Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

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As to the doctrine of ‘perfect holiness,’ I have not much to say. My observation of men concurs with the little study I have been able to bestow on the Old and New Testaments, in convincing me that men are not completely freed from sin by the grace of God, in this life. The final victory is on the banks of the Jordan. That a marvellous change does take place, by the blessing of God upon Gospel truth, I joyfully believe; but that a man, while in the body, is placed by it beyond the power of temptation, I must be allowed to doubt. The history of Christianity is far from furnishing any proof to this effect, and the passages of Scripture you quote, when taken in their connection, and with the allowances, exceptions and reservations to which all general propositions, not founded on strict definitions, are subject, do not seem to me to prove that a man cannot be holy in his general character without being altogether sinless. He cannot of course be holy and sinful in the same act, and how many times and how far he may sin and yet repent and be forgiven, I shall not undertake to decide. There are a great many things that I don't know. But I must believe the testimony of my own senses in preference to anybody's interpretation of Scripture—for Scripture itself, after all, rests on the testimony of sense; and according to that testimony I have never yet met with a man who was free from sin. I am obliged to reject your own claim to sinlessness. Your very letter refutes it. Hence I am obliged to reject your theory, or to believe that the gospel has never done its appropriate work within the range of my observation. If your theory could be established from Scripture, it would only make me an infidel, for I cannot receive a revelation which asserts that which my senses pronounce to be false, nor one which visibly fails to accomplish its object. On your theory, I must either believe that the gospel has been in the world eighteen hundred years for nothing, or I must believe that pride and vanity, flattery and slander, are holy affections and righteous acts! To be sure, I may be saved from the dilemma by more evidence, but so far as what I have goes, I am transfixed on one horn or the other. Still, therefore, am I obliged to mourn over your theological position as ‘downright fanaticism,’ and I pronounce it so with about the same confidence that I pronounce slaveholding a sin, but with far different feelings towards the subject of it.

Your theory of perfection, of course, takes away my hopes of salvation, which are not founded, as you intimate, on the law, but on God's free grace to Sinners who, believing in Christ,