3. Erroneous Views refuted by these Scripture Passages

A. The Antinomian,—which holds that, since Christ’s obedience and sufferings have satisfied the demands of the law, the believer is free from obligation to observe it.

The Antinomian view rests upon a misinterpretation of Rom. 6:14—“Ye are not under law, but under grace.” Agricola and Amsdorf (1559) were representatives of this view. Amsdorf said that “good works are hurtful to salvation.” But Melanchthon’s words furnish the reply: “Sola fides justificat, sed fides non est sola.” F. W. Robertson states it: “Faith alone justifies, but not the faith that is alone.” And he illustrates: “Lightning alone strikes, but not the lightning which is without thunder; for that is summer lightning and harmless.” See Browning’s poem, Johannes Agricola in Meditation, in Dramatis Personæ, 300—“I have God’s warrant, Could I blend All hideous sins as in a cup, To drink the mingled venoms up, Secure my nature will convert The draught to blossoming gladness.” Agricola said that Moses ought to be hanged. This is Sanctification without Perseverance.

Sandeman, the founder of the sect called Sandemanians, asserted as his fundamental principle the deadliness of all doings, the necessity for inactivity to let God do his work in the soul. See his essay, Theron and Aspasia, referred to by Allen, in his Life of Jonathan Edwards, 114. Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts, in 1637, for holding “two dangerous errors: 1. The Holy Spirit personally dwells in a justified person; 2. No sanctification can evidence to us our justification.” Here the latter error almost destroyed the influence of the former truth. There is a little Antinomianism in the popular hymn: “Lay your deadly doings down, Down at Jesus’ feet; Doing is a deadly thing; Doing ends in death.” The colored preacher’s poetry only presented the doctrine in the concrete: “You may rip and te-yar, You may cuss and swe-yar, But you’re jess as sure of heaven, ’S if you’d done gone de-yar.” Plain Andrew Fuller in England (1754–1815) did excellent service in overthrowing popular Antinomianism.

To this view we urge the following objections:

(a) That since the law is a transcript of the holiness of God, its demands as a moral rule are unchanging. Only as a system of penalty and a method of salvation is the law abolished in Christ’s death.

Mat. 5:17–19—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”; 48—“Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”; 1 Pet. 1:16—“Ye shall be holy; for I am holy”; Rom. 10:4—“For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth”; Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ”; 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us”; Col. 2:14—“having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross”; Heb. 2:15—“deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

(b) That the union between Christ and the believer secures not only the bearing of the penalty of the law by Christ, but also the impartation of Christ’s spirit of obedience to the believer,—in other words, brings him into communion with Christ’s work, and leads him to ratify it in his own experience.

Rom. 8:9, 10, 15—“ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.… For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear: but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father”; Gal. 5:22–25—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof”; 1 John 1:6—“If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth”; 3:6—“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him.”

(c) That the freedom from the law of which the Scriptures speak, is therefore simply that freedom from the constraint and bondage of the law, which characterizes those who have become one with Christ by faith.

Ps. 119:97—“O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day”; Rom. 3:8, 31—“and why not (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come? whose condemnation is just.… Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid: nay, we establish the law”; 6:14, 15, 22—“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid.… now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life”; 7:6—“But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter”; 8:4—“that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”; 1 Cor. 7:22—“he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord’s freedman”; Gal. 5:1—“For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage”; 1 Tim. 1:9—“law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly”; James 1:25—“the perfect law, the law of liberty.”

To sum up the doctrine of Christian freedom as opposed to Antinomianism, we may say that Christ does not free us, as the Antinomian believes, from the law as a rule of life. But he does free us (1) from the law as a system of curse and penalty; this he does by bearing the curse and penalty himself. Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation; this he does by making his obedience and merits ours. Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion; this he does by giving to us the spirit of obedience and sonship, by which the law is progressively realized within.

Christ, then, does not free us, as the Antinomian believes, from the law as a rule of life. But he does free us (1) from the law as a system of curse and penalty. This he does by bearing the curse and penalty himself. Just as law can do nothing with a man after it has executed its death-penalty upon him, so law can do nothing with us, now that its death-penalty has been executed upon Christ. There are some insects that expire in the act of planting their sting; and so, when the law gathered itself up and planted its sting in the heart of Christ, it expended all its power as a judge and avenger over us who believe. In the Cross, the law as a system of curse and penalty exhausted itself; so we were set free.

