ren (it is so far true) did treat me ill. Afterward they asked my pardon. I answered that that was superfluous; that I had never been angry with them, but was afraid, 1. That there was error in their doctrine. 2. That there was sin (allowed) in their practice. This was then, and is at this day, the only question between them and me.

Z. Speak more plainly.

W. I feared that there was error in their doctrine: 1. Concerning the end of our faith in this life, to wit, Christian Perfection. 2. Concerning the means of grace, so called by our Church.

Z. I acknowledge no inherent perfection in this life. This is the error of errors. I pursue it through the world with fire and sword-I trample it under foot-I exterminate it. Christ is our only perfection. Whoever follows after inherent perfection denies Christ.

W. But I believe that the Spirit of Christ works perfection in true Christians.

Z. Not at all. All our perfection is in Christ. All Christian perfection is imputed, not inherent. We are perfect in Christin ourselves never.

W. We contend, I think, about words. Is not every true believer holy?

Z. Certainly. But he is holy in Christ, not in himself.

W. But does he not live holily?

Z. Yes, he lives holily in all things.

W. Has he not also a holy heart?

Z. Most certainly.

W. Is he not, consequently, holy in himself?

Z. No, no. In Christ only. He is not holy in himself. In

himself he has no holiness at all.

W. Has he not the love of God and his neighbor in his heart? Yea, even the whole image of God?

Z. He has. But these constitute legal, not evangelical, holiness. Evangelical holiness is-faith.

W. The dispute is altogether about words. You grant that the whole heart and the whole life of a believer are holy; that he loves God with all his heart, and serves him with all his strength. I ask nothing more; I mean nothing else by Christian perfection or holiness.

Z. But this is not his holiness. He is not more holy if he loves more, nor less holy if he loves less.

W. What! Does not a believer, while he increases in love, in crease equally in holiness?

Z. By no means. The moment he is justified he is sanctified wholly. From that time, even unto death, he is neither more nor less holy.

W. Is not, then, a father in Christ more holy than a new-born babe?

Z. No. Entire sanctification and justification are in the same instant; and neither is increased or diminished.

W. But does not a believer grow daily in the love of God? Is he perfect in love as soon as he is justified?

Z. He is. He never increases in the love of God; he loves entirely in that moment, as he is entirely sanctified.

W. What, then, does the Apostle Paul mean by "We are renewed day by day?"

Z. I will tell you. Lead, if it be changed into gold, is gold the first day, and the second, and the third; and so it is renewed day by day. But it is never more gold than on the first day.

W. I thought we ought to grow in grace.

Z. Certainly; but not in holiness. As soon as any one is justified, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell in his heart; and in that moment his heart is as pure as it ever will be. A babe in Christ is as pure in heart as a father in Christ. There is no difference.

W. Were not the Apostles justified before the death of Christ? Z. They were.

W. But were they not more holy after the day of Pentecost than before the death of Christ?

Z. Not in the least.

W. Were they not on that day filled with the Holy Ghost? Z. They were. But that gift of the Spirit had no reference to their holiness; it was the gift of miracles only.

W. Perhaps I do not understand you. Do we not, while we deny ourselves, more and more die to the world and live to God? Z. We spurn all (self) denial; we trample it under foot. Being believers, we do whatever we will, and nothing more. We ridicule all mortification. No purification precedes perfect love. W. What you have said, God assisting me, I will thoughtfully consider.

On this conversation the author of an article on Methodisın, in the "Evangelische Kirchenzeitung" for 1840, (the late Professor Hengstenberg's organ,) very justly remarks: "It is truly astonishing how Zinzendorf could himself have caused this conversation, passages of which sound like a malevolent caricature of his doctrines, to be copied just as it stands, word for word, into the "Büding Collection." Into what dangerous phantasies did his excessive pressure of the doctrine of the atonement here betray him! He not merely maintains what the Evangelical Church has ever taught, that before justification there can be no sanctification; that before and apart from the righteousness of faith there can be no righteousness of life; but he denies, out and out, all righteousness of life, and places himself upon a stand-point so ideal as to represent the believer as no longer living in time, but as already in full possession of

what he is to receive hereafter. To hold fast this fantastical idealism, how must the Moravian brotherhood at that time have forsaken the healthful nourishment of Scripture, which so often speaks of a becoming more perfect in love-of a race toward the mark, during which one has not yet attained-of a perfecting of holiness in the fear of God. How must they have turned away from all this to intoxicate their feelings with their morbid hymns, in which the words 'blood and wounds' are a hundred times repeated! God be thanked, that they afterward purged themselves from this dross, and thus became a blessing to so many. In no case, however, can we justify Spangenberg, who certainly was acquainted with this conversation, (he refers to the 'Büding Collection,') when he represents in his 'Life of Zinzendorf,' (Part IV, p. 1,046,) that the grand point of difference between Wesley and the Brotherhood was the doctrine of the former respecting sinless perfection."

The same writer shows that the other declarations of the Moravians were as little satisfactory to Wesley as those of the Count in this conversation-the diversity of doctrine with respect to faith and its fruits was too great.

