A30243:749
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 28
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.
So that in the words you have a necessary qualification for out entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
The qualification is in an exceptive expression; Unless your righteousness, &c. By righteousness is not meant that Evangelical righteousness imputed to us, but inherent wrought by Gods grace, and therefore called your righteousness, because subjected in us: our holiness is called righteousness, not because we are justified or accounted righteous before God because of it: but because there are all the essential parts of righteousness commanded by the Law, though defective in the gradual intentions thereof.
The qualification is in an exceptive expression; Unlesse your righteousnesse, &c. By righteousnesse is not meant that Evangelicall righteousnesse imputed to us, but inherent wrought by Gods grace, and therefore called your righteousnesse, because subjected in us: our holinesse is called righteousnesse, not because we are justified or accounted righteous before God because of it: but because there are all the essentiall parts of righteousnesse commanded by the Law, though defective in the graduall intentions thereof.
In the next place there is the necessary requisite to our righteousness, viz. that it doth exceed, abound, as the greek word, or increase and be greater then that [of the Scribes and Pharisees] Scribes are named because of their learning, and Pharisees because of their pretended exactness in piety. He doth not say, unless your righteousness be more then Publicans and Harlots, for that would easily be granted, but more then Scribes and Pharisees. Nor, unless it be like and equal to that of the Pharisees, but unless it exceed. This was extremely offensive and paradoxical, and it is, saith Musculus, as if in the time of Popery a Preacher had said, Unless your righteousness exceed that of the Minorites and Carthusians, you cannot be saved; Now the general ground why the Pharisees obedience was insufficient; was because it consisted in an external conformity to the Law, without any inward