Christ frees us (2) from the law with its claims as a method of salvation: in other words, he frees us from the necessity of trusting our salvation to an impossible future obedience. As the sufferings of Christ, apart from any sufferings of ours, deliver us from eternal death, so the merits of Christ, apart from any merits of ours, give us a title to eternal life. By faith in what Christ has done and simple acceptance of his work for us, we secure a right to heaven. Obedience on our part is no longer rendered painfully, as if our salvation depended on it, but freely and gladly, in gratitude for what Christ has done for us. Illustrate by the English nobleman’s invitation to his park, and the regulations he causes to be posted up.

Christ frees us (3) from the law as an outward and foreign compulsion. In putting an end to legalism, he provides against license. This he does by giving the spirit of obedience and sonship. He puts love in the place of fear; and this secures an obedience more intelligent, more thorough, and more hearty, than could have been secured by mere law. So he frees us from the burden and compulsion of the law, by realizing the law within us by his Spirit. The freedom of the Christian is freedom in the law, such as the musician experiences when the scales and exercises have become easy, and work has turned to play. See John Owen, Works, 3:366–651; 6:1–313; Campbell, The Indwelling Christ, 73–81.

Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 195—“The supremacy of those books which contain the words of Jesus himself [i. e., the Synoptic Gospels] is that they incorporate, with the other elements of the religious life, the regulative will. Here for instance [in John] is the gospel of the contemplative life, which, ‘beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord is changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:18). The belief is that, with this beholding, life will take care of itself. Life will never take care of itself. Among other things, after the most perfect vision, it has to ask what aspirations, principles, affections, belong to life, and then to cultivate the will to embody these things. Here is the common defect of all religions. They fail to marry religion to the common life. Christ did not stop short of this final word; but if we leave him for even the greatest of his disciples, we are in danger of missing it.” This utterance of Gould is surprising in several ways. It attributes to John alone the contemplative attitude of mind, which the quotation given shows to belong also to Paul. It ignores the constant appeals in John to the will: “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21). It also forgets that “life” in John is the whole being, including intellect, affection, and will, and that to have Christ for one’s life is absolutely to exclude Anti-nomianism.

B. The Perfectionist,—which holds that the Christian may, in this life, become perfectly free from sin. This view was held by John Wesley in England, and by Mahan and Finney in America.

Finney, Syst. Theol., 500, declares regeneration to be “an instantaneous change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.” The claims of Perfectionists, however, have been modified from “freedom from all sin,” to “freedom from all known sin,” then to “entire consecration,” and finally to “Christian assurance.” H. W. Webb-Peploe, in S. S. Times, June 25, 1898—“The Keswick teaching is that no true Christian need wilfully or knowingly sin. Yet this is not sinless perfection. It is simply according to our faith that we receive, and faith only draws from God according to our present possibilities. These are limited by the presence of indwelling corruption; and, while never needing to sin within the sphere of the light we possess, there are to the last hour of our life upon the earth powers of corruption within every man, which defile his best deeds and give to even his holiest efforts that ‘nature of sin’ of which the 9th Article in the Church of England Prayerbook speaks so strongly.” Yet it is evident that this corruption is not regarded as real sin, and is called ‘nature of sin’ only in some non-natural sense.

Dr. George Peck says: “In the life of the most perfect Christian there is every day renewed occasion for self-abhorrence, for repentance, for renewed application of the blood of Christ, for application of the rekindling of the Holy Spirit.” But why call this a state of perfection? F. B. Meyer: “We never say that self is dead; were we to do so, self would be laughing at us round the corner. The teaching of Romans 6 is, not that self is dead, but that the renewed will is dead to self, the man’s will saying Yes to Christ, and No to self; through the Spirit’s grace it constantly repudiates and mortifies the power of the flesh.” For statements of the Perfectionist view, see John Wesley’s Christian Theology, edited by Thornley Smith, 265–273; Mahan, Christian Perfection, and art. in Bib. Repos. 2d Series, vol. iv, Oct. 1840:408–428; Finney, Systematic Theology, 586–766; Peck, Christian Perfection; Ritschl, Bib. Sac., Oct. 1878:656; A. T. Pierson, The Keswick Movement.

In reply, it will be sufficient to observe:

(a) That the theory rests upon false conceptions: first, of the law,—as a sliding-scale of requirement graduated to the moral condition of creatures, instead of being the unchangeable reflection of God’s holiness; secondly, of sin,—as consisting only in voluntary acts instead of embracing also those dispositions and states of the soul which are not conformed to the divine holiness; thirdly, of the human will,—as able to choose God supremely and persistently at every moment of life, and to fulfil at every moment the obligations resting upon it, instead of being corrupted and enslaved by the Fall.

