Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

As late as 1768 he writes a friend, blessing God that
"if a hundred enthusiasts were set aside, they were still encompassed with a cloud of witnesses, who
have testified, and do testify in life and in death, the perfection we have taught for forty years."
In speaking of the lives and character of those witnesses whom we have cited -- those who did
not go off with Maxfield, and whom Dr. Mudge calls "very ignorant," and whose testimonies he says
"are crude and unreliable" -- Dr. Stevens says:
"It was indeed remarked that the professors of sanctification were generally, as at Dublin,
distinguished more than other Methodists as 'calm and sober-minded.' Quietness, without 'quietism,'
became a characteristic of them as a class, and among preachers and people they were considered
by Wesley to be his most prudent, most reliable coadjutors."
The early suppression in his societies of this Bell-Maxfield fanaticism, and the still more glorious
results that soon followed Mr. Wesley's ministry, indicate the genuineness of the work of full
salvation in the great mass of his followers. Dr. Stevens says:
"If Wesley's treatment of these disturbances was at first too indulgent, his final course was
characteristically decisive, and soon extinguished the evil. He then went forth traversing the land,
and found the societies flourishing, the revival extending into many new places, and his
congregations larger than ever before."
This was true of his work in the towns and cities of England, Scotland, and Ireland, his
congregations being unusually large, and at one place reaching twenty thousand. And this glorious
work of sanctification went steadily forward; for, some eight or ten years after the time noted above,
Mr. Wesley, in speaking of sanctification, says:
"I believe no year has passed since that time wherein God has not wrought the same work in many
others, but sometimes in one part of England or Ireland, sometimes in another."
Only once, some thirty years afterwards, and at only one place, do we hear of the defection of Bell
and Maxfield seriously obstructing the good work of Mr. Wesley and his co-laborers.
We close this chapter by saying that we are profoundly convinced that the testimony from
experience of these early followers of Wesley, given by so many of them through a period of half
a century, and so carefully taken by this great man, has not been rated at its true value. We regard
it as most satisfactory and convincing to the candid mind -- more so than even the reasoning of John
Wesley.
*************************************