ADAM CLARKE: HOLINESS SAINT AND SCHOLAR
The name of Adam Clarke is synonymous with biblical scholarship and
rightly so. His Commentary and Critical Notes on the entire Bible was
completed in 1826 and it represented more than 30 years of intense
research and writing. Other scholars have written commentaries on the
whole Bible, but Clarke's is a thesaurus of biblical, oriental,
philosophical, and classical learning unequaled by any other. When it
is recalled that all this work was done while Clarke was a busy,
itinerant Wesleyan preacher who never had an hour's secretarial help
in his life, it, together with all his other publications, indicates
a prodigious literary achievement.
Clarke was a Wesleyan scholar and an ardent, convinced expositor
of scriptural holiness. No appreciation of the holiness heritage can
ignore Adam Clarke. Following the Wesley brothers and John Fletcher,
Clarke's is the next name in that illustrious line of holiness preachers
and scholars from John Wesley to the present. It is altogether fitting
that we should highlight Adam Clarke's contribution to the theology
of scriptural holiness. Before looking at his teaching in some detail,
a brief sketch of his life and work is necessary.
Adam Clarke was born in the county of Londonderry, North Ireland,
in 1760 and was converted in 1779 through hearing a Methodist preacher.
Three years later he left home to attend Wesley's school in Kingswood,
Bristol, England. Five weeks later he was appointed to his first
preaching circuit and for the next 50 years he was a self-taught
Wesleyan preacher who, among other academic accomplishments, made
himself master of at least 10 languages, ancient and modern.
He served on 24 Methodist circuits in England and Ireland, worked
for 3 years in the Channel Islands, was three times president of the
English Methodist Conference and four times president of the Irish
Methodist Conference. He devoted hundreds of working hours to the newly
founded British and Foreign Bible Society and 10 years of painstaking
editing and collating of state papers. This latter work was a colossal
undertaking. It required the most exact examination, deciphering, and
classification of British State Papers from 1131 to 1666. The research
was carried on in 14 different locations, including the Tower of London,
London's Westminster Archives, and Cambridge University Library. In
1808 the University of Aberdeen conferred on Adam Clarke the honorary
degree of LL.D., the university's highest academic honor.
As well as his Commentary, Clarke's publications ran to 22 volumes,
including his Memorials of the Wesley Family, Reflections on the Being
and Attributes of God, The Manners of the Ancient Israelites, 4 volumes
of sermons, 3 volumes of miscellanea titled Detached Pieces, a volume
on Christian Missions, A Concise View of the Succession of Sacred
Literature, and A Bibliographical Dictionary. Clarke's literary output
was phenomenal when it is recalled that he was a full-time itinerant
preacher.
A glance at the record of the 24 Methodist circuits he served
between 1782 and 1832 shows that his longest domicile in one place was
four years, yet his moving from place to place approximately every two
years does not seem to have interfered with his reading, writing, and
publication. He was elected a member of six of the most learned
societies of his day, including the Antiquarian Society, the Royal
Asiatic Society, and the Royal Irish Academy. In spite of all the
distinctions given to him, Clarke remained a loyal Wesleyan preacher
and a devout, humble believer. Learning I love," he once wrote, "learned
men I prize; with the company of the great and the good I am often
delighted. But infinitely above all these and all other possible
enjoyments, I glory in Christ--in me living and reigning and fitting
me for His heaven."
Clarke was a preacher of rare power and gifts and, particularly in
his latter years, he preached to crowded churches. To his pulpit
ministry he brought all the warmth of his Celtic upbringing and all
the vast resources of his encyclopaedic learning. Essentially a textual
preacher, he made little formal preparation before he entered the
pulpit--a method that we lesser mortals should not emulate! "I cannot
make a sermon before I go into the pulpit," he confessed to his friend,
Robert Carr Brackenbury, "therefore, I am obliged to hang upon the
arm and the wisdom of the Lord. I read a great deal, write very little,
but strive to study." "I ... strive to study"--that was the secret of
Clarke's success both as a preacher and a writer.
A veritable Briareus in his many accomplishments, he explored every
available avenue of knowledge, especially the linguistic, the scientific,
and the historical. Advising a young Methodist preacher about his
studies, Clarke averred: "A Methodist preacher should know everything.
Partial knowledge on any branch of science or business is better than
total ignorance.... The old adage of 'Too many irons in the fire'
contains an abominable lie. You cannot have too many--poker, tongs,
and all, keep them all going." It was advice he followed himself before
giving it to others. Visiting Liverpool in the north of England in
1832, he contracted the deadly Asiatic cholera and died from it at his
London home on August 26.
