A30243:912
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 33
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.
And first it appeareth a wonder, If you consider that grace in a mans heart is not in its natural soil. It's like an Herb transplanted and put into some ground it doth not agree with. Now it's a wonder this herb of Grace doth not wither, alas the soil helps nothing to it. God gave command at first to ⟨p. 198⟩the earth to bring forth grass; but alas our hearts cannot do so: Grace in our hearts is like a stranger in a strange Land, like a spark of fire in the deep ocean, like a candle in a boisterous windy night, it's a wonder if it do not go out. And certainly if Adam so quickly lost his grace, when yet it was connatural to him, his heart was a fit soil; were it not for the Covenant of Grace, which fails not, a godly man would fall seven times a day wholly from God, as well as the Scripture saith he doth so often in temporal calamities. Oh then wonder how any grace comes to be alive in thy heart, that those coals are not smothered up, that every night thou dost not as that mother lie upon thy child, and through security and negligence kill this poor infant of grace.
And first it appeareth a wonder, If you consider that grace in a mans heart is not in its natural soyl. It's like an Herb transplanted and put into some ground it doth not agree with. Now it's a wonder this herb of Grace doth not wither, alas the soil helps nothing to it. God gave command at first to ⟨p. 198⟩the earth to bring forth grasse; but alas our hearts cannot do so: Grace in our hearts is like a stranger in a strange Land, like a spark of fire in the deep ocean, like a candle in a boisterous windy night, it's a wonder if it do not go out. And certainly if Adam so quickly lost his grace, when yet it was connatural to him, his heart was a fit soil; were it not for the Covenant of Grace, which fails not, a godly man would fall seven times a day wholly from God, as well as the Scripture saith he doth so often in temporal calamities. Oh then wonder how any grace comes to be alive in thy heart, that those coals are not smothered up, that every night thou dost not as that mother lie upon thy childe, and thorow security and negligence kill this poor infant of grace.