The Testings of the Holy Spirit

The great condition on which the Paraclete is given to any believer is love to Christ evinced by obedience. He may think he loves Christ and be sadly mistaken. His Christ may be a false Christ, a figment of his own imagination, a liberalistic Christ who will save all men on their own terms, or a fragmentary Christ with justice and with all the sterner qualities omitted. There is many a nominal, but only one real and saving Christ. 

Hence tests are required to prove whether we are really obedient to the true Christ, whether, in the words of John Wesley, "naked we are willing to follow a naked Savior." This means whether at the loss of all things — property, friends and reputation — we will follow a pauper Christ with no hope of any reward this side of the resurrection of the just, and possibly a chance for martyrdom. Will we sell all to buy the pearl of great price? Essentially this test is required of all: "Will you hold all else as cheap, yea, worthless, in comparison with Christ?" The literal divesting ourselves of all our possessions which are necessary to give us a foothold of vantage and usefulness may never be required by the Spirit. Christ required it of but one person. If he had obeyed promptly, I doubt not that Christ would have taken the will for the deed and would have made him His steward to hold and administer the estate in the interest of his Master, honoring every draft he should make.

IN MY KO-FI SHOP: The Interior or Hidden Life (1844)

In my Ko-Fi Shop: The Interior or Hidden Life by Thomas C. Upham (1799–1872).  

In his book on Upham’s theology, Darius Salter wrote: 

“Upham’s writings are the first attempt to weigh the tenants of holiness theology within the rubrics of psychological investigation. His findings are integral to the history of the psychology of religion. Upham’s Principles of the Interior [or Hidden] Life (1843) may be the best attempt to stress experiential holiness theology within a psychological context.” 

Objections to Entire Sanctification Answered (Rewritten)

My dear fellow believer in Christ: 

You have sincere objections to entire sanctification as a distinct blessing. Let me try to help remove them. 

Maybe you have been troubled by the obvious imperfections of some people who claim to be walking this higher path of Christian life. First, remember that people who have not repented use that very same argument against every effort we make to lead them to Christ. You regularly tell them that Christianity can be counterfeited by hypocritical professors; that all valuable things are exposed to cheap imitations; and that the most valuable things are the most likely to be imitated. Please apply that same reasoning to yourself when you think about the higher Christian life.

Growth in Grace (Rewritten)

We are urged to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Some people say the real logic of Christian growth works better if we reverse that order, putting the knowledge of Christ first as the way to grow in grace. But the apostle’s order—grace first, knowledge second—is actually the deeper and more natural one. 

We come to know Christ through the heart, not merely through the mind. We do not truly know Jesus until we love him; and the more we love him, the more closely we know him. 

The more we study the perfect character of Jesus, the more we admire him, just as studying Michelangelo’s works can make us admire him more. But admiration is not love. Admiration does not set the affections burning like a furnace; it does not drive the soul forward through loss and labor, self-denial and persecution, all the way to the martyr’s stake. As Christ’s character unfolds its splendor under the long, earnest gaze of the student, that student may grow aesthetically through contact with so much moral beauty. He may also become more firmly settled in his theological beliefs about the divinity of the man of Nazareth. And yet, in his own heart, he may still be refusing to receive and enthrone Christ as his rightful king.

We can go a step further and say that growth in grace, while it is accompanied by increasing power to avoid outward acts of sin, does not have the power to destroy the spirit of sin itself, commonly called original sin. 

Love Enthroned PDF

I have added a digital edition of Daniel Steele's book Love Enthroned to my Ko-Fi shop. It is in PDF form because that's all I can manage right now and because all e-readers can recognize and display that. 

This is the first of Steele's "Holiness books" and serves as an excellent introduction to his thought — and to the teachings of the Methodist Holiness movement in the Nineteenth Century. 

The page of "Definitions" alerts the reader to the distinctive way certain terms are defined and used by advocates of Christian Perfection. 

Chapter nine is a very helpful discussion of John Fletcher's doctrine of Dispensations — quite a bit different than the doctrine currently known as "Dispensationalism." Understanding Fletcher's doctrine of Dispensations also helps to explain why the Methodists commonly referred to "Entire Sanctification" as the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit." 

The book was originally published in 1875. This digital edition is from the 1908 revision, which contains an additional essay entitled “Love as a Principle and Love as a Passion.” 

For this digital edition, I have added a short autobiography, which was written in 1888.

It can be found here: Love Enthroned. 

For those who might be wondering: my old web site is coming down sometime at the end of November or the beginning of December. The Holiness books that I have hosted there will be unavailable after that time, but digital downloads like this will be available — but not for free! I am learning the digital formats and hope to make the books available in EPUB and AZW3 at some point in the near future.

A Brief History of Antinomianism (Rewritten)

Theological errors tend to come around in cycles, sometimes after very long stretches of time. They are like comets with unknown orbits that suddenly sweep into our solar system — but unlike comets, they are not harmless. They often leave moral wreckage behind them. Because all Christian truth is practical and aims at the moral transformation of people, every denial of that truth is harmful. Such denials do more than cloud the truth or block its purifying power; they actively corrupt and destroy souls. This is especially true of errors that free people from obligation to the law of God. 

