Wesley Corpus

12. My last and most deliberate thoughts on this head were published but a few months since, in these words: (1) “Perhaps the general prejudice against Christian per fection may chiefly arise from a misapprehension of the nature of it. We willingly allow, and continually declare, there is no such perfection in this life, as implies either a dispensation from doing good and attending all the ordinances of God; or a freedom from ignorance, mistake, temptation, and a thou sand infirmities necessarily connected with flesh and blood. (2.) “First. We not only allow, but earnestly contend, that there is no perfection in this life, which implies any dispensa tion from attending all the ordinances of God, or from ‘doing good unto all men, while we have time, though “specially unto the household of faith. We believe, that not only the babes in Christ, who have newly found redemption in his blood, but those also who are “grown up into perfect men, are indis pensably 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 perfection in his 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 cor ruptible 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 inca pable of mistake, or falling into divers temptations. (4) “‘But whom then do you mean by one that is perfect P” We mean one in whom ‘is the mind which was in Christ,’ and who so “walketh as Christ 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 ‘doth not commit sin.