Wesley

...Methodist revivalist meetings were attended with charismatic phenomena. There were people crying out (pp. 65, 71, 105, 108) or laughing (p. 157), with children often playing “prominent parts” (p. 175) in both the wailing (p. 155) and the laughing (p. 157). Some fell down prostrate (pp. 72, 79, 105, 156-157) and others had visions and revelations (p. 156).

Was this a rare thing? No, Tomkins writes, “this kind of thing happened almost daily” (p. 71).

But did this occur where Wesley himself was preaching? Yes, his preaching provoked the “charismatic phenomena” (p. 65), including the “wailing and convulsions” (p. 103). Thus his preaching was a “noisy event” (p. 72). Tomkins writes that “charismatic phenomena ... were to surround Wesley throughout his life” (p. 39).

But did not Wesley oppose these things? No. He was “impressed,” “delighted” and “wholly positive” regarding the charismatic phenomena (pp. 73, 157) viewing the outbreaks “most favourably” (p. 105). Wesley “championed ... charismatic gifts” (p. 195) and “embraced” dreams and visions “unreservedly” (p. 65).

Of course! For not only other Methodists (pp. 60, 102, 123, 161), but also Wesley himself had dreams (p. 133). He also held to miraculous healing (pp. 162-163) and evidently believed that on one occasion he raised the dead or at least one “dangerously ill.” Concerning the latter, Wesley issued the challenge: “I wait to hear who will either disprove this fact, or philosophically account for it” (p. 106).

Tomkins traces Wesley’s belief in the paranormal back to his teenage days. While John was at Charterhouse School in London, his family thought that Epworth rectory, where they lived, was being visited by a poltergeist whom they named “Old Jeffery” (pp. 18-20). The ghost stories were passed on to John who was “fascinated” (p. 19). Tomkins writes,

John was utterly convinced. He evidently had an innate taste for the supernatural and Old Jeffery brought it to the surface. Intrigued by his family’s accounts, he later collected and published them … His letters home often repeated other ghost stories he had heard. When he next went home, he wrote an account of the haunting from Samuel’s diary and the family’s recollections … In later years, he was to welcome the paranormal manifestations his preaching provoked in a way that upset even his closest colleagues (p. 20).

Other “bizarre religious phenomena of Methodism” include the man “who had the gift of preaching in his sleep.”

He would sing a hymn, recite a text and then preach a six-point sermon, sometimes breaking off to dispute with a clergyman who came to interrupt him (p. 144).

Then there was the Wesleyan lay preacher who spoke in tongues and the demon-possessed girl who recovered before Wesley was able to make it to her house (p. 144).

Tomkins sums up the role of charismatic phenomena in Methodism:

The importance of Methodism’s willingness to embrace the miraculous and charismatic has not always been recognised, but it was crucial. It was, though by no means uniformly, a religion of dreams and visions, healings, convulsions, ecstatic worship, exorcisms and messages and guidance from God. Such phenomena were exciting for participants and drew many spectators. They were also often decisive in Methodist conversions and played an ongoing part in their spiritual lives (p. 85).

Tomkins rightly sees Wesley and his Methodism as a forerunner of the Pentecostal movement (pp. 196, 198-199). This is where his free will gospel was to take many of his followers in years to come.

Moreover, the fusion of free will and emotionalism in modern Pentecostalism has much in common with Wesley who stressed “look[ing] within” and “feel[ing]” God’s love (p. 66) and who “put such store on his feelings as proof of his soul’s state” (p. 62). John Wesley’s love of the medieval mystics and his indebtedness to the “emotional” Moravians (p. 46) comes in here too. They placed a lot of “emphasis on experience and feelings in the spiritual life.” There is a lot to be said for Tomkins’ reckoning: “Moravian spirituality ... [had] an incalculable impact on the shape of Methodism” (p. 46)....

...Tomkins quotes at length “a most extraordinary letter [from John Wesley] to Charles in 1766” in which “he bares his soul in the most bleak and moving way:”

In one of my last [letters] I was saying that I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery), I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed, in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen … And yet, to be so employed of God! And so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there was never such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I ever have had that faith, it would not be so strange. But I never had any other evidence of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all, unless such as faintly shines from reason’s glimmering ray. I have no direct witness (I do not say, that I am a child of God, but) of anything invisible or eternal.

And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection. And yet I find rather an increase than a decrease of zeal for the whole work of God and every part of it. I am borne along, I know not how, that I can’t stand still. I want all the world to come to what I do not know (p. 168; italics mine).

What are we to make of this bizarre letter of confession? Here, the apostle of free will, now in his sixties, confesses that he does not love God, believe or have the direct witness of divine sonship or even of things invisible or eternal; and that he never did. “I do not love God. I never did … I want all the world to come to what I do not know” (p. 168; italics mine). And can it be that Wesley never gained an interest in the Saviour’s blood?...

http://www.cprf.co.uk/articles/johnwesley.htm

...

