After most ably arguing the matter, Wesley, in the sermon here referred to, concludes “that faith is the only condition which is _immediately_ and _proximately_ necessary to sanctification;” and that the “faith whereby we are sanctified—saved from sin, and perfected in love, is a divine evidence and conviction, first, that God hath promised it in the Holy Scripture; secondly, that what God hath promised, He is able to perform; thirdly, that He is able and willing to do it now; and, fourthly, a divine evidence and conviction that He doeth it. In that hour,” continues Wesley, “it is done; God says to the inmost soul, ‘According to thy faith, be it unto thee!’ Then the soul is pure from every spot of sin; it is clean ‘from all unrighteousness.’ The believer then experiences the deep meaning of those solemn words, ‘If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’” Well would it be, for the Church and the world, if these views of Wesley and his friend Fletcher were held by all the Methodists of the present age, or even by a thousandth part of them. How often are they preached in Methodist pulpits? Not so often as they ought to be! “Where Christian perfection is not strongly and explicitly preached,” said Wesley, “there is seldom any remarkable blessing from God; and, consequently, little addition to the Society, and little life in the members of it.”[318] Footnote 318: Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 252. The year 1775 was to Fletcher one of the busiest in his life. He was steeped in controversy; but he rose in piety. In a letter to his friend Joseph Benson, he wrote:— “I have had two printers at my heels, besides my common business, and this is enough to make me trespass upon the patience of my friends. I have published the first part of my ‘_Scales_,’ which has gone through a second edition in London, before I could get the second part printed in Salop, where it will be published in about six weeks. I have also published a creed for the Arminians, where you will see that, if I have not answered your critical remarks upon my Essay on Truth, I have improved by them, yea publicly recanted the two expressions you mentioned as improper.