Regeneration and Entire Sanctification.

By our physiological and psychological sensitiveness, we are susceptible to temptation and very liable to sin. No constituent part of our psychological or physical constitution is cast out or, in substance, changed in regeneration. It is the vitalizing influence, presence, and power of the Holy Spirit, obeyed and acted by our free agency, that constitutes our regeneration. Nor does the still-remaining presence of the above-named susceptibilities and liabilities to sin in the least contradict the doctrine that our regeneration is of the whole man. The regenerative Spirit does pervade body, soul, and spirit. But here is a momentous distinction between the extent of the Spirit's presence and the intensity of its presence and power. This is the distinction sometimes philosophically found between extension and intension. We tolerate the phrase "total depravity," because that depravity truly does pervade the total man; not because its degree and intensity in the whole man is total, so total that he is as bad as the devil ; bad as he can be; so bad that the most abandoned mature pirate is no more depraved than a modest young girl. "Totus vir depravatus, not totus vir depravatus totaliter." And so the regenerate spirit is entire in its extent through the whole man, but measured in its intensity of influence and power; so that the free will is able to yield to temptation. According to the fullness of the presence and influence of the Spirit obeyed by the man is his degree of spiritual power; that is, the entirety of his sanctification. When that Spirit's power and the man's concurrence are so entire that the man is able to, and actually does, reject all sin, and so does remain in the undiminished fullness of the divine approbation, unquestionably he is entirely sanctified. The love of God is in his heart, and his path is the path of the just shining to the perfect day. And this is the simple account of the difference between regeneration and entire sanctification, at which so many minds are perplexed.

Grades of Depravity and Holiness.

Had we been privileged to peruse Dr. Crane's brochure, Holiness the Birthright of All God’s Children, before publication, we should doubtless have endeavored to convince him that there is no such difference in his views as to require him to place them in so frank an antagonism to Mr. Wesley's. Mr. Wesley holds that regeneration is at first so incomplete that traces of depravity remain in the soul, as is evidenced by the "sins willfully committed" (according to our Twelfth Article) "after justification.'' Dr. Crane admits that "after justification "there are "weak faith," "temptation," and "sin," but denies that their base is a "residue" of our natural pravity within us. This may seem to some a shadowy difference, but it really leads him to a brave contest with Mr. Wesley's sermon on Sin in Believers, which has been accepted as standard by our Methodism the world around. We think it must still remain standard.

We venture the following statement. Mr. Wesley and Dr. Crane agree that, at justification, there is conferred a degree of "power" over sin and against temptation. Both would agree that according to the degree of that "power" is the degree of sanctification. Indeed, we think one of the best definitions of sanctification is: The power, through divine grace, more or less complete, and more or less permanent, so to resist temptation and avoid sin as to live in the fullness of divine favor. Where the correlation between the inner state of the soul and temptation is such that there is no power to avoid sinning, "and that continually," the depravity is entire. Where, secondly, there is power through grace, by faith, largely but partially and precariously to avoid sin, with usually but a dim sense of divine approval, then we should by parity infer that the pravity was not entire but partial. If it were the case of one who had been previously in the entirely depraved state, we should imagine that it was a trace of that previous entire state. And viewing this to be about the condition of the ordinary justified person, we look upon this deficit of his spiritual power as a remains of his previous entire inability. Where, thirdly, the power is such as to enable one, with the exertion of unremittent care and energy, to maintain, with a clear and regular continuity, the avoidance of such sin as diminishes the light of God's smile upon us, we might with trembling trust call that entire sanctification. Where, fourthly, such is the correlation between the state of the soul and temptation that the avoidance of sin is a matter of perfect normal and natural ease, and may be rationally predicted as forever and absolutely permanent (even though there is a free power for sin, and though sin be most abnormally the actual result), there is clearly no depravity. And this is Adamic perfection. But it is quite irrelevant to quote Adam and Eve before the fall to illustrate either of the previous cases. Finally, where the soul is entirely removed from the sphere of sin, perfectly filled with God, and framed within a body incapable of sin, so that sin becomes impossible, the holiness is finitely absolute. This last stage of complete, indefeasible bliss will be at the resurrection. It is that glorious day to which St. Paul, earnestly looking, beholds the whole creation groaning for the manifestation of the sons of God. Regeneration is, indeed, truly a specific term in theology, and yet it comes under the grand genus of the final renovation. Then, for the first moment, the impairment we, one and all, have derived from Adam and sin, shall be completely repaired. Hence, our regeneration here, as individuals, is but initial, as part of the entire regeneration completed at the resurrection. Let us not be impatient because God is so slow as to leave an imperfect " residue" within us. "God is patient because God is eternal."