The holiness movement is a set of beliefs and practices emerging from the Methodist Christian church in the mid 19th century. The movement is distinguished by its emphasis on John Wesley's doctrine of "Christian perfection" - the belief that it is possible to live free of voluntary sin - and particularly by the belief that this may be accomplished instantaneously through a second work of grace.
wiki

The holiness movement

Relation and reaction to Pentecostalism

The traditional holiness movement is distinct from the Pentecostal movement, which believes that the baptism in the Holy Spirit involves speaking in tongues. Many of the early Pentecostals were from the holiness movement, and to this day many "classical Pentecostals" maintain much of holiness doctrine and many of its devotional practices. (Oneness Pentecostals, such as the United Pentecostal Church, still largely adhere to these "standards.") Additionally, the terms Pentecostal and apostolic, now used by adherents to Pentecostal and charismatic doctrine, were once widely used by holiness churches in connection with the consecrated lifestyle described in the New Testament. However, Pentecostals add and emphasize that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is evidenced specifically by speaking in tongues, a position which churches in the traditional holiness movement do not accept.

During the advent of Pentecostalism at Azusa Street, the practice of speaking in tongues was strongly rejected by leaders of the traditional holiness movement. Alma White, the leader of the Pillar of Fire Church, a holiness denomination, wrote a book against the Pentecostal movement that was published in 1936; the work, entitled Demons and Tongues, represented early rejection of the new Pentecostal movement. White called speaking in tongues "satanic gibberish" and Pentecostal services "the climax of demon worship".[2]

Nevertheless, many holiness churches and organizations joined the Pentecostal movement (e.g., the Church of God in Christ and the Pentecostal Holiness Church), accepting the Pentecostal teaching on speaking in tongues as the evidence of a "third work" of grace, in addition to conversion and sanctification. As a result, Pentecostal churches in the Southeast and in the African-American community, are often called "holiness" and "sanctified" churches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiness_movement

...

Reformed Dogmatics, volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, by Herman Bavinck.

Edited by John Bolt; translated by John Vriend. Published by Baker Academic. Hardback, 944 pages, list price $49.99. Reviewed by OP pastor Mark A. Garcia.

With the release of this splendid volume, the most anticipated Reformed publishing venture in recent memory has reached completion. Now that the full scope of Bavinck’s achievement is in view for English readers, it is easy to see why his work has been praised effusively for generations.

This volume has three major sections. Part One opens with a full discussion of calling and regeneration, and proceeds to careful treatments of faith and conversion, justification, sanctification, and perseverance. This section includes fruitful, sophisticated treatments of various topics, including faith and conversion, varieties of conversion, holiness as gift and reward, sanctification in Christ, good works, and the perfectionist heresy.

Review of Studies in Perfectionism by Benjamin Warfield

Author: Jim Elliff

Warfield, Benjamin B., Studies in Perfectionism. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958. 464 pages.

B. B. Warfield is known as one of the major exponents of the Reformed view of theology. He studied at what is now Princeton University and Seminary, graduating from the later in 1876. He taught first at Leipzig, Germany but was later the successor to Archibald Alexander Hodge as professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Seminary. He died in 1921. During his life he earned several distinguished degrees. He wrote theology profusely. This book was taken from the original ten volume series of Warfield works first published by Oxford University Press which has been popular for years as a corpus of his writings.

The original work, Studies in Perfectionism, included material on "German rationalists as Ritschl, Wernle, Clemen, Pfleiderer, and Windisch." For the use of the present audience this one thousand page work was truncated by excluding this material. The study's foci is on such men and movements as Asa Mahan, Charles Grandison Finney, Hannah Whitehall Smith, the Oberlin teaching, the Higher Life teaching, the Fellowship movement, Keswick, and the Victorious Life movement, mostly as they appear in English-speaking countries.

Perfectionism is a phenomenon which, if dealing exclusively in the Christian context, has appeared in Catholic, Arminian/Weslyan, Quaker and Quietists circles. It has been most prominently displayed in the Keswick and Victorious Life movement.

The predominate theme of Warfield is that sin is under-evaluated and under-appreciated by these perfectionists, and that sin consists of any failure to conform to the law of God. In Warfield's view, the perfectionists discussed have a theoretical rather than actual perfectionism. Salient arguments and a great deal of vital history make this a most useful book.....

this lecture on wesley - his life and teachings really covers all the bases and summarizes quite well all the reasons why the foundation of Methodism/The Holiness Club/Perfectionism is utterly alien and faulty. it'll really help in recognizing the jargon coming from the present-day camp.

recommended:

The Disturbing Teachings of John Wesley
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11910185240

...

Of Sanctification: Perfectionism, Part 2

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=99091912282

...
outstanding lecture on the issue.

highly recommended.
easy listening.
again, very helpful to recognize today's arminian/pelagianism/perfectionism camp including RC. interesting how closely they're all related....you'll surely know it when you hear it.

particular focus on Arminianism.

i.e:

- high view of man - low view of Grace & Law
- synergism
- Jesus is our "example"