A30243:889
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 32
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.
Sixthly, Escaping of worldly pollutions, is not always an argument of a renewed 1nature, because sin may drive out sin, even as Divines say about popish exorcisms, when the priest calls out devils from men possessed, it is by collusion: the devil recedes not, because those exorcisms are of divine efficacy, but because hereby he would confirm people more in believing a lye. Thus a man that hath propounded ⟨p. 193⟩to himself any great worldly end, of profit, pleasure, or advancement, he must for a while be a saint, that he may be a devil. Thus divers Heretics have been men of unblamable, and excellent lives, that their seeming Sanctity may stamp the greater reputation upon their Heresies. It is Machiave's counsel to his great ones, That by all means they should get the name and repute of virtue […] though the thing it self be a burden; see then whether thy reformation of life, be not subordinate to carnal designs; if so, thou art but a serpent with a glistering colour, but a body full of poison.
Sixthly, Escaping of worldly pollutions, is not alwaies an argument of a renewed 1nature, because sin may drive out sin, even as Divines say about popish exorcismes, when the priest calls out divels from men possessed, it is by collusion: the divel recedes not, because those exorcismes are of divine efficacy, but because hereby he would confirm people more in believing a lye. Thus a man that hath propounded ⟨p. 193⟩to himself any great worldly end, of profit, pleasure, or advancement, he must for a while be a saint, that he may be a divel. Thus divers Hereticks have been men of unblamable, and excellent lives, that their seeming Sanctity may stamp the greater reputation upon their Heresies. It is Machiave's counsel to his great ones, That by all means they should get the name and repute of virtue 〈…〉 though the thing it self be a burthen; see then whether thy reformation of life, be not subordinate to carnal designs; if so, thou art but a serpent with a glistering colour, but a body full of poyson.