A Plain Account of Christian Perfection

It is John Wesley's own account, gathered over fifty years, of what he did and did not mean by Christian perfection. He is careful to explain that he does not mean freedom from mistake, ignorance, or infirmity, but a heart so filled with love to God and neighbour that nothing contrary to love remains — the great and controversial doctrine that lay at the centre of the Methodist movement.

John Wesley was the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism, an Anglican clergyman whose tireless preaching and organizing helped spark a great revival in Britain. Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, was one of his most distinctive and disputed teachings, and this book is his mature, careful defence and explanation of it.

He means perfect love — a heart wholly given to God and neighbour, cleansed from the reigning power of sin, so that love becomes the ruling principle of the whole life. It is not, he insists, a claim to sinless flawlessness or freedom from human limitation, but the fullness of love that he believed God could work in a believer in this life.

He is emphatic on this. Christian perfection does not mean freedom from ignorance, mistake, infirmity, or temptation; the perfected believer still errs and still needs Christ every moment. Wesley wrote much of the book to clear away these misunderstandings, insisting that what he means is a perfection in love, not an absolute flawlessness impossible in this life.

Because critics feared it claimed a sinless perfection that Scripture denies to this life, or that it bred pride and self-deception. Wesley spent decades defending and refining the doctrine against such objections, which is partly why the book is cast as a 'plain account' — an attempt to state carefully, and guard against misuse, a teaching many found either impossible or dangerous.

By faith, as a work of God's grace, often received in a moment though prepared for over time — not achieved by human effort but wrought by the Holy Spirit in a fully surrendered heart. Wesley taught believers to seek it earnestly and expect it, while always resting on Christ, and to regard it as God's gift rather than their own attainment.

Anyone wanting to understand Wesley and Methodism at their heart, or the holiness tradition that flowed from him, and any Christian interested in the pursuit of holiness and perfect love. It is essential for grasping a doctrine that shaped whole movements, and useful for anyone weighing what Scripture holds out to the believer in this life.

At the beginning; the book is arranged largely as Wesley's own chronological account, tracing how his understanding developed and answering objections along the way. Read in order, it lets the reader see the doctrine take shape in Wesley's hands and understand both what he affirmed and what he was careful to deny.