“Christian Perfection! Why should the harmless phrase offend us? Perfection! Why should that lovely word frighten us? The word predestinate occurs but four times in all the Scriptures; and the word predestination not once; and yet Mr. Hill would justly exclaim against us, if we showed our wit, by calling out for ‘a little Foundery’ (or Tabernacle) ‘eye-salve’ to help us to see the word predestination once in all the Bible. Not so the word perfection. It occurs, with its derivatives, as frequently as most words in the Scripture; and not seldom in the very same sense in which we take it; nevertheless, we do not lay an undue stress upon the expression; and, if we thought that our condescension would answer any good end, we would give up that harmless and significant word.”
In reply to the unfair and untrue taunt that Wesley and Fletcher taught the doctrine of sinless perfection, Fletcher makes an admirable quotation from Wesley:—
“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.”
Fletcher then proceeds to prove that “Pious Calvinists have had, at times, nearly the same views of Christian Perfection” that he and Wesley had.
“They dissent from us,” says he, “because they confound the anti-evangelical law of innocence and the evangelical law of liberty—peccability and sin—Adamic and Christian Perfection; and because they do not consider that Christian Perfection, falling infinitely short of God’s absolute perfection, admits of a daily growth.”
The third section of Fletcher’s work is occupied with answers to popular objections; and the fourth amply proves that the doctrine for which he is contending is a doctrine taught in the formularies of the Church of England.
Mr. Hill, in the Eleventh Article of his “Fictitious Creed,” had made Fletcher, Wesley, and Walter Sellon, not only deny “The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England,” which they had “solemnly subscribed,” but also the truthful teaching of four Apostolical writers in the New Testament. With excessively bad taste, he had represented them as saying, “Let Peter, Paul, James, and John say what they will, and let the Reformers and Martyrs join their syren-song, their eyes were at best but half opened, for want of a little Foundery eye-salve.” Accordingly, the fifth and five following sections of Fletcher’s book are devoted to a refutation of this scandalous and almost profane slander. A large number of texts, from the Epistles of these four inspired writers, are most ably examined and explained,—texts incontestably proving that the doctrine of Christian Perfection was a doctrine taught by “Peter, Paul, James, and John.”
In the eleventh section of his book, Fletcher triumphantly answers the objections, founded upon certain texts in the writings of Solomon, Isaiah, and Job; and in the twelfth he adduces “a variety of arguments to prove the absurdity of the twin doctrines of Christian Imperfection and a Death-Purgatory.” In this, he furnishes a definition of Christian Perfection worthy of being quoted, namely:—
“Christian Perfection is nothing but the depth of evangelical repentance, the full assurance of faith, and the pure love of God and man shed abroad in a faithful believer’s heart, by the Holy Ghost given unto him, to cleanse him, and to keep him clean, from all filthiness of the flesh and Spirit; and to enable him to fulfil the law of Christ according to the talents he is entrusted with, and the circumstances in which he is placed in this world.”
In the next section (the thirteenth) Fletcher dwells upon “the mischievousness of the doctrines of Christian Imperfection, and a Death Purgatory.” He concludes his scathing arguments on this subject as follows:—