The Search for Holiness: Historical Influences on Wesley’s Doctrine of Sanctification

by Jonathan Powers | Aug 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

The Search for Holiness: Historical Influences on Wesley’s Doctrine of Sanctification

By Ryan N. Danker

This article is the first in a four-week series on sanctification drawn from the webinar sponsored by the John Wesley Institute, exploring the biblical and Wesleyan vision of a life made holy by the power of God.

I grew up in the Church of the Nazarene and have heard about holiness (or entire sanctification) my entire life. When I was in high school, I started paying attention a bit more to this topic, and so I asked my pastor for books describing sanctification because I really didn’t know what it was. He gave me a number of books, all by Nazarene authors, all published by Nazarene Publishing House. So, I dove into the books. What I found was that every one of the books talked about or quoted John Wesley. So, then, I dove into Wesley and I’ve been stuck with him ever since.

A striking characteristic of Wesley’s writings, however, is who he is quoting. It runs the gambit, from Milton to Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms, to German mystics, English divines, or Protestant Reformers. You name them, and his writing is chock full of historic figures from the church.

What I have come to see is that in his work, Wesley, driven by scripture and the early church, was not trying to communicate a new doctrine nor a new vision of Christianity, but rather the historic witness of the Church throughout the centuries. Today we might look to him, but in his day he was looking back quite a bit further and much more broadly.

Any study of the Church’s history reveals that the search for holiness, sanctification, Christlikeness, or whatever you may call it, has been central to Christians from the beginning. At the heart of this search is the desire not only to know Christ and to be saved by him, but to become like him. Athanasius put this well in the fourth century when he wrote that “God became man so that man might become like God.”

We can all probably think of some of the noteworthy saints in Church history who strove after holiness. St. Francis of Assisi often comes to mind, especially as one who, in his case, literally threw off the riches of this world in search of the riches of Christ. He dedicated himself to the Church, to the poor, and to the Gospel. Modern Christians might think of Mother Theresa, who left family and home and settled in the most difficult of places, in the direst circumstances, and ministered to those who had been forgotten, uncared for, left to die.

However, the search for holiness hasn’t simply been something left to the most notable of Christians. In fact, throughout Christian history, holiness has often taken shape in the most mundane places, and among those whose names we no longer know, even if God does. Holiness, remember, breaks in through simple acts of faith and kindness, and these do not usually make headlines. The search of such saints was not simply an attempt to attain eternal life in the future, but to find that peace, that wholeness, and that freedom that is made possible by God now.

What I intend to do with this quick dive into history, then, is not to outline the entire history of the Church’s search for holiness. Instead, I will look at Wesley’s own Anglican tradition, starting with Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers and then lead to Wesley. So, to begin this examination we begin with Cranmer.

For Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI, holiness was central to the Church’s life. It was founded upon the work of Christ, his death and passion, and fueled by grace. In the Anglican tradition, which mirrors the larger tradition of the historic Church, holiness is understood to be the very power of the Holy Spirit.

In Cranmer’s work of compiling the Book of Common Prayer, he sought to mingle, as it were, the doctrine of holiness throughout the liturgy of the Church of England. He was convinced that a living faith is the only true faith. In other words, a sure confidence in Christ and what he has done for us, will also change the way that we live. In Cranmer’s own words:

We have our Saviour Christ our perpetual advocate and priest, in whose only merits, oblation, and suffering, we do trust that our offences be continually washed and purged, whensoever we, repenting truly, do return to him with our whole heart, steadfastly determining with ourselves, through his grace, to obey and serve him in keeping his commandments, and never to turn back again to sin…Such is the true faith that the scripture doth so much commend.

Additionally, we can see this in a prayer that Cranmer included in the first Book of Common Prayer for the first Sunday of Advent: “Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light…”

Another of his collects describes this empowering grace: “Lord, we pray that that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Louis Weil, writing in the 1980s, commented on these prayers, and others in the BCP, saying, “The grace of God articulated in these examples is expressive of the divine power to touch human life to heal or to enable. The doctrine of God articulated here is not of a distant deity unconcerned with human pain, but of a God who is near at hand, attentive to prayers of his creatures.”

Writing about a century after Cranmer, Lancelot Andrewes, an academic, bishop, and even one of the translators of the King James Bible, wrote about the power of Christ’s resurrection, both as a future hope but also as present reality. He said, “Enable us [Christ] will, and can, as not only having passed the resurrection, but being the Resurrection itself; not only had the effect of it in Himself, but being the cause of it to us. So He saith Himself: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life;’ the Resurrection to them that are dead in sin, to raise them from it; and the Life to them that live unto God, to preserve them to it.”

Continuing on the theme of resurrection power, William Perkins, alive at the same time as Andrewes, wrote about what he called “vivification,” or in other words “coming to life.” Listen to his words:

The means of vivification is a virtue derived from Christ’s resurrection to those that are quickened, which maketh them rise to newness of life. The power of Christ’s resurrection is that whereby he first did in his own flesh, as conqueror over death and sin, begin to live with God and to be exalted above every name: and then in his members, sin being dead and buried, he causeth in them an endeavour and purpose to live according to the will of God. The efficient cause of them both is the Holy Ghost who doth by his divine power convey himself into the believer’s hearts and in them, by applying the power of Christ his death and resurrection, createth holiness.

As we can see from just these three authors, one during the English reformation and two a century after, the call to holiness is real because the power of God is real. They understood that Christ’s resurrection did not just raise one man from the dead but unleashed something with transformative power. Even before the general resurrection in the age to come, the power of Christ’s resurrection has the ability to change us, even now.

