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takes, errors, and faults, and of many involuntary improprieties of speech and behaviour; yet, so long as their will is bent upon doing God's will ;—so long as they walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit;-so long as they fulfil the law of liberty by pure love, they do not sin according to the gospel; because (evangelically speaking) "sin is the transgression, and love is the fulfilling of that law." Far then from thinking, that there is the least absurdity in saying daily, "Vouchsafe to keep me this day without sin," we doubt not but in the believers, who "walk in the light as Christ is in the light," that deep petition is answered, the righteousness of the law, which they are under, is fulfilled; and of consequence, an evangelically sinless perfection is daily experienced.-I say evangelically sinless, because, without the word evangelically, the phrase sinless perfection gives an occasion of cavilling to those who seek it, as Mr. Wesley intimates in the following quotation, which is taken from his Plain account of Christian perfection, page 60. "To explain myself a little farther on this head: 1. Not only sin, properly so called, that is, a voluntary transgression of a known law, but sin, improperly so called, that is, an involuntary transgression of a divine law known or unknown, needs the atoning blood.-2. I believe there is no such perfection in this life, as excludes these involuntary transgressions, which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality.—3. Therefore sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself.-4. I believe a person filled with the love of God is still liable to these involuntary transgressions.-5. Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please; I do not, for the reasons above mentioned."

SECTION II.

If it were necessary, we could support the doctrine of Christian perfection stated in the preceding pages by almost numberless quotations from the most judicious and pious Calvinists. The sentiments of two or three of them may edify the reader, and give him a specimen of the candour, with which they have written upon the subject, when a spring tide of evangelical truth raised them above the shallows of their system.

"If love be sincere, (says pious Mr. Henry) it is accepted as the fulfilling of the law. Surely we serve a good Master, that has summed up all our duty in one word, and that a short word, and a sweet word, Love, the beauty and harmony of the universe. Loving and being loved is all the pleasure, joy, and happiness of an intelligent being God is love, and love is his image upon the soul. Where it is, the soul is well moulded, and the heart fitted for every good work.” Henry's exposition on Rom. xiii. 10.-Again: "It is well for us that by virtue of the covenant of grace, upon the score of Christ's righteousness, sincerity is accepted as our gospel perfection." Hen. on Gen. vi. 9.-[See the note on the word perfection, Sect. 1.]

Pions Bishop Hopkins is exactly of the same mind. "Consider," says he, "for your encouragement, that it is not so much the absolute and legal perfection of the work, as the [evangelical] perfection of the worker, that is, the perfection of the heart, which is looked at and rewarded by God. There is a two-fold perfection, the perfection of the work, and that of the workmau. The perfection of the work is,

when the work does so exactly and strictly answer the holy law of God, that there is no irregularity in it. The perfection of the workman is nothing but inward sincerity and uprightness of the heart towards God, which may be where there are many imperfections and defects intermingled. If God accepted and rewarded no work, but what is absolutely perfect in respect of the law; this would take off the wheels of all endeavours, for our obedience falls far short of legal perfection in this life;" (the Adamic law making no allowance for the weaknesses of fallen man.) "But we do not stand upon such terms as these are with our God. It is not so much what our works are, as what our heart is, that God looks at and will reward. Yet know also that if our hearts are perfect and sincere, we shall endeavour to the utmost of our power, that our works may be perfect according to the strictness of the law."

Bishop Leighton pleads also for the perfection we maintain, and by calvinistically supposing that perseverance is necessary to Christian perfection, he extols it above Adam's paradisiacal perfection. Take his own words abridged: "By obedience sanctification is here intimated: It signifies both habitual and actual obedience, renovation of the heart, and conformity to the divine will: The mind is illuminated by the Holy Ghost to know and believe the divine will; yea this faith is the great and chief part of this obedience, Rom. i. 8. The truth of the doctrine is first impressed on the mind, hence flows out pleasant obedience and full" [he does not say of sin, but]' of love: hence all the affections, and the whole body with its members, learn to give a willing obedience and submit to God; whereas before they resist him, being under the standard of Satan. This obedience, though imperfect [when it is measured by the christless law of paradisiacal innocence] yet has a certain, if I may so say, imperfect perfection.' [It is not legally but evangelically perfect] It is universal' [or perfect] three manner of ways, (1) In the subject:-It is not in the tongue alone, or in the hand, &c. but has its root in the heart-(2) In the object-It embraces the whole law, &c. It accounts no command little, which is from God, because he is great and highly esteemed: no command hard, though contrary to the flesh, because all things are easy to Love; there is the sam authority in all, as St. James divinely argues. And this authority is the golden chain to all the commandments" [" of the law of liberty preached by St. James "]which if broke in any link falls to pieces.-(3) In the duration, the whole man is subjected to the whole law, and that constantly.-That this threefold perfection of obedience is not a picture drawn by fancy, is evident in David, Psalm 119." Archbishop Leighton's com. on St. Peter, page 15.