After St. Paul had shown that no one can be justified by works meant to compensate for sin, and after he had established justification through faith in Christ — a faith that works by love and purifies the heart—a class of teachers appeared who drew a false conclusion from Paul’s teaching. They claimed that God’s law is abolished for the believer, who is now released from its authority as the rule of life. For this reason they became what Luther first called Antinomians (Greek anti, against, and nomos, law). From Rom. 3:8, 31; 6:1; Eph. 5:6; 2 Peter 2:18, 19, and James 2:17-26 — passages that warn against twisting the truth into an excuse for loose living — we can infer that Antinomianism, at least in its cruder form, had a place in the primitive church.

Antinomianism Defined (Rewritten)

 John Fletcher once wrote:

"An Antinomian is a professor of Christianity, who is antinomos, against the law of Christ, as well as against the law of Moses. He allows Christ's law to be a rule of life, but not a rule of judgment for believers, and thus he destroys that law at a stroke, as a law; it being evident that a rule by the personal observance or non-observance of which Christ's subjects can never be acquitted or condemned, is not a law for them. Hence he asserts that Christians shall no more be justified before God by their personal obedience to the law of Christ, than by their personal obedience to the ceremonial law of Moses. Nay, he believes that the best of Christians perpetually break Christ's law; that nobody ever kept it but Christ Himself; and that we shall be justified or condemned before God, in the great day, not as we shall personally be found to have finally kept or broken Christ's law, but as God shall be found to have, before the foundation of the world, arbitrarily laid, or not laid, to our account, the merit of Christ's keeping His own law. Thus he hopes to stand in the great day, merely by what he calls 'Christ's imputed righteousness'; excluding with abhorrence, from our final justification, the evangelical worthiness of our own personal, sincere obedience of repentance and faith, -- a precious obedience this which he calls 'dung, dross, and filthy rags' just as if it were the insincere obedience of self-righteous pride, and Pharisaic hypocrisy. Nevertheless, though he thus excludes the evangelical, derived worthiness of the works of faith, from our eternal justification and salvation, he himself does good works, if he is in other respects a good man. Nay, in this case, he piques himself on doing them, thinking he is peculiarly obliged to make people believe that, immoral as his sentiments are, they draw after them the greatest benevolence and the strictest morality." This brings to mind the testimony of a Universalist woman: "That she had come three miles to attend this prayer-meeting, so as to show that the Universalists are as pious as the Orthodox."

Why Dr. Steele Wrote a Book Against Dispensationalism (Rewritten)

It is no secret that I believe in a broad Gospel — one that reaches as far as the present needs of Adam’s fallen children. More than that, I believe that where sin has abounded, grace does here and now much more abound for believers who insist that Christ is a perfect Savior from inbred sin, through the power of His blood, in securing the indwelling Comforter and Sanctifier. 

I openly proclaim and testify to the whole world that Jesus Christ can make the inside clean as well as the outside of His vessels unto honor; that purity of heart is real and inwardly worked, not merely a spotless robe covering unspeakable moral filth and leprosy. I believe with St. John, against the Gnostics, that if anyone claims to have no natural defiling stain of depravity, no bent toward sinful acts, and therefore no need of the blood of atonement, he is deceiving himself, and the truth is not in him. But if he confesses his lost condition, God is faithful and just not only to forgive, but also to cleanse from all sin, "actual and original" (Bengel). 

Who are the Plymouth Brethren? (1887 essay rewritten)

Guest blog by W. McDONALD (1887).

(This essay has been revised and updated with the assistance of  Microslop CoPilot. The essay appeared in it’s original form, as the Introduction to Daniel Steele’s 1887 book A Substitute for Holiness, or Antinomianism Revived: The Theology of the So--Called Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted. I have no biographical information about the author, except to note that his name appears as one of the early leaders of the National Holiness Association.)

They are a sect — if that is even the right word for people who reject all sects — popularly known as "Darbyites," "Brethren," "Plymouth Brethren," and so on. They began in England nearly sixty years ago under the leadership of Mr. John Darby.

Mr. Darby was born in England to wealthy parents. He was trained for the law and began practicing it. But after his conversion, the whole direction of his life changed. He became convinced that it was his duty to enter the ministry. When his father learned of this plan, he strongly opposed it, and when he could not persuade him otherwise, he actually disinherited him. Still, a wealthy uncle adopted him and later left him a substantial fortune.

Perfect Love as a Definate Blessing (Rewritten)

It took four thousand years for the sacred Scriptures to fully unfold — "to import God into knowledge," in the phrase of Dr. Bushnell. The patriarchal and Jewish dispensations were devoted to revealing and firmly impressing the Divine unity on one nation surrounded by polytheism. If the triune personality of God had been taught before God's oneness of substance was securely established, it might have asked too much of humanity in its early stage of theological learning. For more than three thousand years, the first words taught to every child in the Jewish nursery were these: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." Under the dispensations before Christianity, faith in this truth, when it produced obedience, was saving. It is saving now for all who have received no higher revelation. So why do we need a clearer and more definite manifestation of the nature of God? Why should he reveal the unthinkable fact of his threefold personality, and call us to a faith that rises so far above reason? This is a question even angels might approach with bashful tread. It is certain that he has not taken me into his counsels. Here I walk by faith. And faith says that the fuller revelation of God, and the new requirement of faith in the Trinity, come from his gracious purpose to give richer blessings to the believer in a dispensation "rather glorious."