“My throat is not formed for the labours of preaching When I have preached three or four times together it inflames and fills up; and the efforts which I am then obliged to make heat my blood Thus I am, by nature, as well as by the circumstances I am in, obliged to employ my time in writing a little O that I may be enabled to do it to the glory of God!”
Perhaps nothing he wrote more fully conduced to that lofty purpose than his famous “Polemical Essay on the Twin Doctrines of Christian Imperfection and a Death Purgatory”; than which few clearer, more convincing, or more able vindications of Scriptural holiness have ever been written Can aught be plainer than the definition of Christian perfection which follows:—
“...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... This is evident from the descriptions of Christian perfection which we find in the New Testament.”
In a practical, almost homely, manner, Fletcher deals with questions we often hear put to-day. For instance :—
“How many baptisms, or effusions of the sanctifying Spirit, are necessary to cleanse a believer from all sin, and to kindle his soul into perfect love?... If you asked your physician how many doses of physic you must take before all the crudities of your stomach can be carried off, and your appetite perfectly restored, he would probably answer you that this depends upon the nature of those crudities, the strength of the medicine, and the manner in which your constitution will allow it to operate, and that, in general, you must repeat the dose, as you can bear, till the remedy has fully answered the desired end I return a similar answer: If one powerful baptism of the Spirit ‘seals you unto the day of redemption,’ and ’cleanses you from all’ moral ‘filthiness,’ so much the better If two or more are necessary, the Lord can repeat them.
“Which is the way to Christian perfection? Shall we go to it by internal stillness, agreeably to the direction of Moses and David ... or shall we press after it by an internal wrestling according to the commands of Christ?... The way to perfection is by the due combination of prevenient, assisting free grace, and of submissive, assisted free will... ‘God worketh in you to will and to do,’ says St. Paul Here he describes the passive office of faith, which submits to, and acquiesces in, every divine dispensation and operation. ‘Therefore work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,’ and, of consequence, with haste, diligence, ardour, and faithfulness... Would ye then wait aright for Christian perfection? Impartially admit the two Gospel axioms, and faithfully reduce them to practice In order to this, let them meet in your hearts, as the two legs of a pair of compasses meet in the rivet which makes them one compound instrument... When your heart quietly rests in God by faith, as it steadily acts the part of a passive receiver, it resembles the leg of the compasses which rests in the centre of a circle; and then the poet’s expressions, ‘restless, resigned’ ("Restless, resigned, for God I wait; for God my vehement soul stands still."—Wesley), describes its fixedness in God But when your heart swiftly moves towards God by faith, as it acts the part of a diligent worker; when your ardent soul follows after God, as a thirsty deer does after the water-brooks, it may be compared to the leg of the compasses which traces the circumference of a circle; and then these words of the poet, ‘restless’ and ‘vehement,’ properly belong to it.
“Is Christian perfection to be instantaneously brought down to us? or are we gradually to grow up to it? Shall we be made perfect in love by an habit of holiness suddenly infused into us, or by acts of feeble faith and feeble love so frequently repeated as to become strong, habitual, and evangelically natural to us?”
Such are the difficulties with which Fletcher deals, patiently and fully turning them inside out, comparing and contrasting, defining and enlarging, leading the reader step by step to the conclusion that Christian perfection is essentially the perfection of love, love, “the highest gift of God, humble, gentle, patient love,” shed abroad in the heart of the believer by the perpetual anointing of the Holy Spirit.
As he finds his climax in Wesley’s words, let us read them in the sense of his own quotation:—
“All visions, revelations, manifestations whatever, are little things compared to love.... The Heaven of heavens is love There is nothing higher in religion; there is, in effect, nothing else. If you look for anything but more love, you are looking wide of the mark, you are getting out of the royal way And when you are asking others, ’Have you received this or that blessing?’ if you mean any thing but more love, you mean wrong; you are leading them out of the way, and putting them upon a false scent Settle it, then, in your heart, that, from the moment God has saved you from all sin you are to aim at nothing but more of that love described in 1 Cor. xiii You can go no higher than this till you are carried into Abraham’s bosom.”