers, murderers, &c. though they never committed those external acts. This was so paradoxical to the received doctrine at that time, that men were amazed at it. Now howsoever (it may be) people will acknowledge the doctrine true, yet in practice they are as gross and secure as ever Jews and Pharisees were. Neither did they ever make their works a refuge, and a bulwark, more then people now adays do. And no wonder, for Paul so great a proficient in the knowledge of the Law of God, yet confesseth his great blindness and mistake herein, Rom. 7. insomuch that when he cometh to understand how spiritual the law is, and how carnal he is, he crieth out of himself as most miserable. The Law is spiritual, saith Paul, that is, it reacheth to the sins of the spirit, it forbiddeth all inordinate motions there, it prohibits all their secret irregularities: so that as God is the father of spirits, thus the Law is the Law of spirits, and thou mayest become an horrid transgressor of this in thy heart when thy outward I so seemeth pare and innocent; The Law is compared by James to a glass; now it's no wonder that a man never abhorreth the foulness of spots and dirt upon his face, as long as he looketh not in there. No man can bewail the obliquity and crookedness of his actions, that doth not diligently apply them to the straightness of the rule, Oh then say, This justice, this honesty, this freedom from gross sin is highly esteemed among men: but what is it to Gods Law? how foul a transgressor shall I be convinced to be, if I compare my self with that rule! Hence therefore ariseth all that self-righteousness, in that men do no more understand how holy and exact that rule is by which they ought to walk. There is a world of unseen, and unknown filthiness in thee, and if thy eyes were opened to behold it thou couldst no longer abide thy self.