Christian perfection

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Christian perfection.

Yeah.

I'm teaching in a Methodist church, and in the next couple months we're going to cover that doctrine, and I'll share with you my understanding, and then I, I would appreciate your thoughts on it.

Thank you, Jeff.

Um, I'm glad I get a chance to respond to this because there's a couple of things going on here.

Uh, the question has to do with the possibility of entire sanctification in this life, uh, Christian perfections, so that we, we, we don't sin, and as such, we can fulfill in this life the command to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Now, um, I've been a Christian for 53 years, and I have been a serious Christian.

He encouraged every branch of the sciences, and would have the fathers in his society applied to those functions, whether in teaching, preaching, or the missions, for which God seemed chiefly to qualify and destine them by their genius, talents, and particular graces, yet so that one should neglect the duties either of assiduous prayer, and an interior life, or of instructing and catechizing others." He recommended to them all, especially the masters of novices, to read diligently the conferences, lives, and writings of the fathers of the desert, and other pious ascetics, in order to learn their spirit.

With what success many among them did this appears from the practice of Christian perfection, compiled by Father Alphonsus Rodriguez, one of the most eminent persons whom our saint had admitted into his society.

In this excellent work he gathered and digested, in a clear and easy method, the most admirable maxims and lessons of the ancient monks, and having many years trained up, according to them, the novices of his order in Spain, died holily in the year 1616, the ninetieth of his age.

We have other eminent instances of this Holy Spirit and science among the primitive disciples of Saint Ignatius, in the works of Father Luis de Ponte, or Puente, who died in 1624, and whose canonization has been often desired by the kings of Spain, in those of Father Álvarez de Paz, who died in Peru, in 1620, and in the writings and life of Father Baltasar Álvarez, who died in Spain, in 1580, in the odor of sanctity.

St. Ignatius's chamber is now a chapel, his study is another, in which prelates, and sometimes popes, come to say Mass on the Saints' Festival.

He was beatified by Paul V. in 1609, and canonized by Gregory XV in 1622, though the bull was only published the year following by Urban VIII.

The example of the saints evinces that to disengage our affections from earthly things, and to converse much in heaven by the constant union of our hearts to God, is the short road to Christian perfection.

Those who are employed in the active life, ought to learn the art of accompanying all their actions with a lively attention to the divine presence, as our guardian angels are faithful in discharging every duty of that external ministry which God hath committed to them, yet so as never to intermit their contemplation of the Godhead, and their incessant homages of praise and love, which are the uninterrupted employment of their happy state.

People are wounded in their natures, but he did think that they could get better and they could ultimately come to genuine holiness in this life.

He wrote a book about it called Christian Perfection.

And in Wesley's scheme, the idea was to strive towards Christian perfection, which he thought was attainable.

He thought you could get there.

You might get it on your dying breath, but he thought

And in this mentality where people think like, okay, we have to kick it up to the next level, There's normal Christianity, and then there is revived Christianity.

That becomes part of the mindset.

When that mindset takes hold in the Wesleyan tradition, with its tradition of holiness, they think that, okay, now maybe Christian perfection, Wesley's idea of Christian perfection, can take place through a revival, that you can have a kind of blow-up experience and go from mundane Christian to holy Christian.

Now, before we go further, do all you young gentlemen do as much as this? Have you always been good livers? Have you paid every man and woman their due? Do you pray to be called prayer? And if so, when and where and what for and how long a time? I do not ask if your private prayer book is like Bishop Andrew's devotions, which was so reduced to pulp with tears and sweat and the clenching of his agonizing hands that his literary executors were with difficulty able to decipher it.

Cleto in The Christian Perfection was so expeditious with his prayers that he used to boast that he could both dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an hour.

What was the longest time you ever took to dress or undress and say your prayers? Then again, there is another Anglican young gentleman in the same high church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the thirtieth of January.

Did you ever deny yourself a glass of wine or a cigar or an opera ticket for the church or the poor? Could you honestly say that you know what tithes are? And is there a poor man or woman or child in this whole city who will by any chance put your name into their prayers and praises at bedtime tonight? I am afraid there are not many young gentlemen in this house tonight who could cast a stone at that brisk, glad Ignorance, vain hope, door in the side of the hill and all.

My dear friend, I knew, had his own difficulties, though he was not exactly as poor as a howlet.

And it might have been about some of his investments that had gone out of joint that he went that forenoon to him who had said that he would help.

Or, like the author of The Christian Perfection and The Spirit of Prayer, it was the sixth hour of the day, and he may have gone to his knees for his clerks, or for his boys at school, or for himself and for the man in the same business with himself right across the street.

I know that my friend had the charming book at home in which such counsels as these occur.