This view reduces the debt to the debtor’s ability to pay,—a short and easy method of discharging obligations. I can leap over a church steeple, if I am only permitted to make the church steeple low enough; and I can touch the stars, if the stars will only come down to my hand. The Philistines are quite equal to Samson, if they may only cut off Samson’s locks. So I can obey God’s law, if I may only make God’s law what I want it to be. The fundamental error of perfectionism is its low view of God’s law; the second is its narrow conception of sin. John Wesley: “I believe a person filled with love of God is still liable to involuntary transgressions. Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please; I do not.” The third error of perfectionism is its exaggerated estimate of man’s power of contrary choice. To say that, whatever may have been the habits of the past and whatever may be the evil affections of the present, a man is perfectly able at any moment to obey the whole law of God, is to deny that there are such things as character and depravity. Finney, Gospel Themes, 383, indeed, disclaimed “all expectations of attaining this state ourselves, and by our own independent, unaided efforts.” On the Law of God, see pages 537–544.

Augustine: “Every lesser good has an essential element of sin.” Anything less than the perfection that belongs normally to my present stage of development is a coming short of the law’s demand. R. W. Dale, Fellowship with Christ, 359—“For us and in this world, the divine is always the impossible. Give me a law for individual conduct which requires a perfection that is within my reach, and I am sure that the law does not represent the divine thought. ‘Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 3:12)—this, from the beginning, has been the confession of saints.” The Perfectionist is apt to say that we must “take Christ twice, once for justification and once for sanctification.” But no one can take Christ for justification without at the same time taking him for sanctiflcation. Dr. A. A. Hodge calls this doctrine “Neonomianism,” because it holds not to one unchanging, ideal, and perfect law of God, but to a second law given to human weakness when the first law has failed to secure obedience.

(1) The law of God demands perfection. It is a transcript of God’s nature. Its object is to reveal God. Anything less than the demand of perfection would misrepresent God. God could not give a law which a sinner could obey. In the very nature of the case there can be no sinlessness in this life for those who have once sinned. Sin brings incapacity as well as guilt. All men have squandered a part of the talent intrusted to them by God, and therefore no man can come up to the demands of that law which requires all that God gave to humanity at its creation together with interest on the investment. (2) Even the best Christian comes short of perfection. Regeneration makes only the dominant disposition holy. Many affections still remain unholy and require to be cleansed. Only by lowering the demands of the law, making shallow our conceptions of sin, and mistaking temporary volition for permanent bent of the will, can we count ourselves to be perfect. (3) Absolute perfection is attained not in this world but in the world to come. The best Christians count themselves still sinners, strive most earnestly for holiness, have imputed but not inherent sanctification, are saved by hope.

(b) That the theory finds no support in, but rather is distinctly contradicted by, Scripture.

First, the Scriptures never assert or imply that the Christian may in this life live without sin; passages like 1 John 3:6, 9, if interpreted consistently with the context, set forth either the ideal standard of Christian living or the actual state of the believer so far as respects his new nature.

1 John 3:6—“Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him”; 9—“Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.” Ann. Par. Bible, in loco:—“John is contrasting the states in which sin and grace severally predominate, without reference to degrees in either, showing that all men are in one or the other.” Neander: “John recognizes no intermediate state, no gradations. He seizes upon the radical point of difference. He contrasts the two states in their essential nature and principle. It is either love or hate, light or darkness, truth or a lie. The Christian life in its essential nature is the opposite of all sin. If there be sin, it must be the afterworking of the old nature.” Yet all Christians are required in Scripture to advance, to confess sin, to ask forgiveness, to maintain warfare, to assume the attitude of ill desert in prayer, to receive chastisement for the removal of imperfections, to regard full salvation as matter of hope, not of present experience.

John paints only in black and white; there are no intermediate tints or colors. Take the words in 1 John 3:6 literally, and there never was and never can be a regenerate person. The words are hyperbolical, as Paul’s words in Rom. 6:2—“We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein”—are metaphorical; see E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., 1892:375, note. The Emperor William refused the request for an audience prepared by a German-American, saying that Germans born in Germany but naturalized in America became Americans: “Ich kenne Amerikaner, Ich kenne Deutsche, aber Deutsch-Amerikaner kenne Ich nicht”—“I know Americans, I know Germans, but German-Americans I do not know.”

Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 110—“St. John uses the noun sin and the verb to sin in two senses: to denote the power or principle of sin, or to denote concrete acts of sin. The latter sense he generally expresses by the plural sins.… The Christian is guilty of particular acts of sin for which confession and forgiveness are required, but as he has been freed from the bondage of sin he cannot habitually practise it nor abide in it, still less can he be guilty of sin in its superlative form, by denial of Christ.”

