A30243:739
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 27
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.
2. Here is no ground of confidence in these, because they are consistent with the ordinary 1practice of gross and sinful courses. The Jews cried, The temple, the temple of the Lord, when yet their lives were fraughted with murders, adulteries, and all kind of notorious sinfulness; and this is still to be seen, none so zealous for superstitious ways, as men of corrupt lives, and dissolute conversations; and it seemeth very strange that a man should be so seemingly for God in worship, and yet so really against him in practice. The first Chapter of Isaiah is a most excellent remonstrance against such men, I have your new moons, your sacrifices are as if a dogs hear were cut off. Wash ye, make ye clean. Here you see that which God looks at, is real Obedience: yea God judgeth all such worship a great dishonour to him. And indeed it must needs be so, for such men think God like themselves, Thou thoughtest (saith God) that I was such an one as thy self. God is indeed the God of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob, the God of believers and of holy men, but not the God of Cain, Lamech, Esau and Judas: What blasphemy would it be to entitle God to such. God is God of the living, and not of the dead, in this sense, viz. who are dead in gross and wicked impieties. Know therefore, that notwithstanding all thy worship, thy ceremonious addresses, thou art but a dead corpse, which makes every thing unclean it toucheth.
2. Here is no ground of confidence in these, because they are consistent with the ordinary 1practice of grosse and sinfull courses. The Jews cried, The temple, the temple of the Lord, when yet their lives were fraughted with murders, adulteries, and all kinde of notorious sinfulness; and this is still to be seen, none so zealous for superstitious waies, as men of corrupt lives, and dissolute conversations; and it seemeth very strange that a man should be so seemingly for God in worship, and yet so really against him in practice. The first Chapter of Isaiah is a most excellent remonstrance against such men, I have your new moons, your sacrifices are as if a dogs hear were cut off. Wash ye, make ye clean. Here you see that which God looks at, is real Obedience: yea God judgeth all such worship a great dishonour to him. And indeed it must needs be so, for such men think God like themselves, Thou thoughtest (saith God) that I was such an one as thy self. God is indeed the God of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob, the God of believers and of holy men, but not the God of Cain, Lamech, Esau and Judas: What blasphemy would it be to entitle God to such. God is God of the living, and not of the dead, in this sense, viz. who are dead in gross and wicked impieties. Know therefore, that notwithstanding all thy worship, thy ceremonious addresses, thou art but a dead corpse, which makes every thing unclean it toucheth.