We have above traced at least five degrees of spiritual power over sin (which we hold, with Wesley, to be sanctification), and thereby demonstrated the difference between our initial sanctification and its full ultimate perfecting.

These five degrees of spiritual power against all sin we may illustrate by the five following degrees of moral power against intemperance, though the number of the degrees may be increased by minuter division. There is, we may say: 1. The man to whom alcohol is so utterly repugnant that his stomach throws it off, and he cannot drink it. 2. The man who greatly dislikes it, but can swallow it as a repulsive medicine. 3. The man who neither likes nor dislikes it, and can with equal ease drink it or let it alone. 4. The man who likes it, and can scarce refrain from drinking. 5. The man whose will has lost all resisting power; like the man, once described by the late Sylvester Graham, whose will, when the glass was set before him, could no more stop from taking, than a steel trap could stop from springing; not even if he knew that death and damnation were the immediate sequents. And this last is parallel with the total depravity of our spiritual scale. Now, how figurative is the question, whether numbers 2 and 3 have any intemperance in them; as some brethren query and debate whether a justified man has any sin in him! All you can say is, that such is the state of the man's mind and body that he has just such and such a degree of like or dislike of the object. And so, by parity, you can say that a Christian has more or less power over sin. And here you have got to the bottom of the inquiry. How it is that a man's sensorial surface is impregnated with such a sensitivity that alcohol is exquisitely agreeable, or agreeable in one or another degree, science has never begun to guess; any more than it can tell why scratching the bottom of one's foot will tickle and scratching the face will pain. We know that here is a man whose sensorium is delighted with, alcohol; is in a terrible state of pain, which we call craving, at its long absence; and whose will pounces upon it when it is at length within his reach. And that is the sum of the matter. Let our candid readers place these five degrees beside the five degrees of power produced by the empowering Spirit, reversing the order, and we shall be disappointed if the whole matter does not become tolerably clear. Only it must be remembered, as against Pelagianism, in sanctification the power is divinely bestowed, and not merely natural.

To perceive the difference between justification and entire sanctification let us take another view. At justification, or pardon, God beholds the soul as being in Christ perfectly innocent, perfectly pure from the guilt of sin. In that sense he is, at that moment, perfectly holy. Then such measure of the Spirit is given as God pleases; and even the slightest measure of spiritual life thereby bestowed is regeneration. Assuming, then, that the soul is, in the above sense, perfectly holy, is he possessed of such perfect power over the future commission of sin as to constitute entire sanctification? That is, does entire sanctification ever take place at justification? If such a case should be, it would be a rare exception. Experience shows that such a power over and against sin is the usual result both of growth and of fuller measures of the Spirit, and "gift of power." And now, what is the measure of what can be called "entire sanctification?" Our answer would be: Such a measure of power over sin as holds us, with more or less continuity, in that same perfect fullness of divine approbation as rested upon us when jusfification first pronounced us, through Christ, perfectly innocent of sin. Happy, transcendently happy, is the man with whom such fullness is permanent! With others it may be for a season; with others, a vibrating experience; and rarer than is usually supposed is the case of its permanence.

We think it accords with Wesleyan theology to say, that the amissibility of even the most entire sanctification in our probationary life is based in a "residue" of our hereditary moral debility. Just because it is part of the great racial impairment waiting the great racial repairment. And just because, also, it is such a correlation of the soul with temptation, belonging to our nature, inherited from the fall, as leaves us, as Mr. Wesley repeatedly states, inferior to Adamic perfection. Whatever inferiority we possess below unfallen Adam must be part of that loss we have suffered from fallen Adam.

