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Updated: May 20, 2025
Perhaps some may object, That from this way of reasoning it is apparent, that sanctification is first, since the soul may have faith, and so a principle of grace in it; and yet, as yet it cannot find Christ to feed and to refresh the soul withal. Answ.
I shall only say this here, That if the soul have an earnest desire to be sanctified wholly, and to have on the image of God, that he may glorify him, and panteth after holiness as for life, that he may look like him that is holy, and maketh this his work and study; sorrowing at nothing more than at his shortcoming; crying out and longing for the day when he shall be delivered from a body of death, and have the old man wholly crucified; he needeth not question his interest in Christ, and warrant to make use of him for every part of sanctification; for this longing desire after conformity to God's law, and panting after this spiritual life, to the end God may be exalted, Christ glorified, and others edified, will not be readily found in one that is yet in nature.
And certainly, if there is one consideration more than another which should make us English grateful to Pius the Ninth, it is that, by giving us a Church of our own, he has prepared the way for our own habits of mind, our own manner of reasoning, our own tastes, and our own virtues, finding a place and thereby a sanctification, in the Catholic Church.
At length, having labored for the salvation of souls with great fatigue, nearly the whole year, the holy Patriarch returned to his dear home, St. Mary of the Angels, to attend more immediately to his own sanctification. He there received Brother Casar of Spire, who had returned from Germany, and the subject of whose mission we must now resume, having lost sight of it since the year 1221.
"He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." If you look on morality, virtue, goodness, holiness, sanctification call it what you will as merely the obligation of an EXTERNAL law, you will be tempted to say, "Let me be faithful to it in its greater and more important cases, and that is enough.
Joy is not always overflowing in the hearts of the sanctified. These trials are profitable, really indispensable. Sanctification restores the soul. It purifies the affections and motives of the life, it lifts all of life up to a plane of holiness and love, but it leaves us men and women. Do not expect impossibilities of it, but expect it to cleanse out sin and carnal wicked elements.
Thus Penn the quaker and you run in this, in one and the self same spirit; he affirming that sanctification is antecedent to justification, but not the consequence thereof. But what salvation? Why salvation? say you: First from the filth; for that is the primary and first sense: justification from the guilt, being the never-failing consequence of this.
See also Psalm xxxvii. 37, and lxiv. 4. 1 Cor. ii. 6. Heb. v. 14. James iii. 2. And it is true, we are to aim at perfection, and to pray for it, as Matt. v. 48. 2 Cor. xiii. 11. Col. iv. 12. Heb. xiii. 21. James i. 4. 1 Pet. v. 10. Heb. vi. 1. Yet as to the degrees of holiness and sanctification, and in respect of the remnant of corruption within, there is no full perfection here, Jer. ix. 20, 21.
It is an immense thing to be anchored in some great principle like that. Emerson says: "The hero is the man who is immovably centered." Get immovably centered in that doctrine of sanctification.
In the first four petitions Christ teaches us and commands us to beseech for the things that pertain to this last end, and in the last three petitions for protection against the things which hinder the attainment of this end. The glory of God is the first and chief purpose of all creation, as also of redemption and sanctification.
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