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That learned prelate, as a pious man could not but be a perfertionist; though as a Calvinist, he frequently spoke the language of the imperfectionists. Take one more quotation, where he grants all that we contend for. "To be subject to him, (God) is truer happiness than to command the whole world. Pure love reckons thus. Though no farther reward were to follow; obedience to God (the perfection of his creature, and its very happiness) carries its full recompense in its own bosom. Yea love delights most in the hardest services: &c. It is love to him indeed to love the labour of love, and the service of it; and that not so much because it leads to rest, and ends in it, but because it is service to him whom we love: yea, that labour is in itself a rest: it is so natural and sweet to a soul that loves, as the revolution of the heavens, which is a motion in rest, and

rest in motion; changes not place, though running still: so the motion of love is truly heavenly, and circular still in God; beginning in him, and ending in him; and so not ending, but moving still without weariness, &c. According as the love is, so is the soul; it is made like to, yea, it is made one with, that which it loves, &c. By the love of God it is made divine, is one with him, &c. Now though fallen from this, we are again invited to it; though degenerated and accursed in our sinful, nature, yet we are renewed in Christ, and this commandment is renewed in him, and a new way of fulfilling it." ["even the way of faith in our Redeemer"]' is pointed out.' Select works of Archbishop Leighton, page 461. Where has Mr. Wesley even exceeded this high description of Christian perfection?

I grant that this pious prelate frequently confounds our celestial perfection of glory with our progressive perfection of grace, and en that account supposes that the latter is not attainable in this life: but even then he exhorts us to quit ourselves like sincere perfectionists. "Though men, says he, fall short of their aim, yet it is good to aim high: they shall shoot so much the higher, though not full so high as they aim. Thus we ought to be setting the state of perfection in our eye, resolving not to rest content below that, and to come as near it as we can, even before we come at it. Phil. iii. 11, 12. This is to act as one that has such a hope, such a state in view, and is still advancing towards it." Ibid. page 184. The mistake of the Archbishop will be particularly pointed out, where I shall show the true meaning of Phil. iii. 11-the passage, behind which he skreens the remains of his Calvinian prejudices.

By the preceding quotations, and by two more from the Rev. Mess. Whitfield and Romaine, which the reader will find at the end of Sect. IX. it appears, that pious Calvinists come at times very near the doctrine of Christian perfection; and if they do not constantly enforce it, it is [we apprehend] chiefly for the following reasons.

1. They generally confound the christless law of innocence with the evangelical law of Christ; and, because the former cannot be fulfilled by believers, they conclude that pure obedience to the latter is impracticable.

2. They confound peccability with sin :-the power of sinning with the actual use of that power. And so long as they suppose, that a bare natural capacity to sin is either original sin, or an evil propensity, we do not wonder at their believing, that original sin, or evil propensities must remain in our hearts till death removes us from this tempting world. But on what argument do they found this notion? Did not God create angels and man peccable? Or, in other terms,

* I think I have said in one of the Checks, that Archbishop Leighton doubted whether those, who do not sincerely aspire after perfection, have saving grace: That doubt (if1 now remember right) is Mr. Alleyne's: Though this quotation from the Archbishop shews, that he was not far from Alleyne's sentiment, if he was not in it. Pious Dr. Doddridge is explicit on this head. "To allow yourself," says he, deliberately to sit down satisfied with any imperfect attainments in religion, and to look upon a more confirmed and improved state of it as what you do not desire, nay, as what you secretly resolve that you will not pursue, is one of the most fatal signs we can well imagine, that you are an entire stranger to the first principles of it." Doldridge's Rise and Prog. Chap. xx.

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Did he not endue them with a power to sin or not to siu, to disobey or obey, as they pleased? Did not the event show that they had this tremendous power? But would it not be " basphemous to assert, that God created them full of original sin, and of evil propensities? -If an adult believer yields to temptation, and falls into sin as our first parents did; is it a proof that he never was cleansed from inbred sin? If sinning necessarily demonstrates that the heart was always teeming with depravity, will it not follow, that Adam and Eve were tainted with sin before their will began to decliue from original righteousness? Is it not however indubitable, from the nature of God, from scripture, and from sad experience, that after having been created in God's sinless image, and holy likeness, our first parents, as well as some angels, were drawn away of their own self-conceived lust, and became evil by the power of their own free-agency? Is it reasonable to think, that the most holy Christians, so long as the day of their visitation and probation lasts in this tempting wilderness, are in that respect above Adam in paradise, and above angels in heaven? And may we not conclude, that as Satan and Adam insensibly fell into sin, the one from the height of his celestial perfection, and the other from the summit of his paradisiacal excellence, without any previous bias inclining him to corruption: so may those believers, whose hearts have been completely purified by faith, gradually depart from the faith, and fall so low as to account the blood of the covenant, wherewith they were sanctified, an unholy thing?

