A30243:996
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 36
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.
So that our Saviours reason lieth in this, Every thing expresseth the nature of that kind in which it is, That which comes of a Wolf hath a Wolvish nature, that which comes of a Sheep hath a Sheepish nature, and that which comes of a corrupt unclean kind must also be unclean: So that our Saviours expression is like ⟨p. 218⟩that of Jobs, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Lambs come not from Bears, nor Figs from Thorns.
So that our Saviours reason lyeth in this, Every thing expresseth the nature of that kind in which it is, That which comes of a Wolf hath a Wolvish nature, that which comes of a Sheep hath a Sheepish nature, and that which comes of a corrupt unclean kind must also be unclean: So that our Saviours expression is like ⟨p. 218⟩that of Jobs, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Lambs come not from Bears, nor Figs from Thorns.
The great Corruption of mans Nature is the ground of the necessity of Regeneration.1
- 1Observ. Whence the necessity of Regeneration proceeds.
Men never apply themselves to more than Morality and Civility, till they are persuaded that the greatest part of their vileness and loathsomeness lieth in their inward parts. We are most sinful and deformed there where the natural eye perceiveth nothing at all: Men never provide a plaster any further than they think the wound reacheth; now if men perceive no wound in the inward frame of their heart, they never look at any change there.