Holiness Must Be Preached Part 3

151. Is the doctrine and experience of holiness the great peculiarity of Methodism?

It was strikingly so in early Methodism, and is claimed to be so now by our leading writers.

1. Mr. Wesley said: "It is the grand depositum which God has given to the people called Methodists and chiefly to propagate this, it appears, God raised them up." ..... "We believe that God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodist in America was to reform the continent, and spread scriptural holiness over these lands." -- Methodist Discipline.

2. Dr. J. V. Watson says: "Holiness! it is the ark of the Lord among our doctrinal ideas. ... It is the very essence of our spiritual life, the vital artery of our whole system. It is the central sun around which the satellites all revolve in harmony, rejoicing in its broad, warm, genial, life-imparting smile. O for holiness individually in the membership! O for a holy ministry! Together they make an omnipotent church." -- Helps to Revivals, p. 222.

3. Dr. George Peck says, in his able and standard work on Christian Perfection: "The doctrine of entire sanctification, as a distinct work wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost, is the great distinguishing doctrine of Methodism. This given up, and we have little left which we do not hold in common with other evangelical denominations." -- Christian Perfection, p. 363).

4. Rev. William Arthur, of the English Wesleyan Church, said in a London address recently: "Methodism was not in its original life more marked by seeking justification by faith, than by seeking sanctification by faith."... "On us Methodists the past and the present join to lay an obligation even greater than that which rests on all our beloved brethren of other branches of the living vine, in regard to the doctrine and practice of holiness."

152. Did the early Methodist preachers in the country make holiness a prominent item in their ministry?

They did, and preached it clearly and powerfully all through the land; such men as Bishop Asbury, Bishop McKendree, Bishop George, Bishop Hedding, Bishop Whatcoat, Jesse Lee, George Pickering, Billy Hibbard, Freeborn Garrettson, Benjamin Abbott, and hundreds of others proclaimed this blessed doctrine. Dr. Olin says, "Preaching holiness was a peculiarity of early Methodism."

Dr. Bangs says, in his History of the Methodist Episcopal Church: "The doctrine more especially urged upon believers [in early Methodism] was that of sanctification or holiness of heart and life, and this was pressed upon them as their present privilege, depending for its accomplishment now on the faithfulness of God, who had promised to do it. It was this baptism of the Holy Ghost which fired and filled the hearts of God's ministers at that time."

Rev. Asa Kent, of the New England Conference, said in the Guide thirty years ago "I think the preachers fifty or sixty years ago (that is, eighty years ago), were generally more particular in explaining the doctrine of holiness of heart, and more earnestly urged the necessity of going on unto perfection, than is the case among us at the present time."