A30243:818
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 30
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.
Thirdly, Where such bold apprehensions are concerning God, there is not only confidence in the general, that God is merciful, but they have also a fiducial application, & appropriation 1of God to their own selves in particular: And herein they have a great resemblance of justifying faith, as Paul said, Who loved me, and gave himself for me: so these will apply Christ to their particular: I thank my Christ, my Redeemer, my Saviour. In the Godly such applications are of saith in the most excellent manner, in the wicked it is of mere presumption, without any true ground at all. It is indeed the glorious fruit of the covenant of Grace, that thereby God becomes the God of his children, Hosea 2. They shall call me Ishi, and no more Baali, that is, My Husband, not my Lord: they shall have more dear and appropriated meditations of God; and at the end of the Chapter, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Hence Jeremiah, 4. 3, 4. God would have the Church repenting, say, My Father. Fiducial applications of Gods love to us are a duty, as the learned prove against the Papists: Hence faith is called, Eating and drinking of Christ. When a true broken heart loaded with sin, crieth out with Thomas, My God, my Lord, this is not carnal presumption, but holy believing. But now when men whose hearts were never smitten with Gods displeasure for sin, find no burden of it, and so cry not for ease to Christ; when (I say) such say, I thank my God, and my Redeemer, this is bold presumption in them. God is not the God of the dead, we may say, but of the living; he is not the God, the Father of such who live in, and love their wickedness. It would be a dishonour to be a Father of such Children: but he inviteth those to call him Father, and my Father, who are deeply humbled for sin under his hand, who are of self-emptied and poor spirits, acknowledging his Grace only. As therefore we are not to discourage the wounded heart, but to embolden him to appropriate Christ to himself in particular, and that he is to set against all se• vile fears and doubts that would like the Devils to the possessed man, keep him always about the tombs, and make him gash and wound himself; so we are also to set a flaming sword, as God did to Adam, to a profane man, lest he venture to come into this Paradise.