Sanctification is, perhaps, less the taking away any thing from our inward nature than the bestowment of a repressive power over our inner sin-ward tendencies. On the rail-track the sprung iron sometimes turns up a dangerous elastic "snake-head," that, unless fastened down, will smash the train. The natural man's heart contains a circle of elastic "snake-heads," pointing from circumference to center, that nothing but divine grace can press completely down. The Spirit of God, aiding our firm volition, applies a pressure that shuts them down more or less completely; and according to the completeness of the shut-down is the entireness of the sanctification. That divine grace ever completely takes away the snake- heads, or even their elasticity, during probation, is more than we can affirm. Whatever be the conscious feeling of the professedly sanctified man, our impression is, that spectators often perceive the snake-head when he little thinks it. St. Paul found it necessary to keep his body under — that is, to keep the snake-head repressed; and it was that repression, not the removal, that constituted his sanctification. The unremoved snake-head is evidenced by the energy still required to keep it in repression; and apostasy discloses the snake-head present and elastic as ever. It is, perhaps, only in the sense that the complete repression of the snake-head would be its cessation as a snake-head, so that it is a snake-head no longer, that there may be said to be in sanctification a cessation of our hereditary pravity.

What constitutes the difference between the sin of the unregenerate and the sin of the regenerate? We answer: the former is the hostile act of an enemy, the latter the offense of a child. For the former God has justice, for the latter correction. When faith is strong and fertile, that childship is manhood. When faith is "weak" and barren, the soul is dwarfed in moral manhood and becomes a babe. When faith expires, the child of God becomes a child of the devil. In the heart of the regenerate, faith, however weak, is a deep, moral protest underlying the sin he commits; a potential repentance, likely soon to manifest itself in action. The difference, therefore, between the sins of the unregenerate and regenerate is not intrinsic but relative; it arises from the different conditions of enemy and child. The denying the Christian's sins to be sins is a fatal procedure. Dr. Hodge charges an Antinomian tendency upon perfectionism, but carefully adds that it has no such effect among Methodists. Any inclination to deny sin and guilt in the believer would certainly introduce such tendency. We must beware how we sustain our regeneration or our sanctification, not by avoiding sin, but by whitewashing the sin we commit.

Dr. Crane, like many others of the purest and holiest men in our Church, has been impressed with what seems to him a vast amount of both false showiness and extravagance under the guise of sanctification, with which much of the present hour is disfigured, and he wished to furnish a conservative remedy. He attempted this, we think, on a mistaken basis, a platform outside the Wesleyan doctrine. He forgot that Wesleyanism furnishes not only the animating but the conservative element united in mutual countercheck. Its doctrines are beautifully symmetrical. As conservative check, Wesley presents before us the absolute penalty of the divine law, damning us for even the slightest so-called "infirmities." He presents the full interval between us and unfallen Adam in its ample breadth. And then, his pages of caution to the followers of George Bell are providentially on record. These conservative forces, if brought out and emphasized, are ample and adequate to the purpose of blowing off all the froth and "fury signifying nothing" with which these errorists are trying to overlay the cause of the higher Christian life.

Correctness of our Definition of Entire Sanctification.

Our definition of entire sanctification, as given above, being questioned, with a challenge to compare it with that of Wesley, we will place, them side by side. We are sure the reader will discern their oneness of ultimate essence under a variety of form:

Sanctification Does Not Destroy our Human Nature.

We have compared the sinward tendencies in us to that elastic upspringing of the flat iron rail in use on our earlier railways, technically called a "snake-head," and said that sanctification consists in the power conferred by the divine Spirit to lay the snake-head on the level track. To this it is replied : "Entire sanctification takes away our sinward tendencies. The old, bent, rusty, rotten rail of depravity, which puts up 'snake-heads,' is removed, and the steel rail of purity, which has no snake-like capabilities, is substituted for it." But that, again, is anti-Wesleyanism, Calvinism, excluding the possibility of apostasy. For how can this "steel rail, which has no snake-like capabilities," admit a lapse into the old depravity ? Does God, then, destroy the new steel rail, and create anew for the apostate the old rotten rail of depravity? That would be making God the author of sin, and so would land the unfortunate objector again in Calvinism. If the old man is utterly annihilated by sanctification and an immutable new man created, where does the old man of the apostate come from? Thus the Wesleyan-Arminian doctrine of the possibility of falling from grace is completely contradicted.

