A30243:970
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 4 › Sermon 35
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.
First, That it is a most requisite, yea, necessary thing for every Minister that is to 1be a Teacher, and guide of others, to understand well, and be inwardly acquainted with this Doctrine of a new birth. When our Saviour saith, Art thou a Teacher, a Master of the people, and knowest not these things? he supposeth it was a great shame and reproach to him: And indeed, seeing the one principal end of the Ministry is to beget men anew unto God, how can he be skilful in that office, which is wholly unacquainted with the end of it? It is true, that opinion of the Donatists: That an ungodly Minister is never used instrumentally to the regeneration of others, is rejected as false. Judas, and those who preached Christ out of envy, might be serviceable to bring others to Christ, else Paul would not have rejoiced in it, Phil. 1. 19. although this it may be is very rare; and as God in the Old Testament would have no Minister with any bodily deformity, so in the New, without any soul-deformity; he must be unblameable: we do not therefore dispute of the possibility, but it is very rare for dead men, to beget living men; for ministers unexperienced in the life of grace, to revive others: although this be so, yet it is the auditors duty, as our Saviour informeth about the Scribes and Pharisees, To hear them as long as they sit in Moses chair; but not to do what they do: for a man to neglect good doctrine, because of the bad practice of the teacher, is as Austin well saith, as if a traveller that seeth the post in the high way, that hath an hand to direct him on his journey, should not go forward because the post that directeth him doth not go forward. But though these things are so; yet it is a wonderful uncomfortable and deading thing to live under that preaching, which is not discovering of a work of regeneration within: when a Minister speaks of this great work, as some bragging men of the remotest part of the world, which he hath only by hear-say, or by books, not by experience in his travels. The Minister must speak from the heart, else he cannot speak to the heart; as they could not give any account of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which had not so much as heard whether there was an holy Ghost or no; so those Ministers are never able to give direction, consolation to the Godly in their temptations about this, that know not the power of it in their own hearts.
First, That it is a most requisite, yea, necessary thing for every Minister that is to