The Work
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection was first published in 1766 by the Methodist Conference and is unusual in being not a single composed treatise but a retrospective compilation: Wesley gathered sermons, tracts, letters, and conference minutes from 1725 onward to demonstrate that the doctrine of entire sanctification was not a late innovation but the consistent teaching of his ministry from its beginning. The text runs to approximately 120 pages in most editions and is organized chronologically, tracing Wesley's development of the doctrine through four decades. It remained in print throughout Wesley's lifetime (he revised it repeatedly) and became the definitive statement of what Methodists call the 'second blessing' or 'perfect love.'
The doctrine Wesley articulated - and spent his ministry defending, clarifying, and applying - is that the Holy Spirit can bring a believer in this life to a state in which the governing motive of the heart is love for God and neighbor, with the habitual power of sin broken. Wesley was careful to distinguish this from absolute sinlessness (which he denied) and from cessation of temptation, growth, or the possibility of falling away. His 'entire sanctification' is a crisis of grace - a moment of transformation - rather than a gradual process, though it is prepared by gradual growth and followed by further growth.
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 22:37 - 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind' - is the Great Commandment that Wesley takes as the definition of Christian perfection. He argues that Christian perfection is not moral achievement but the fulfillment of this commandment: a heart wholly oriented to God in love. The emphasis is on love as the governing disposition rather than on moral performance - perfection is love's completeness, not virtue's accumulation. This reframing - perfection as love rather than as sinlessness - is Wesley's most important theological move.
1 John 4:18 - 'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love' - provides the Johannine foundation for 'perfect love' as a state that can be attained. Wesley reads John's language of 'perfect love casting out fear' as a description of the condition he is commending: a love so complete that the servile fear that motivates much religious performance is replaced by the filial love that serves God as a child serves a father. The trajectory from fear to love - from the religion of duty to the religion of affection - is Wesley's account of the Christian life.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 - 'And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ' - is the Pauline prayer for 'entire' sanctification that gives Wesley his vocabulary. 'Sanctify you wholly' - the sanctification of the entire person - is Wesley's proof text for the possibility of a comprehensive inner transformation rather than merely the forgiveness of individual sins.
Romans 5:5 - 'And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us' - is the Pauline description of the love poured into the heart by the Spirit, which Wesley reads as the promised gift that entire sanctification realizes: the Spirit pouring into the heart the very love that is its content.
Author and Context
John Wesley (1703-1791) was the son of Samuel Wesley, an Anglican clergyman, and Susannah Wesley, whose disciplined household religion and high intellectual standards shaped John's character. He was educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, was ordained in the Church of England, and founded the 'Holy Club' at Oxford (1729) - the disciplined devotional society from which 'Methodism' took its mocking nickname.
Wesley's 'Aldersgate experience' (May 24, 1738) - 'I felt my heart strangely warmed' - is the crisis moment he describes as the beginning of his own experience of the assurance of salvation. But the doctrine of entire sanctification - the second transformation beyond initial conversion - he traces to his reading of Thomas à Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and William Law in 1725. The doctrine was controversial throughout his ministry: critics charged that it bred spiritual pride, that it was unattainable, or that Wesley himself had not attained it.
A Plain Account was written partly as self-defense against these critics. By compiling forty years of consistent teaching, Wesley aimed to show that the doctrine was not enthusiasm or innovation but the consistent witness of Scripture, the early church fathers, and his own experience and observation.
The Doctrine and Its Debates
Wesley's doctrine of entire sanctification generated debates that have continued to the present day. The central questions are: (1) Is the state he describes achievable in this life? (2) If achievable, can it be maintained? (3) Does it constitute actual sinlessness, or only the absence of voluntary sin? Wesley's answers - yes, yes with difficulty and ongoing vigilance, and the latter - were not always clearly stated, and his followers disagreed.
The Calvinist wing of the evangelical revival - George Whitefield and most of the Reformed tradition - strongly opposed Wesley's doctrine. For Calvinists, the idea that a believer could be entirely sanctified in this life contradicted the Reformed doctrine of remaining sinfulness throughout the earthly life. The controversy between Wesley and Whitefield - warm friends despite theological disagreement - is one of the defining debates of eighteenth-century evangelicalism.
Theological Significance
The book's theological contribution is its articulation of the possibility of transformative grace - that the Christian life is not merely the management of persistent sinfulness but the progressive realization of love. Wesley's doctrine held open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing transformation than the Reformed tradition typically affirmed, and in doing so generated a tradition of expectancy: Christians in the Wesleyan-holiness stream pray and seek for a transformation they believe is available.
The lineage from Wesley's entire sanctification through the nineteenth-century Holiness movement to Pentecostalism is direct: the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism as a 'second blessing' (a crisis experience after conversion) is Wesley's crisis-sanctification applied to a new pneumatological framework. Every Pentecostal and charismatic Christian who prays for a transforming experience of the Spirit is, whether they know it or not, praying in the tradition Wesley's Plain Account established.
Legacy
The book spawned the Wesleyan-Holiness movement of the nineteenth century: Phoebe Palmer's 'Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness' (1835 onward), the National Holiness Association (1867), and the Keswick Convention (1875 onward) all drew on Wesley's doctrine. The Pentecostal movement (1901 onward) is its most numerically significant descendant. Contemporary charismatic and Third Wave movements worldwide - numbering hundreds of millions of Christians - stand in this tradition.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Matthew 22:34-40 (the Great Commandment), 1 John 4:7-21 (God is love; perfect love casts out fear), 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 (pray without ceasing; sanctified wholly), Romans 5:1-11 (love poured into the heart by the Spirit), and Ezekiel 36:25-27 (a new heart and a new spirit).
Further Reading
- John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions (1746-1760) - the sermons that provide the theological context for the Plain Account. - Kenneth Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (2007) - the best modern scholarly treatment of Wesley's doctrine. - Melvin Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (1980) - traces the Plain Account's influence through the American holiness movement.