Test this high-flown talk by facts of experience. Years ago a minister professing a high sanctification, as unquestionably genuine as any other case, suddenly fell into awful licentiousness, lost his ministerial status, and died some years afterward profoundly penitent. Now, how did his nature, physical and mental, in such an act, differ from that of an unsanctified man? Were not his blood, brain, nervous system, sensations, etc., just like any other man's? Were not his reasoning intellect, his inflammable passions, his sexual sensitiveness, his corporeal appetites, all the same? The whole structure and substance of his physical system were the same; the whole structure and substance of his mental system were the same. He sinned, then, with the same personal system, and the same impulses that any unregenerate man would. What, then, is this "old rotten rail of depravity, which puts up snake-heads " and that has been all "removed?" If the railroad be, as we understand, the sensitive nature, and the snake-heads the sensitive impulses, they were all there, however closely laid upon the track, capable of up-springing, and had never been "removed," for it was by and with them that this sanctified man sinned. And how is it that "Jesus strikes death into the sinful life?" Was there not a sad "life" in this sanctified man's "seat of sinful life ?" Did not the most heinous sin come from the living "seat of sinful life? " Now, let this learned objector understand that stirring metaphors like these will serve very well as emotional expressions; they are abundantly used in Scripture; but, like all metaphors, when you come to exact literal analysis, they muddle far more than they explain. And in Scripture exegesis it is one of the most important and difficult points to detect metaphor and obtain the bare and literal thought. All this sanctified man's sensitivities, which in themselves had the intrinsic strength and elasticity to spring up as lusts, were, through the aid of the empowering Spirit, held by his will under control, and kept in their proper and their rightful action, just as the iron elastic is kept in its place on the track from being a snake-head. The man, then, forgiven of his past sin, is perfectly right, all his nature being brought by the Spirit's power into complete control, and harmonized with the law of Christ. He was, therefore, entirely sanctified. The sensitivities, thus held in their true and natural symmetry, still had their true and natural strength, just as the fastened iron elastic had its natural spring. While thus held in place by gracious power they were not sinful lusts, just as the iron in its place is not a snake-head. The railroad is not torn up, the metal elastic, capable of rising into a snake-head, has not been destroyed; but, all being held in its proper place and order, the elastic is no snake-head, and the rail-track, elastic and all, is a first-class, perfect rail-track. But let the man's free-will suspend or reverse its repressive action, and then let the blessed Spirit withdraw the repressive "power," and up springs the elastic into a snake-head; and, alas, it proves a live one, and bites the man to death! That is, let the watchful will suspend or reverse its repressive action, holding the sensitivities in their proper place; then will the Spirit withdraw the "power," and the hitherto pure sensitivities will spring up into lusts, and lusts will bring forth death. This is the plain, literal process, and he who understands this will have the key to the perplexities in which many minds are at this day involved. And nine tenths of all the difficulties arise from undertaking to explain with metaphors and other figures.

And when Mr. Wesley takes a literal case and uses literal language, he accords precisely with these views. Thus he says: "A woman solicits me. Here is a temptation to lust. But in the instant I shrink back. And I feel no desire or lust at all; of which I can be as sure as that my hand is cold or hot." Here all the natural sexual sensitivities belonging to man are presupposed as still existing. They are neither "torn up," "removed," "cleansed away," nor substituted by an entire new set. They have all the same natural excitability to the external object, the same correlation to the tempting thing. That is, the iron lies upon the track with all its inherent elasticity. But when the tempting object presents itself, the blended power of the divine and human spirit holds these springy sensitivities in repression. That is, the repressive power keeps the elastic iron lying on the track. Otherwise the sensitivity would spring up into lust and sin, as the elastic iron would spring up into a snake-head. And that is John Wesley's entire sanctification.

The excessive use of metaphor in the discussion of this subject has, indeed, Mr. Wesley's sermon on Sin in Believers as a remarkable precedent. That sermon is figure and symbol from end to end. His opponents, as stated by him, argue against him in figures, and he refutes them in figures; so that the whole discussion was a battle of symbols and emblems. If any acute and well-trained psychologist will take that sermon and translate it into precise literal language, he will find the argument valid, the doctrine sound, and the conclusion perhaps more clear. The very title, Sin in Believers, is image. It images a believer as a sort of ancient leather-bottle, with a certain bad substance called sin in it. Then this sin must be "emptied out;" the bottle must be "washed," "cleansed," "purified;" and it is a great question among our figure lovers whether it can be emptied, cleansed, purified, in part without being "emptied," etc., in whole. Now all we have done is to divest the subject of figures, and present Mr. Wesley's exact doctrine, translated into the terms of modern psychology.

