A30243:983
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.
Seventhly, The busying of mens selves about superstitious invented worship by men, doth also make a man altogether ignorant, or not attentive to this. We may say 1to Monks, Friars, Superstitious persons, Are you, or would you be accounted Master in Israel, and know nothing of this? look on all the popish devotional books, their heaps of external ceremonies, and in all these things, not a word or manifestation of any regeneration. Thus it was also with the Jews, and with the Pharisees; they placed all religion in external addresses to God, but never acquainted themselves with the knowledge of the inward efficacious work of grace. The heart of a man is finite; it is not a spring that can fill two channels; if therefore all the intention of it run out upon invented worship, it neglecteth what is more necessary. Hence it is that none are greater enemies and scorners of this work of God, then those that are most pertinacious in traditional worship. He that is busy where he should not, is always negligent where he ought not to be: who hath required these things at your hands? saith Christ; but where things were required, there they did nothing at all.
Seventhly, The busying of mens selves about superstitious invented worship by men, doth also make a man altogether ignorant, or not attentive to this. We may say 1to Monks, Fryars, Superstitious persons, Are you, or would you be accounted Master in Israel, and know nothing of this? look on all the popish devotional books, their heaps of external ceremonies, and in all these things, not a word or manifestation of any regeneration. Thus it was also with the Jews, and with the Pharisees; they placed all religion in external addresses to God, but never acquainted themselves with the knowledge of the inward efficacious work of grace. The heart of a man is finite; it is not a spring that can fill two channels; if therefore all the intention of it run out upon invented worship, it neglecteth what is more necessary. Hence it is that none are greater enemies and scorners of this work of God, then those that are most pertinacious in traditional worship. He that is busie where he should not, is alwaies negligent where he ought not to be: who hath required these things at your hands? saith Christ; but where things were required, there they did nothing at all.
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