3. The prejudices of our opponents, are increased by their confounding Adamic * and Christian perfection: two perfections these, which are as distinct as the garden of Eden and the Christian church, Adamic perfection came from God our Creator in paradise, before any trial of Adam's faithful obedience: and Christian perfection comes from God our Redeemer and Sanctifier in the Christian church, after a severe trial of the obedience of faith. Adamic perfection might be lost by doing despite to the preserving love of God our Creator; and Christian perfection may be lost by doing despite to the redeeming love of God our Saviour. Adamic perfection extended to the whole man: his body was perfectly sound in all its

*Between Adamic and Christian perfection we place the gracious innocence of little children. They are not only full of peccability like Adam, but debilitated in all their animal and rational faculties, and of consequence, fit to become an easy prey to every temptation, through the weakness of their reason, and the corruption of their concupiscible and irascible powers. Nevertheless, till they begin personally to prefer moral evil to moral good, we may consider them as evangelically or graciously innocent. I say, graciously innocent, because, if we consider them in the seed of fallen Adam, we find them naturally children of wrath, and under the curse; but if we consider them in the seed of the woman, which was promised to Adam and to his posterity, we find them graciously placed in a state of redemption, and evangelical salvation. For the free gift, which is come upon all men to justification, belongs first to them, Christ having sanctified infancy first. And therefore we do not scruple to say, after our Lord, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Now the kingdom of heaven is not of sinners as sinners; but of little children, as being innocent through the free-gift: or of adult, as being penitent, that s, turned from their sins to Christ

parts: and his soul in all its powers. But Christian perfection extends chiefly to the will, which is the capital, moral power of the soul; leaving the understanding ignorant of ten thousand things, and the body dead because of sin.

4. Another capital mistake lies at the root of the opposition which our Calvinian brethren make against Christian perfection. They imagine, that upon our principles, the grace of an adult Christian, is like the body of an adult man, which can grow no more. But this consequence flows from their fancy, and not from our doctrine. We exhort the strongest believers to grow up to Christ in all things; asserting that there is no holiness, and no happiness in heaven [much less upon earth] which do not admit of a growth, except the holiness and the happiness of God himself: because, in the very nature of things, a being absolutely perfect, and in every sense infinite, can never have any thing added to him. But infinite additions can be made to beings every way finite, such as glorified saints and holy angels are.

Hence it appears, that the comparison which we make between the ripeness of a fruit, and the maturity of a believer's grace, cannot be carried into an exact parallel. For a perfect Christian grows far more than a feeble believer, whose growth is still obstructed by the shady thorns of sin, and by the draining suckers of iniquity. Besides, a fruit which is come to its perfection, instead of growing, falls and decays: whereas a babe in Christ is called to grow, till he becomes a perfect Christian;-a perfect Christian, till he becomes a disembodied spirit;-a disembodied spirit, till he reaches the perfection of a saint, glorified in body and soul;-and such a saint, till he has fathomed the infinite depths of divine perfection, that is, to all eternity. For if we go on from faith to faith, and are spiritually changed from glory to glory, by beholding God darkly through a glass on earth; much more shall we experience improving changes, when we shall see Him as he is, and behold him face to face in various, numberless, and still brighter discoveries of himself in heaven. If Mr. Hill did but consider this, he would no more suppose that Christian perfection is the pharisaic rickets, which put a stop to the growth of believers, and turn them into " temporary monsters."

Again:

Does a well-meant mistake defile the conscience? You inadvertently encourage idleness and drunkenness by kindly relieving an idle, drunken beggar, who imposes upon your charity by plausible lies: is this loving error a sin?-A blundering Apothecary sends you arsenic for alum; you use it as alum, and poison your child; but are you a murderer, if you give the fatal dose in love? Suppose the tempter had secretly mixed some of the forbidden fruit, with other fruits that Eve had lawfully gathered for use; would she have sinned if she had inadvertently eaten of it, and given a share to her husband? After humbly confessing and deploring her undesigned error, her secret fault, her accidental offence, her involuntary trespass; would she not have been as innocent as ever?-I go farther still, and ask: may not a man who holds many right opinions, be a perfect lover of the world? And, by a parity of reason, may not a man, who holds many wrong opinions, be a perfect lover of God? Have not some Calvinists died with their hearts overflowing with perfect love, and their heads fall of the notion, that God set his everlasting, absolute hatred upon myriads of men before the foundation of the world? Nay, is it not

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