But these brethren make their powerful stand upon regeneration. And they quote a very vigorous figure from Toplady thus: "Regeneration, as Toplady says, is not 'the' whitewashing of an old rotten house, but the taking it down and building a new one in its place — a temple for the Holy Ghost.'"

Now this figure of "the old rotten house" is, like the figure of the "old rotten railroad," very good Topladyan Calvinism. But, when the man apostatizes, does God build him a new "old rotten house?"

The Jews, when they had converted and baptized a Gentile, called him regenerate. The temperance men, by parity with the Jews, may call a man who signs the pledge, with earnest purpose to keep it, regenerate. And when a man, with perfectly earnest purpose, repents and is pardoned, then the first element of the Spirit's empowering aid given him to stay pardoned and in God's favor is regeneration. His justification is at that first moment absolute. He is perfectly free from condemnation. His justification remains absolute until, by sins, he shades the divine countenance, yet loses not thereby necessarily and completely his regeneration. His justification is, then, qualified; and yet, dying at that moment, he would be saved, though he would be, perhaps, among the lesser in the kingdom of heaven. But let the full sanctifying power of the Spirit come upon him, and he is not only restored to his absolute justification, but enabled, if he will, to maintain that absolute justification entire; not, indeed, according to the Christless law, but according to the grace of God through Christ. And at his entire sanctification God may, additionally to the simple act of sanctifying, pour upon him new and richer effusions of love and blessedness than he ever before experienced, signalizing that experience as an event in his Christian life. And so the infant is, by the Spirit's power, enabled, if translated to a purer world, to be and act as pure as that world is pure. It will thus be seen that our whole sanctification is the gift of power; "power to cleave to God," and cleave away from transgressing his law.

Abuse of Figurative Terms.

From this our readers will see the literal truth of our statement, that sanctification is "less the taking away any thing than the bestowment of a repressive power over our inward tendencies." We do not say that the idea of taking away is excluded; but that the idea of bestowing is the predominant and literal, while the idea of taking away is the subordinate, inferential, and often metaphorical. When, for instance, a governor bestows pardon on a criminal, you can say, less properly, he takes away his guilt. And so of the sanctified man, as the Spirit enables him to live thus purely, you can say that "sin is all cast out," "evil tempers are abolished," lusts are wholly removed," "the roots of sin are plucked out," " our inbred corruption is ejected."

These metaphors, like all metaphors, are literal untruth, but they have legitimate place and use of rousing and inspiriting our feelings and action. Only let them keep their place, and not be used in the process of exact analysis of actual realities. When we read that we are "washed in the blood of the Lamb," do not imagine that we are actually plunged into a sheet-iron blood-vat and soaked and rubbed. Understand simply that we are pardoned through the atonement. And when we are assured with an air of proof, that "an immense amount is taken away when the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin" we reply, that the simple fact expressed is, that a man is enabled by the Spirit's power, purchased by the atonement, to keep himself in perfect evangelical justification before God; and as sin thereby disappears you can figure it, if you please, as a cleansing away with a liquid. And so in the words of Wesley, "The moment a sinner is justified his heart is cleansed in a low degree, yet he has not a clean heart," truth is perfectly stated in figurative language. The literal fact is: When a man is justified that measure of the Spirit is given him that he can, in a measure, keep free from sin, but not that measure by which he can avoid all sin. Thus Wesley states it figuratively, and we have stated it, exactly the same thing, literally.

And so in regard to Wesley's definition of sanctification; it may be that the first clause means not "the deliverance from all sin" in its guilt by justification, but the deliverance from all actual sin. And then both propositions of his definition say the same thing, the former in a negative, the latter in a positive form. Just so one may say, "The sun disperses the shades of night and brings the day;" but then the latter clause fully expresses both; for the shades of night are but the absence of day. "The fire gives a deliverance from all cold, and produces a perfect warmth," is but two ways of saying the same thing. Just so Mr. Wesley's definition says the same thing twice. The deliverance from all sin, and the exerted power of avoiding all sin, are the same one thing. Wesley's definition says it twice, and ours says it only once.