Secondly, the apostolic admonitions to the Christians and Hebrews show that no such state of complete sanctification had been generally attained by the Christians of the first century.

Rom. 8:24—“For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth?” The party feeling, selfishness, and immorality found among the members of the Corinthian church are evidence that they were far from a state of entire sanctification.

Thirdly, there is express record of sin committed by the most perfect characters of Scripture—as Noah, Abraham, Job, David, Peter.

We are urged by perfectionists “to keep up the standard.” We do this, not by calling certain men perfect, but by calling Jesus Christ perfect. In proportion to our sanctification, we are absorbed in Christ, not in ourselves. Self-consciousness and display are a poor evidence of sanctification. The best characters of Scripture put their trust in a standard higher than they have ever realized in their own persons, even in the righteousness of God.

Fourthly, the word τέλειος, as applied to spiritual conditions already attained, can fairly be held to signify only a relative perfection, equivalent to sincere piety or maturity of Christian judgment.

1 Cor. 2:6—“We speak wisdom, however, among the perfect,” or, as the Am. Revisers have it, “among them that are fullgrown”; Phil. 3:15—“Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded.” Men are often called perfect, when free from any fault which strikes the eyes of the world. See Gen. 6:9—“Noah was a righteous man, and perfect”; Job 1:1—“that man was perfect and upright.” On τέλειος, see Trench, Syn. N. T., 1:110.

The τέλειοι are described in Heb. 5:14—“Solid food is for the mature (τελείων) who on account of habit have their perceptions disciplined for the discriminating of good and evil” (Dr. Kendrick’s translation). The same word “perfect” is used of Jacob in Gen. 25:27—“Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents” = a harmless man, exemplary and well-balanced, as a man of business. Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 132—“ ‘Perfect’ in Job = Horace’s ‘integer vitæ,’ being the adjective of which ‘integrity’ is the substantive.”

Fifthly, the Scriptures distinctly deny that any man on earth lives without sin.

1 K. 8:46—“there is no man that sinneth not”; Eccl. 7:20—“Surely there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”; James 3:2—“For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also”; 1 John 1:8—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

T. T. Eaton, Sanctiflcation: “1. Some mistake regeneration for sanctification. They have been unconverted church members. When led to faith in Christ, and finding peace and joy, they think they are sanctified, when they are simply converted. 2. Some mistake assurance of faith for sanctification. But joy is not sanctification. 3. Some mistake the baptism of the Holy Spirit for sanctification. But Peter sinned grievously at Antioch, after he had received that baptism. 4. Some think that doing the best one can is sanctification. But he who measures by inches, for feet, can measure up well. 5. Some regard sin as only a voluntary act, whereas the sinful nature is the fountain, Stripping off the leaves of the Upas tree does not answer. 6. Some mistake the power of the human will, and fancy that an act of will can free a man from sin. They ignore the settled bent of the will, which the act of will does not change.”

Sixthly, the declaration: “ye were sanctified” (1 Cor. 6:11), and the designation: “saints” (1 Cor. 1:2), applied to early believers, are, as the whole epistle shows, expressive of a holiness existing in germ and anticipation; the expressions deriving their meaning not so much from what these early believers were, as from what Christ was, to whom they were united by faith.

When N. T. believers are said to be “sanctified,” we must remember the O. T. use of the word. ‘Sanctify’ may have either the meaning ‘to make holy outwardly,’ or ‘to make holy inwardly.’ The people of Israel and the vessels of the tabernacle were made holy in the former sense; their sanctiflcation was a setting apart to the sacred use. Num. 8:17—“all the firstborn among the children of Israel are mine.… I sanctified them for myself”; Deut. 33:3—“Yea, he loveth the people; all his saints are in thy hand”; 2 Chron. 29:19—“all the vessels.… have we prepared and sanctified.” The vessels mentioned were first immersed, and then sprinkled from day to day according to need. So the Christian by his regeneration is set apart for God’s service, and in this sense is a “saint” and “sanctified.” More than this, he has in him the beginnings of purity,—he is “clean as a whole,” though he yet needs “to wash his feet” (John 13:10)—that is, to be cleansed from the recurring defilements of his daily life. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:551—“The error of the Perfectionist is that of confounding imputed sanctification with inherent sanctification. It is the latter which is mentioned in 1 Cor. 1:30—‘Christ Jesus, who was made unto us.… sanctification.’ ”

Water from the Jordan is turbid, but it settles in the bottle and seems pure—until it is shaken. Some Christians seem very free from sin, until you shake them,—then they get “riled.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 371—“Is there not a higher Christian life? Yes, and a higher life beyond it, and a higher still beyond. The Christian life is ever higher and higher. It must pass through all stages between its beginning and its perfection.” C. D. Case: “The great objection to [this theory of] complete sanctification is that, if possessed at all, it is not a development of our own character.”

