A30243:71
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 1 › Sermon 2
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.
Fourthly, By this experimental knowledge a man will be settled in the truth, and endure all persecution rather then forsake it. He will believe no fallacies or sophisms, 1he will not be frighted out of it by any dangers. Its called tasting of God and his Word, and the rule is, Non est disputandum de gustu, there is no disputing against taste. The sense of taste and feeling do herein differ from the other senses, that they are joined really to the objects themselves, whereas seeing and hearing do receive only the intentional species, and therefore cannot make such a real and powerful impression, as is in tasting or feeling. Pauls experimental knowing whom he did believe, made him boldly to speak: what makes men have a monthly or yearly faith, change their opinions as often as their garments, but because they have not felt the power of truth upon their own soul? The Schoolmen speak of a gift of the holy Ghost, which they call Sapience, 2which they define to be Quoddam lumen divinorum, sub quo videntur & gustantur divina per experimentum, A certain light of divine things, whereby they are seen and tasted by experience: or others describe it, A contemplation of God out of love, with a certain experimental sweetness in the affections. But whatsoever ⟨p. 9⟩their conceit is about this, it is certain the Apostle Heb. 5. 14 would have us by use to have our senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Where the Apostle attributeth to the mind [Greek or Hebrew], which are properly the Organs of sense in the body, but he applieth it to the soul, because of the intuitive and experimental knowledge the soul ought to have in good things; and therefore he speaks of use and custom which the people of God have in this spiritual discerning: No wonder then that faith is called Heb. 11. [Greek or Hebrew], The real subsistence of things believed in the soul. (Aristotle calls the thick cloud that by the repercussion of the Sun beams makes the Rainbow [Greek or Hebrew], and the Rainbow [Greek or Hebrew],) and [Greek or Hebrew] an undeniable conviction of the mind of man, because where this grace is operatively upon the soul, it makes a real impression. Hence also the whole work and way of grace is compared to life,