Adam Clarke was a holiness preacher and scholar. He was enthusiastically
committed to Methodist doctrine and experience and particularly to Wesley's
understanding of Christian perfection. In a sermon preached from Phil. 1:27-28
titled "Apostolic Preacher," he explained Christian holiness:
"The whole design of God was to restore man to his image, and raise
him from the ruins of his fall; in a word, to make him perfect; to blot
out all his sins, purify his soul, and fill him with all holiness, so
that no unholy temper, evil desire, or impure affection or passion
shall either lodge or have any being within him. This and this only
is true religion, or Christian perfection; and a less salvation than
this would be dishonourable to the sacrifice of Christ and the operation
of the Holy Ghost.... Call it by what name we please, it must imply
the pardon of all transgression and the removal of the whole body of
sin and death.... This, then, is what I plead for, pray for, and heartily
recommend to all true believers, under the name of Christian perfection."
Preaching on Eph. 3:14-21 Clarke interpreted the phrase "filled with
all the fulness of God" as descriptive of the experience of full
salvation. "To be filled with God is a great thing, to be filled with
the fulness of God is still greater; to be filled with all the fulness
of God is greatest of all. It is . . . to have the heart emptied of,
and cleansed from, all sin and defilement, and filled with humility
meekness, gentleness, goodness . . . and love to Go and man."
Clarke knew that some Christians were opposed to the Wesleyan
doctrine of entire sanctification because they think no man can be
fully saved from sin in this life.... They hold out death as the
complete deliver from all corruption and the final destroyer of sin
as if were revealed in every page of the Bible! Whereas there is not
one passage in the sacred volume that says any such thing! Were this
true, then death, far from being the last enemy, would be the last and
best friend, and the greatest of all deliverers.... It is the blood
of Jesus alone that cleanseth from all unrighteousness."
Another familiar argument against Christian perfection was the
assertion that indwelling sin humbles believers and keeps them penitent.
Clarke replied: "Pride is of the essence of sin . . . and the root
whence all moral obliquity flows. How then can pride humble us? . . .
The heart from which it [pride] is cast out has the humility, meekness
and gentleness of Christ implanted in its stead."
To the further argument that a Christian is surely humbled by the
sense of indwelling sin, Clarke replied: "I grant that they who see
and feel and deplore their indwelling sin, are humbled. But is it the
sin that humbles? No. It is the grace of God that shows and condemns
the sin that humbles us.... We are never humbled under a sense of
indwelling sin till the Spirit of God drags it to the light and shows
us not only its horrid deformity, but its hostility to God; and He
manifests it that He may take it away."
Preaching some 30 years after Wesley died, Clarke saw this glorious
doctrine exemplified by a host of professing Methodists. Replying to
the objection that this teaching produced self-righteousness in its
professors, Clarke testified: "No person that acts so has ever received
this grace. He is either a hypocrite or a self-deceiver. Those who
have received it . . . love God with all their heart, they love even
their enemies.... In the splendor of God's holiness they feel themselves
absorbed.... It has been no small mercy to me that in the course of
my religious life, I have met with many persons who professed that the
blood of Christ had saved them from all sin, and whose profession was
maintained by an immaculate life; but I never knew one of them that
was not of the spirit above described. They were men of the strongest
faith, the purest love, the holiest affections, the most obedient lives
and the most useful in society."
Adam Clarke wrote and preached and exegeted the doctrine of entire
sanctification with all his command of scripture, linguistic expertise,
and wide theological reading, but there is one characteristic of his
presentation that deserves more attention. He not only believed it was
a scriptural doctrine and that it was theologically sound--he enforced
it and explained it and defended it with all the passion of an evangelist.
Whenever he touched the subject, he had as his dominant concern not
only that Christians would believe it and be persuaded of its veracity,
but that they might personally claim the experience, enter into it,
live it, enjoy it, and testify to it.
"If men would but spend as much time in fervently calling upon God
(i.e. to fully sanctify them) as they spend in decrying this doctrine,
what a glorious state of the church should we soon witness! . . . This
moment we may be emptied of sin, filled with holiness and become truly
happy.... The perfection of the gospel system is not that it makes
allowance for sin, but that it makes an atonement for it, not that it
tolerates sin, but that it destroys it.... Let all those who retain
the apostolic doctrine . . . press every believer to go on to perfection,
and expect to be saved, while here below, into the fulness of the
blessing of the Gospel of Jesus.... Art thou weary of that carnal mind
which is enmity to God? Canst thou be happy whilst thou art unholy?