The Spirit does not, indeed, operate as a dry mechanical power upon the springs of the will. He enables our love to fix upon God and his law, and lights our love up to a living, ruling power, which the will obeys. And that love divides itself off into various specific forms of goodness, excluding (or, as some would say, cleansing away), their various reverse badnesses. Love distributes into charity, long-suffering, benevolence, meekness, modest profession, truth, etc. Then, as love of God's law, it assumes a sterner form and goes into active life. There it becomes conscientiousness, integrity in business, chastity, observance of law, voting for honest rulers, abstinence from proscribing a good brother for doctrinal mistake, and fairness in theological discussion. Where these exist not, no profession of a man should induce you to believe he is entirely sanctified. Yet be not too severe with such a professor. Admit that this entireness is approximative, varying, or vibratory, with a great many exceptional unable to stand before God's absolute law, or you may be obliged to feel that he deceives himself. Generally, our observation is, that very modest profession is best for all.

Liability to Apostasy from Entire Sanctification.

That we inherit from the fall a liability to sin and apostasy from even our entire sanctification is clear from: 1. The inferiority of our highest perfection to Adam, which must consist in a lesser power of resistance to temptation. 2. From the fact that whereas Adam could be saved by the Christless law of works, we, however sanctified, from constant transgressions against the holy law, need atonement, and these transgressions are unquestionably evidences of both moral debility and liability to fall. 3. How human bodies, impaired by the fall, weaken our persevering power, appears from these words of Wesley:

"But even these souls dwell in a shattered body, and are so pressed down thereby, that they cannot always exert themselves as they would, by thinking, speaking, and acting precisely right. For want of better bodily organs they must at times think, speak, or act wrong; not, indeed, through a defect of love, but through a defect of knowledge. And while this is the case, notwithstanding that defect and its consequences, they fulfill the law of love. . . . Yet as, even in this case, there is not a full conformity to the perfect law, so the most perfect do, on this very account, need the blood of atonement, and may properly, for themselves as for their brethren, say, 'Forgive us our trespasses.'" — Works, vol. vi, p. 515.

Example of George Bell.

George Bell was for awhile one of Mr. Wesley's most pious and useful ministers. But he ran into high exaggeration on the subject of sanctification. Supposing truly that nobody can be too holy, he caught the notion that no theory and no profession of holiness could be too high. Soon Wesley was not Wesleyan enough for him, and he denounced the grand common sense of that great man as "an enemy of the doctrine of holiness." His "high enthusiasm," as Wesley in his day called it — fanaticism, as we in our day call it — led the people into a wild religious delirium. Wesley was deserted, his London society largely broken off, and over the scene he had to begin to build anew. George Bell and his seceders went to ruin in due time. Mr. Wesley then saw that his own overstatements of sanctification had really commenced the mischief; and he proceeded, most wisely, to correct his own error. He published a tract intended for all Methodists inclined to Bellism, entitled, almost sarcastically, Cautions and Directions given to the Greatest Professors in the Methodist Societies. This tract was afterward added to his previous manual, Plain Account of Christian Perfection, in order to modify the ultraizing influence of that manual as it previously stood. Still further, he appended to that manual some very significant notes, carefully and wisely lowering his own overstatements. With characteristic magnanimity and wisdom he left both his error and its correction on record for our ensample. It required some Christian humility for a man like him to append to his once jubilant language such notes as these: "This is too strong," "Far too strong," etc. To a penetrating eye it reveals the fact that Mr. Wesley himself, with no modern precedents to guide his course, came very near to swinging over into "enthusiasm." The state of the case as it now stands, is holy life and modest profession with Wesley, against tall profession and "enthusiasm" with Bell. For a goodly body of pious people among us, Wesley, if alive, would emphasize his address to the Bellites in the closing part of his invaluable Plain Account.

The longer and more extended our experience, the more we are impressed with the necessity of looking beyond lofty professions to attain true estimates of character. The great reason why this doctrine is so coldly, not to say skeptically, regarded by an immense majority of the Church, is the immense distance between the professional and the visible sanctity. The process is, first, a theory empyrean in height; next, a profession as empyrean; next, an immense visible distance between the empyrean and the professor's real altitude; and, last, a consequent reaction in the entire observant Church against the whole matter.