Scriptural Sanctification - Media Sabda Org

pollution, and weakness, as well as to His guilt, together with the fact that full provision is made in
the gospel for His thorough cleansing from that pollution, as well as for the full pardon of His guilt,
and the gift of a new life. And, in the improvement of His preventive grace and initial life, he must
exercise a faith that is full, both subjectively and objectively. His conviction or persuasion must as
fully embrace or relate to His need as it does to God's promise. Where such clear insight awakens
ardent desire and secures full appropriating faith at conversion, we dare not deny that the Holy
Ghost, at that time, takes full possession of the soul and does His perfect work of cleansing, renewal,
and empowering. Such [a] soul may by a supreme and intelligent act of faith pass at a bound from
the dispensation of the Father into that of the Holy Ghost. The "good-ground" hearer in the parable
of the sower, may be of, and represent, this ideal class.
2. The second modification or explanation of Dr. Tillett's proposition relates to the term "radical"
which he uses in speaking of the work of sanctification. If he means to say that Mr. Wesley and other
fathers of Methodism taught that sanctification is radically different in nature from regeneration, we
think he misinterprets them. They taught, and modern Methodists still teach, that regeneration is
initial sanctification, and that the latter only deepens and finishes the work begun in the former. Mr.
Wesley, in His sermon on "Patience," says:
"Many persons have spoken of the work of sanctification, taking the word in its full sense, as if
it were quite of another kind, as if it differed entirely from that which is wrought in justification
[regeneration]. But this is a great mistake, and has a tendency to make us undervalue that glorious
work ... Love is the sum of Christian sanctification; it is the one kind of holiness which is found only
in various degrees, in the believers who are distinguished by St. John into 'little children, young men,
and fathers.'"
So Bishop Foster, in His Christian Purity, says:
"It has been the universal teaching of the Church that regeneration is a degree of holiness. That
entire sanctification is complete holiness has been as universally the creed of the Church. They are
then the same in kind ... Regeneration is sanctification begun but not completed."
But if by "radical" Dr. Tillett simply means that the work of sanctification is a thorough renewal
as distinguished from that of regeneration, which is only partial; if he means that this cleansing and
renewing work of the Spirit goes to the root of the evil, or the depravity of our nature, removing from
the heart all the disease of sin -- "sin that dwelleth in us" -- from which proceed evil thoughts,
murders, etc., noted in Matthew xv. 19, and which, when unrestrained, produces such "works of the
flesh" as are enumerated in Galatians v. 19-21, then we accept the term with that meaning.
Sanctification seems to do for the "thorny-ground" hearer after regeneration -- after the plant of faith
springs up in His heart -- what may have been done for the "good-ground" hearer at the time of His
regeneration. It seems to remove from the heart the cause or source of backsliding, such as the
distracting "cares," the morbid "desire for riches and pleasure," and "other things," which prevent
the healthy and rapid development of the plant which bears the fruit of love to God and man. It
removes or prevents the feeling of evil or unholy tempers -- tempers that are inconsistent with love,
meekness, patience, humility, etc. [4]