Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 195—“The supremacy of those books which contain the words of Jesus himself [_i. e._, the Synoptic Gospels] is that they incorporate, with the other elements of the religious life, the regulative will. Here for instance [in John] is the gospel of the contemplative life, which, ‘_beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord is changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord_’ (_2 Cor. 3:18_). The belief is that, with this beholding, life will take care of itself. Life will never take care of itself. Among other things, after the most perfect vision, it has to ask what aspirations, principles, affections, belong to life, and then to cultivate the will to embody these things. Here is the common defect of all religions. They fail to marry religion to the common life. Christ did not stop short of this final word; but if we leave him for even the greatest of his disciples, we are in danger of missing it.” This utterance of Gould is surprising in several ways. It attributes to John alone the contemplative attitude of mind, which the quotation given shows to belong also to Paul. It ignores the constant appeals in John to the will: “_He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me_” (_John 14:21_). It also forgets that “_life_” in John is the whole being, including intellect, affection, and will, and that to have Christ for one’s life is absolutely to exclude Antinomianism. B. The Perfectionist,—which holds that the Christian may, in this life, become perfectly free from sin. This view was held by John Wesley in England, and by Mahan and Finney in America. Finney, Syst. Theol., 500, declares regeneration to be “an instantaneous change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.” The claims of Perfectionists, however, have been modified from “freedom from all sin,” to “freedom from all known sin,” then to “entire consecration,” and finally to “Christian assurance.” H. W. Webb‐Peploe, in S. S. Times, June 25, 1898—“The Keswick teaching is that no true Christian need wilfully or knowingly sin. Yet this is not sinless perfection. It is simply according to our faith that we receive, and faith only draws from God according to our present possibilities. These are limited by the presence of indwelling corruption; and, while never needing to sin within the sphere of the light we possess, there are to the last hour of our life upon the earth powers of corruption within every man, which defile his best deeds and give to even his holiest efforts that ‘nature of sin’ of which the 9th Article in the Church of England Prayerbook speaks so strongly.” Yet it is evident that this corruption is not regarded as real sin, and is called “nature of sin” only in some non‐natural sense.