Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

The same test was applied to regeneration and the direct witness of the Spirit in Mr. Wesley's day.
The prevailing theory when he commenced his work was that regeneration, except as baptism is that
work, is gradual in its development. Also that the revelation to consciousness of the fact, if such
revelation is made at all, is indirect and through the Word. Mr. Wesley seems himself to have
inclined to that view until the testimony of the Moravians from experience, and his own experience,
confirmed by the experience of thousands of his people, established beyond question the theory of
instantaneous regeneration and the direct witness of the Spirit.
Is it replied that the Scriptures are very plain on these points, but are obscure touching the matter
of sanctification? The answer is, that many of the leading divines of Mr. Wesley's day did not so
understand the Scriptures as to regeneration and the Spirit's witness. Nor did Mr. Wesley in his early
ministry. Is it said that regeneration is represented as a birth, and that the three thousand at Pentecost
were instantaneously regenerated? It may be replied that sanctification is represented as a baptism,
and that the one hundred and twenty upper-room disciples are believed to have been instantaneously
sanctified, when baptized with the Spirit at Pentecost. Is it still insisted that, at best, instantaneous
sanctification is only a matter of inference from the teaching of the Bible? We reply that many
learned divines think the same of instantaneous regeneration. And so do Christians almost
universally believe as to the authority for substituting the first for the seventh day of the week as the
Sabbath, with this difference, that experience confirms the former and not the latter theory. A
thoughtful divine has well said:
"While I freely allow that the consciousness of the believer cannot be an original source of
doctrine, yet I must admit that when a doctrine is taught by fair inference in the Word of God,
whether by command or by promise, or as a matter of history, the testimony of consciousness in the
living believer is authoritative, and must be accepted in the case of that particular believer."
Dr. Gordon well says:
"It is needful sometimes in setting forth an obscure truth, to present our argument in illuminated
text in order to draw attention to it. Afterwards it will be easily read in common type. That is to say,
it often requires the most vivid and powerful experiences to impress us with the reality of a certain
doctrines which, after we have once accepted, we can discover in its most ordinary manifestations."
Dr. Tillett must know that, although Mr. Wesley admitted that instantaneous sanctification is not
taught "in express terms" in the Bible, he nevertheless held that it is taught by implication and
inference. Also, that Mr. Wesley says he got this doctrine out of the Bible more than twenty years
before the time when he so carefully examined most of the witnesses referred to in the extract from
his sermon, which was in 1759-62. On November 1, 1762, he wrote the following to Messrs.
Maxfield, Bell, and Owen:
"You have over and over denied instantaneous sanctification, but I have known and taught it, (and
so has my brother, as our writings show) above these twenty years."