189. Did the general church abide in this simple way of faith in Christ, and in his power to save to the uttermost?
No; if she had, we believe the world would have been converted long ago, and the eleven hundred years -- the long night of the dark ages -- would never have given birth to Mohammedanism, Arianism, and Greek and Roman Catholicism. The mystery of iniquity, which the apostles declared had begun to work in their day, developed itself in one corruption after another in the church, even from the first century; so that in the third and fourth centuries there were many human devices to supplant simple faith in Christ.
In the third century, contemporary with the early corruptions of the Roman Church, in her alliance with the Emperor Constantine, a branch of the Western Church broke away from its fellowship with Popery, and fled to the mountains of Piedmont, to enjoy the unrestrained liberty of worshiping Christ in scriptural purity and simplicity. There, until the present time, this ancient church of the Vaudois has remained, and the gates of hell have not prevailed against her in her many persecutions of fire and sword by the bloody Church of Rome.
They kept their residence in the Waldensian mountains, and valleys of the Alps, and of the Pyrenees, where age after age they found an asylum from the tyranny of Popery. They have kept their testimony pure in the word of God, and their doctrine and discipline have been preserved from the time of the primitive martyrs, and they are now the principal regenerators of Italy. They hailed with joy the early Hussite reformation and the great reformation under Luther, having kept alive the Scripture doctrine of justification by faith, and sanctification by the Holy Ghost.
Their faith in the pure word of God, and their evangelical experience, sustained them though centuries of darkness and persecution. Their apostolic origin, perpetuity, general orthodoxy, evangelical simplicity, and sanctity of character, have been repeatedly admitted by the Church of Rome herself, although they have been the objects of her most cruel persecutions for more than a thousand years.
It was among their descendants, the Moravians, that Mr. Wesley found this doctrine, which had been kept as a lamp of celestial fire in their experience. Count Zinzendorf told Mr. Wesley "For ten years I have not done my own will in any thing, great or small. My own will is hell to me."
190. Did not the doctrine of Christian perfection originate with Mr. Wesley and the Methodist Church?
By no means. The outlines of this doctrine and experience, as we have seen, can be culled from the writings of the best divines from the time of Christ. Mr. Wesley and his coadjutors taught it as they found it in the Bible and experienced it in their own hearts. The essential elements of the Wesleyan doctrine have been developed from the earliest ages of the church in proportion as vital Christianity has prevailed. Every great evangelist since the apostles, who has made his mark on his age, has taught the doctrine with more or less distinctness. In all the great reformations, this doctrine and experience was broached, but it was not the time for its full representation and spread, as the church was not clear in her justification, and was struggling with the innovations and corruptions of Popery.
In France, in 1620, it was taught by Molinos, who suffered imprisonment and death for this scriptural truth. It was then called mysticism, or Quietism. Archbishop Fenelon, a French bishop, taught the experience in all its essential items, though he mixed with it much of error and human merit. Any man who could cry out, as he did, "O Lord, take my heart, for I cannot give it; and when thou hast it, oh, keep it, for I cannot keep it for thee; and save me in spite of myself; for Jesus Christ's sake," can not drift very far from the truth.
Madam Guyon was clear in the experience, and for her devotion to God and his truth was imprisoned in the French Bastile for four years.
George Fox, the founder of the society called Friends, taught that it was the privilege of Christians to be fully saved from sin, and was imprisoned and greatly persecuted for teaching and professing Christian holiness nearly a hundred years before the Wesleys began to preach it.
Samuel Rutherford, more than two hundred years ago, said: "Christ is more to be loved for giving us sanctification than justification. It is in some respects greater love in him to sanctify than to justify, for he maketh us more like himself in his own essential portraiture and image in sanctification."
In the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal church we have the following: "Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Vouchsafe to keep us this day without sin, and grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee."
No Christian in the world would hesitate to offer these prayers, and yet they are perfectly accordant with the doctrine of Christian perfection, and a perpetual endorsement of this doctrine in the most solemn spiritual services of that church.
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