(c) That the theory is disapproved by the testimony of Christian experience.—In exact proportion to the soul’s advance in holiness does it shrink from claiming that holiness has been already attained, and humble itself before God for its remaining apathy, ingratitude, and unbelief.

Phil. 3:12–14—“Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.” Some of the greatest advocates of perfectionism have been furthest from claiming any such perfection; although many of their less instructed followers claimed it for them, and even professed to have attained it themselves.

In Luke 7:1–10, the centurion does not think himself worthy to go to Jesus, or to have him come under his roof, yet the elders of the Jews say: “He is worthy that thou shouldest do this”; and Jesus himself says of him: “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” “Holy to Jehovah” was inscribed upon the mitre of the high priest (Ex. 28:36). Others saw it, but he saw it not. Moses knew not that his face shone (Ex. 34:29). The truest holiness is that of which the possessor is least conscious; yet it is his real diadem and beauty (A. J. Gordon). “The nearer men are to being sinless, the less they talk about it” (Dwight L. Moody). “Always strive for perfection: never believe you have reached it” (Arnold of Rugby). Compare with this, Ernest Renan’s declaration that he had nothing to alter in his life. “I have not sinned for some time,” said a woman to Mr. Spurgeon. “Then you must be very proud of it,” he replied. “Indeed I am!” said she. A pastor says: “No one can attain the ‘Higher Life,’ and escape making mischief.” John Wesley lamented that not one in thirty retained the blessing.

Perfectionism is best met by proper statements of the nature of the law and of sin (Ps. 119:96). While we thus rebuke spiritual pride, however, we should be equally careful to point out the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification, and their equal importance as together making up the Biblical idea of salvation. While we show no favor to those who would make sanctification a sudden and paroxysmal act of the human will, we should hold forth the holiness of God as the standard of attainment, and the faith in a Christ of infinite fulness as the medium through which that standard is to be gradually but certainly realized in us (2 Cor. 3:18).

We should imitate Lyman Beecher’s method of opposing perfectionism—by searching expositions of God’s law. When men know what the law is, they will say with the Psalmist: “I have seen an end of all perfection; thy commandment is exceeding broad” (Ps. 119:96). And yet we are earnestly and hopefully to seek in Christ for a continually increasing measure of sanctification: 1 Cor. 1:30—“Christ Jesus, who was made unto us.… sanctification”; 2 Cor. 3:18—“But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” Arnold of Rugby: “Always expect to succeed, and never think you have succeeded.”

Mr. Finney meant by entire sanctification only that it is possible for Christians in this life by the grace of God to consecrate themselves so unreservedly to his service as to live without conscious and wilful disobedience to the divine commands. He did not claim himself to have reached this point; he made at times very impressive confessions of his own sinfulness; he did not encourage others to make for themselves the claim to have lived without conscious fault. He held however that such a state is attainable, and therefore that its pursuit is rational. He also admitted that such a state is one, not of absolute, but only of relative, sinlessness. His error was in calling it a state of entire sanctification. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 377–384.

A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 116—“It is possible that one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there is such a total surrender of self to God and such an infilling of the Holy Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self instead of suffering constant defeat.… If the doctrine of sinless perfection is a heresy, the doctrine of contentment with sinful imperfection is a greater heresy.… It is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.” Caird, Evolution of Religion, 1:138—“If, according to the German proverb, it is provided that the trees shall not grow into the sky, it is equally provided that they shall always grow toward it; and the sinking of the roots into the soil is inevitably accompanied by a further expansion of the branches.”

See Hovey, Doctrine of the Higher Christian Life, Compared with Scripture, also Hovey, Higher Christian Life Examined, in Studies in Ethics and Theology, 344–427; Snodgrass, Scriptural Doctrine of Sanctification; Princeton Essays, 1:335–365; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:213–258; Calvin, Institutes, iii, 11:6; Bib. Repos., 2d Series. 1:44–58; 2:143–168; Woods, Works, 4:465–523; H. A. Boardman, The “Higher Life” Doctrine of Sanctification; William Law, Practical Treatise on Christian Perfection; E. H. Johnson, The Highest Life.