Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

(3) These things that "looked" to Dr. Mudge "like" depravity may have been only temptations
from the devil. "A high proficient in spiritual experience," if not in "philosophy," gives the following
wise suggestions and warning:
"Let us quite understand what we mean by temptation. You especially who have stepped out with
the assurance that you have died to self and sin may be greatly amazed to find yourself assailed with
a tempest of thoughts and feelings that seem to come wholly from within, and you will be impelled
to say, 'Why, I thought I was dead, but I seem to be alive.' This, beloved, is the time to remember that
temptation has power to penetrate our inmost being with thoughts and feelings that seem to be our
own, but are really the instigations of the evil one. 'We wrestle with principalities and powers'; that
is to say, they twine themselves around us as wrestlers do about the limbs of their opponents, until
they seem to be a part of ourselves. This is the essence of temptation, and we are almost constrained
to conclude that the evil is within ourselves, and that we are not cleansed and sanctified as we had
believed ...
"We little know how evil can find access to a pure nature, and seem to incorporate itself with our
thoughts and feelings, while at the same time we resist and overcome it, and remain as pure as the
sea fowl that emerges from the water without a single drop remaining on its burnished wing, or as
the harp which may be struck by a rude and clumsy hand and give forth a discordant sound, not from
any defect of the harp but because of the hand that touched it."
It is at such times as these that Mr. Wesley says we specially need the witness of the Spirit to this
work, and may not be fully relieved of doubt without it.
(4) Other statements of Dr. Mudge indicate that he was saved from "selfishness" or the "self-life."
The next words to the question last given above indicate it:
"I believe I can say now, but one thing seemed desirable or valuable in heaven or in earth, and that
was the will of God. And everything which came to me I welcomed as God's will for me. So far as
I am in any way conscious, my whole being, without reservation or hesitation, goes out after him and
abides in him. Loving only what God loves and willing only what God wills, I find no room for
disappointment, but only for delight and thanksgiving, in all he sends me. Surely this is the land of
Beulah, if not something more. It is indeed heaven below."
In referring to the time when, as he expresses it, he received this "full salvation with which God
had so wonderfully enriched my soul," the time which he calls "a memorable hour, or turning point
in my life, from which dates a decided change in my experience," making him "a different
individual," he is very explicit. He says:
"What, then, did happen to me thirty years ago that it should be made so important an epoch from
which to date a higher life? It was, as nearly as I can make it out, simply the apprehension of Jesus
to be my all-sufficient Empowerer for every occasion which naturally comes upon a consecration
greatly increased in thoroughness, and indeed made complete up to the measure of light up to that
time vouchsafed."