Wesley Corpus

“(2.) First. We not only allow, but earnestly contend, that there is no perfection in this life, which implies any v. dispensation from attending all the ordinances of God, or from doing good unto all men while we have time, though * especially unto the household of faith. We believe, that not only the babes in Christ, who have newly found redemp tion in his blood, but those also who are “grown up into perfect men, are indispensably obliged, as often as they have opportunity, “to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of Him, and to ‘search the Scriptures; by fasting, as well as temperance, to “keep their bodies under, and bring them into subjection;' and, above all, to pour out their souls in prayer, both secretly, and in the great congregation. “(3.) We Secondly believe, that there is no such perfec *~\ tion in this life, as implies an entire deliverance, either from | *ignorance, or mistake, in things not essential to salvation, or from manifold temptations, or from numberless infirmities, wherewith the corruptible body more or less presses down the soul. We cannot find any ground in Scripture to suppose, that any inhabitant of a house of clay is wholly exempt either from bodily infirmities, or from ignorance of many things; or to imagine any is incapable of mistake, or falling into divers temptations. “(4.) But whom then do you mean by ‘one that is perfect?’ We mean one in whom is ‘the mind which was in Christ,” and who so “walketh as Christ also walked;’ a man ‘that hath clean hands and a pure heart, or that is “cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit; one in whom is “no occasion of stumbling, and who, accordingly, “does not commit sin.” To declare this a little more particularly: We understand by that scriptural expression, “a perfect man, one in whom God hath fulfilled his faithful word, “From all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you: I will also save you from all your uncleannesses.