191. How was Mr. Wesley led to receive and teach the doctrine?
He says: "In the year 1725, being in the twenty-third year of my age I met with Bishop Taylor's 'Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying.' I instantly resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts, and words, and actions."
Bishop Taylor was an eminent prelate in the English Episcopal Church.
"In the following year, 1726," he says, "I met with Kempis' 'Christian Pattern.' The nature and extent of inward religion, the religion of the heart, now appeared to me in a stronger light than ever it had done before."
Thomas Kempis was an Augustine monk, distinguished for his apostolic simplicity and purity. His "Christian Pattern" has been translated into all modern languages, and published in more than a thousand editions.
"A year or two after," he says, " Mr. Law's 'Christian Perfection,' and 'Serious Call,' were put into my hands. These convinced me more than ever of the impossibility of being half a Christian." At this time Mr. Wesley became determined to be all the Lord's, to give him his soul, his body, and his substance.
William Law was a divine of the Church of England, and his "Serious Call to a Holy Life" was pronounced by Drs. Johnson and Gibbons as one of the most powerful works on devotion in the English language. The great soul of Wesley communed with these eminent men of God, and their writings had much to do in moulding his remarkable character. "In 1729," he says, "I began not only to read, but to study the Bible, as the one, the only standard of truth, and the only model of pure religion."
Dr. Stevens, in his History of Methodism, says: "The holy club was formed at Oxford in 1729, for the sanctification of its members. The Wesleys there sought purification, and Whitefield joined them for that purpose."
These divinely prepared instrumentalities in connection with association with the Moravians gradually led Mr. Wesley into the clear light and truth of this blessed doctrine and experience, and he felt divinely called to spread it through all lands. He thus became the great evangelist of Christian perfection.
Alexander Knox said, in the North British Review: "In John Wesley's view of Christian Perfection are combined in substance all the sublime morality of the Greek Fathers, the spirituality of the mystics, and the divine philosophy of our favorite Platonists. Macarius, Fenelon, Lucus, and all their respective classes, have been consulted and digested by him; and his ideas are essentially theirs."
Mr. Wesley's call, and his day were extraordinary. At that time God raised up three extraordinary men, of whom it may be said, "Their sound went forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." There was John Wesley to formulate the doctrine and preach it, Charles Wesley to put it into poetry and sing , and John Fletcher to refute those who wrote against it. They scattered this truth all over England and the United Kingdom, and the fruit thereof shakes today like Lebanon.
192. What was the chief characteristic of original Methodism?
Christian Perfection was, and has always been, the peculiar and distinctive doctrine of Methodism, the leading and central truth in her doctrinal teachings. As already noticed, it had been held before with different degrees of clearness by numerous individuals, but it had never been the distinguishing principle of any branch of the church. It was formulated by Mr. Wesley, and has been declared, from the commencement, to be "the depositum committed to the people called Methodist," and that God's design in raising up our church "was to spread scriptural holiness over these lands."
We admit Christian holiness should not be regarded as the doctrine of a sect, but the crowning doctrine of the Bible, yet it has been this which has mainly distinguished Methodism, and warranted the encomium of Dr. Chalmers: "Methodism is Christianity in earnest."
To confirm this I will quote from Dr. Warren, of Boston University, and Dr. John McClintock, two of the leading minds of the Church.
Dr. Warren says: "In Luther's mind, justification by faith was the central idea of Christianity, and in Calvin's the decree was the central idea. But Methodism, in respect to its inmost spirit and essence, is a viewing of Christianity from the standpoint of Christian perfection, or perfect love. In Mr. Wesley's experience, the struggle was for entire sanctification and so, in the study of the doctrines of the Bible, he looked at them all from the higher stage of religious consciousness, and perfect love became the formal principle of his theology." -- Introduction to Theology.
In his Centenary Address, Dr. John McClintock says: "Knowing exactly what I say, and taking the full responsibility of it, I repeat, we are the only Church in history, from the Apostles' time until now, that has put forth as its very elemental thought the great, central, pervading idea of the whole book of God from the beginning to the end the holiness of the human soul, heart, mind, and will. Go through all the confessions, of all the churches, and you will find this in no other. It may be called fanaticism, but that, dear friends, is our mission" ... There is our glory. There is our power, and there shall be our triumph."
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