11 - Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
SECOND-WORK SANCTIFICATION.
Nearly all errors are perversions, or partial views, of truth. This is true of the mischievous doctrines of second-work sanctification. It is a metaphysical and theological untruth. This will appear in our discussion of SECOND-WORK SANCTIFICATION. The doctrine of sanctification as taught by many, though not wholly a delusion and error, is a scientific and scriptural untruth. We mean the so-called second-work sanctification theory, as an instantaneous and perfect cleansing of the entire man at some period after justification. The truth, which is in this doctrine is found in the theory as we have expounded it. The errors in it we would summarize in the following enumeration. Not that these errors are avowed beliefs; but they are involved in the doctrine. 1. It denies the fact, stated scores of times in God’s word, that all true, evangelical believers are sanctified.
2. It contradicts the Bible doctrine of justification and pardon, wherein all condemnation and guilt are removed.
3. It is a terrible and fatal lowering of the character of moral obedience in the justified, which can never be partial, but must be, in purpose and so far as the "I" is concerned, entire, complete and universal.
4. It contradicts the Bible on the subject of the abiding conflict between the spirit and the flesh.
5. It teaches a freedom from sin concerning which the Bible is silent, and which experience pronounces unreal.
6. It recognizes means and causes which are adapted to effect spiritual renewal, but not scriptural sanctification.
7. It becomes practical antinomianism, in that it makes each believer a law to himself.
8. It is a delusion, in that believers in it are led to mistake the exaltation of sentiment and feeling for the work of the Spirit, and a mere state of the sensibility for the sanctification of the nature.
9. It denies the teaching of inspiration respecting the true state and relation of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
10. Honest and sincere as we doubt not believers in, and advocates and professors of, this second-work sanctification are, they teach what is not realized in the nature and the life.
If fruits are still a test of character they contradict every profession of this kind of sanctification. This is notorious. They are as other Christians, some better and some worse. Out of the hundreds of known and classified human and Christian virtues and duties there is perhaps not one of those who profess a second-work, perfect sanctification of the entire man, that possesses and performs them all. Of the hundreds of known and classified human vices and sins there is perhaps not one of those who profess a second-work, sin-cleansing, flesh-mortifying sanctification that is not guilty of some. If this were said of believers in, and teachers of, the doctrine it would have no weight. When said in truth of professors of the doctrine, as it is without controversy, it weights the doctrine beyond all possibility of floating. It must sink. Between the Scylla of the Bible and the Charybdis of a true philosophy, "That path of double death," it goes irretrievably down.