"In the manifesto of the Moravian Society at Marienborn with respect to the Methodistic movement, which document was undoubtedly the production of Zinzendorf, it is stated: 'Jesus's passion is our proper fides justificans our justifying faith; his faithfulness, his intercession, his acquired right, justified us through the election of grace before the foundation of the world. In this sense all children of God are justified before they have knowledge of it; from the hour when they believe it they know it. This faith, however, is no work nor proper merit by which we can, as it were, force God to be gracious, as certain divines have incautiously taught, sometimes_confounding miracle-faith with faith in the merits of Jesus. In order to faith in Jesus nothing is needed but the heart; the understanding only makes the enjoyment of it sensible, distinct, and enduring. Miracle-faith, on the other hand, has its seat in the understanding, and with it one may be lost. 1 Cor. xiii. It demands an absolute plerophoria, without the least doubt. The faith which is unto salvation remains in the heart ever the same, and cleaves inseparably to Jesus's wounds; in the understanding, however, especially according to the current method of conversion, it is subject to all sorts of offenses, through which there may result an oligopistia with respect to hours and days. We, however, in our Societies esteem it a precious

and gracious gift of the Saviour that he has permitted us to find the simple old way, in which one stops with his heart, holds himself to the grace which he has obtained, to the forgiveness of sins which he has received, to the death of Jesus, which has become present with us, and counts all that the understanding, temperament, constitution, the tabernacle may from that time on object as unworthy a moment's thought, only letting one's self be driven ever anew to sigh for the Lamb that is slain for us. One has not seen it, but one loves it. That is what we call an abiding witness of the Holy Spirit, who no more ceases to make intercessions for us with ings than the Saviour does to pray for us.'-Büding's Col lection.

groan

"It is no wonder that this representation did not satisfy a man of so sharp an understanding as Wesley. In fact, the witness of the Holy Spirit is too completely subjectified, when it is said that 'one holds himself to the grace which he has obtained,' a thing that must of necessity weaken the assurance of faith and worse yet, at the outset justification is confounded with satisfaction, for it is wholly false that the children of God are just before they have knowledge of it; from that hour when they believe it, they know it.' According to this, the forgiveness of sin would be no act of God, but something occurring merely in the consciousness of man; all men (or the elect, according as one connects a particularistic doctrine of election with it or not) would be from eternity forgiven their sins, and the prayer Forgive us our debts,' rest upon a misunderstanding. That Zinzendorf here and there betrays a tendency toward this Antinomian doctrine of restorationism (which in our day has found new dissemination in certain quarters through Erskine's book on "The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel ") is well known. Still one must not press his language too far, since in employing it he had glimpses of something most true and correct.

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"From the principle which Zinzendorf asserts in the above quotation one might imagine that Wesley regarded faith as something in itself meritorious, after the fashion of the Remonstrant Grotius, for instance, or Menken, as a well-doing on the part of man, for the sake of which God does not regard his other sins, and which, in principle, as inner disposition of the man, already includes all good works. This, however, is not the case. Indeed, his whole life through, Wesley held fast to the doctrine that justification is nothing but the forgiveness of sins, and he contradicted precisely the above cited assertion

"Justificari est consequi remissionem peccatorum," says Melanchthon, in the Apology.

of Zinzendorf, that justification and regeneration are the same, He always taught that the two are inseparable, but that regeneration is the immediate effect and consequence of justification. The same representation is given by Richard Watson in his Theological Institutes, a work of high authority among the Methodists. He says, 'Faith is that qualifying condition to which the promise of God annexes justification; that without which justification would not take place; and in this sense it is that we are justified by faith; not by the merit of faith, but by faith instrumentally as this condition, for its connection with the benefit arises from the merits of Christ and the promise of God. If Christ had not merited, God had not promised, and justification had never followed upon this faith; so that the indissoluble connection of faith and justification is from God's institution, whereby he hath bound himself to give the benefit upon performance of the condition. Yet there is an aptitude in this faith to be made a condition, for no other act can receive Christ as a priest propitiating, and pleading the propitiation, and the promise of God for his sake to give the benefit. As receiving Christ and the gracious promise in this manner, it acknowledgeth man's guilt, and so man renounceth all righteousness in himself, and honoreth God the Father, and Christ the Son, the only Redeemer.'

"The antagonism between Wesley and the Moravian Brotherhood," continues the same writer, "referred, so far as it respected doctrine, to the relation between justification and sanctification, and to the doctrine of the imputation of the merits of Christ. While in the Moravian Society there grew up out of the feeling of vital communion with the Saviour the conception that the sinful soul is to view itself as every moment clothed, as it were, in the righteousness of Christ, and as represented by him before God, Wesley, though holding fast to the doctrine that forgiveness, or justification before God, is imparted to man on account of the satisfaction of Christ, and especially on account of his atoning death, nevertheless repudiates decidedly the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's active righteousness as unscriptural, maintaining that the believer continually needs, indeed, the forgiveness of sins or the confirmation of his justification, but that, in virtue of this new and ever renewed relationship to God, he must also in himself grow in holiness, and without this continual growth his supposed justification itself must rest on self-deception."

Besides this doctrinal antithesis between Wesley and the Moravians, there was a more general one with respect to the respective missions which Wesley and Zinzendorf proposed to

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