Arise, then, and be baptized with a greater effusion of the Holy Ghost....
Reader, it is the birthright of every child of God to be cleansed from
all sin, to keep himself unspotted from the world, and so to live as
never more to offend his Maker. All things are possible to him that
believeth, because all things are possible to the infinitely meritorious
blood and energetic Spirit of the Lord Jesus."
It is surely not out of place to note that the doctrine that Adam
Clarke advocated so fervently found rich expression in his own life.
Henry Moore, close confidant of both John Wesley and Adam Clarke, said
of the latter: "Our Connection, I believe, never knew a more blameless
life than that of Dr. Clarke.''
In view of Clarke's clear and enthusiastic exposition of Christian
perfection, it is not a little surprising that the most serious criticism
of his teaching has come from the "holiness movement."
Clarke emphasized almost exclusively the instantaneous phase of
sanctification and quite neglected the growth phase. "In no part of
the scriptures are we directed to seek holiness gradatim. We are to
come to God as well for an instantaneous and complete purification
from all sin as for an instantaneous pardon. Neither the gradatim
pardon or the seriatim purification exists in the Bible."
Clarke's teaching is further described as throwing "off center"
John Wesley's "theological balance." But this criticism is quite
misleading. It quotes only one brief passage from the chapter titled
"Entire Sanctification" in Samuel Dunn's anthology of Clarke's teaching,
titled Christian Theology. That chapter is a compilation from a number
of Clarke's writings on Christian holiness, and the full text of the
originals needs to be studied before such a sweeping judgment is made
on three sentences. In the given extract Clarke is speaking exclusively
of entering into the blessing, a grace as instantaneous as justification.
Wesley taught this identical truth and to say that Clarke's reiteration
of it jeopardized the Wesleyan "theological balance" is quite wide of
the mark. And why not quote the very next sentence from Clarke? "It
is when the soul is purified from all sin that it can properly grow
in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.'' And why
ignore an earlier passage? "He who continues to believe, love and obey
will grow in grace and continually increase in the knowledge of Jesus
Christ. The life of a Christian is a growth.''
Clarke's teaching on entire sanctification is thoroughly Wesleyan;
in fact Clarke more nearly follows John Wesley here than any of his
contemporary, and later, Methodist theologians--John Fletcher, Richard
Watson, W. B. Pope, etc.. Clarke argues, as Wesley did, that in a
moment the believer's heart may be cleansed from all sin and filled
with God's fullness. Following this crisis of grace there is continuous
growth in the entirely sanctified life. This is what authentic Wesleyanism
has always taught. Those who want to criticize Clarke here really must
go back to the original full text of his writings rather than passing
premature judgment on isolated extracts. Far from throwing Wesley's
teaching "off center," Clarke reinforced, reemphasized, and revitalized
Wesley's "grand depositum"--and for that reason, and others, Adam
Clarke inspires holiness preachers today.
Source: "The Preacher's Magazine," by Herbert McGonigle Professor of
Church History, British Isles Nazarene College, Manchester, England
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION
By Dr. Adam Clarke
The word "sanctify" has two meanings. 1. It signifies to consecrate,
to separate from earth and common use, and to devote or dedicate to
God and his service. 2. It signifies to make holy or pure.
Many talk much, and indeed well, of what Christ has done for us:
but how little is spoken of what he is to do in us! and yet all that
he has done for us is in reference to what he is to do in us. He was
incarnated, suffered, died, and rose again from the dead; ascended to
heaven, and there appears in the presence of God for us. These were
all saving, atoning, and mediating acts for us; that he might reconcile
us to God; that he might blot out our sin; that he might purge our
consciences from dead works; that he might bind the strong man armed
--take away the armor in which he trusted, wash the polluted heart,
destroy every foul and abominable desire, all tormenting and unholy
tempers; that he might make the heart his throne, fill the soul with
his light, power, and life; and, in a word, "destroy the works of the
devil." These are done in us; without which we cannot be saved unto
eternal lie. But these acts done in us are consequent on the acts done
for us: for had he not been incarnated, suffered, and died in our stead,
we could not receive either pardon or holiness; and did he not cleanse
and purify our hearts, we could not enter into the place where all is
purity: for the beatific vision is given to them only who are purified
from all unrighteousness: for it is written, "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God." Nothing is purified by death;--nothing
in the grave; nothing in heaven. The living stones of the temple, like
those of that at Jerusalem, are hewn, squared, and cut here, in the
church militant, to prepare them to enter into the composition of the