Description
During the 1720s, John Wesley began his quest to understand biblical holiness theologically and to experience it personally. Over the following decades, he preached and wrote about sanctification, carefully refining his grasp of the subject. This long-term investigation led him to study Scripture, reason, experience, and the Christian tradition. Then, in 1766, he published A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. That book went through several revisions and expansions, and in 1777, he issued his final edition of this work. Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection became a Christian classic that now stands in the company of such devotional works as Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout Holy Life, Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, and Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying. This edition of the Plain Account is a transcription provided by one of the leading Wesley scholars in the world.
Ellsworth Kalas –
Methodism’s message, as John and Charles Wesley declared it, was a full gospel, both personal and social. At its heart was a message of exceeding hope, a call to perfection. The Wesley brothers addressed their message to those who sought to flee from the wrath to come, but they were passionate about living out that faith in the present, in souls that were going on to perfection. John Wesley spelled out this vision in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. He meant it to be just that: a plain account. Wesley felt that most books were too long and too complex. He sought vigorously to put his message in reach of even the poorest souls. Because this was Wesley’s aim, I dare to think he would be pleased to see the book that follows: a transcription in the English we speak today, with annotations for those who want to be sure they understand, and who want to learn still more. But such a modernizing of Wesley’s language should be done only by someone who believes profoundly in Wesley’s message, and who is scholar enough to know how to transmit it without diminishing it. Which is to say, the modernizer should love the task to which he has set his hand. In Kenneth Kinghorn we have such a person. For this, thanks be to God.