Moving closer to Wesley’s time in the 18^th century, we come to the Caroline Divines. These are theologians and church leaders who lived during the 17^th century and were named “Caroline” because the period is marked by the reigns of Charles I and Charles II. The Caroline Divines came to define the Anglicanism that shaped and formed Wesley, even if he was also, as I have noted, shaped by the English Reformers, the Prayer Book, and so many others before the Reformation period.

Jeremy Taylor is a major figure from this era and had a great impact on John Wesley. In some of Taylor’s writing we can see the fastidiousness that marked Wesley’s own life. Taylor argues that a holy life is one in which we keep track of everything we do, every hour, every moment, so that it might be focused on the ways of God.

Taylor also wrote about Christ as the pattern of holiness. In a section on Jesus’ washing the disciples feet he describes this beautifully:

When the holy Jesus had finished his last Mosaic rite, he descends to give example of the first fruit of evangelical graces: ‘he rises from supper, lays aside his garment like a servant, and, with all the circumstances of an humble ministry, ‘washes the feet of his disciples,’ beginning at the first, St. Peter, until he came to Judas, the traitor; that we might, in one scheme, see a rare conjunction of charity and humility, of self-denial and indifferency, represented by a person glorious and great, their Lord and Master, sad and troubled. And he chose to wash their feet rather than their head, that he might have the opportunity of a more humble posture, and a more apt signification of his charity. Thus God lays every thing aside, that he may serve his servants; heaven stoops to earth, and one abyss calls upon another, and the miseries of man, which were next to infinite, are excelled by mercy equal to the immensity of God.

Richard Allestree, also alive during this time and a great influence on Wesley because of his book, The Whole Duty of Man, wrote a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. In the first section, based on “Our Father who art in heaven” he wrote this:

O Lord, who dwellest in the highest heavens, Thou art the author of our being, Thou hast also begotten us again unto a lively hope, and carriest towards us the tenderness and bowels of a compassionate Father. O Make us to render to Thee the love and obedience of children; and that we may resemble Thee our Father in heaven (that place of true delight and purity), give us a holy disdain of all the deceitful pleasures and foul pollutions of his world, and so raise up our minds, that we may always have our conversation in heaven, from whence we look for our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ.

For many of the Caroline Divines, holiness and the sacraments went together because in the sacraments we experience an encounter with God. A fascinating character in this regard is John Evelyn. Throughout his life and ministry, Evelyn travelled widely and was a noted diarist, in addition to his work done in theology, architecture, and even landscape gardening. In one of his published diaries, Evelyn describes a Christmas Day communion in 1657. As he attended a Christmas Communion service, English troops entered the chapel to intimidate the worshippers, interrogating many of those in attendance, and holding muskets as these faithful continued to take Communion soldiers or not. (This occurred during an era politely called “the Commonwealth,” when in England the monarchy, the Church of England, the bishops, the Prayer Book, etc. had all been sidelined.)

In one of his works on Communion and holiness Evenlyn wrote the following:

There are some who think frequent Communion apt to produce too great Familiarity, and consequently abate of the Reverence with which we should approach the dreadful Mysteries: ‘Tis true, familiarity amongst men, creates many times contempt; because the more we are acquainted with one another, the more we discover our Infirmities and defects, and that lessens our esteeme; But ‘tis quite otherwise with God, whom the more we know and Contemplate, the more we Love, and the more we Love the more we admire and Revere; because he is all perfection; and therefore those who are much given to Converse with God, by Prayer, close Meditation, and frequent Communion, do usually far exceeede in Holyness, and virtue those who onely Contemplate his attributes at a Distance, and approach him but seldom.

Evelyn’s words capture a conviction that would become central to Wesley’s own theology: holiness grows through sustained communion with God. Prayer, meditation, and especially frequent reception of the Eucharist are not merely expressions of an already holy life, but means through which believers are drawn nearer to God and transformed by divine grace. Wesley inherited this sacramental vision from the Anglican tradition and carried it into his own lifelong search for holiness.

The list of figures throughout Anglican history who sought holiness, taught its necessity, and embodied it in their lives is extensive and worthy of far greater study. Those considered here represent only a few of the voices that shaped Wesley’s understanding of sanctification. Yet Wesley’s pursuit of holiness was not unique to him; it placed him within a much larger company of Christians before, during, and after his lifetime who longed for deeper communion with God. When we turn to Wesley’s writings, then, we encounter a man driven by a lifelong pursuit of holiness, a pursuit that was, at its heart, a search for God.

A few years ago a friend in London told me, “the search for God is the greatest adventure known to man.” I think he was right. I also think that whether he knew it or not, he was talking about holiness. St. Augustine said the same thing back in the 5^th century, in a prayer to God that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

The historic search for God in the Church historic, in the leading voices that shaped the English church, and therefore in Wesley, reveal the Good News that holiness goes well beyond initial salvation, conversion, or even justification. It is an experience of God that changes our very lives, applying the power of his grace, the repercussions of the resurrection, and so much more so that we might be healed.

In one of his best sermons, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” Wesley spoke to this very idea when he wrote:

At the same time that we are justified, yea, in that very moment, sanctification begins. In that instant we are ‘born again’, ‘born from above’, ‘born of the Spirit’. There is a real as well as a relative change. We are inwardly renewed by the power of God. We feel the ‘love of God shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us’, producing love to all mankind, and more especially to the children of God; expelling the love of the world, the love of pleasure, of ease, of honour, of money; together with pride, anger, self-will, and every other evil temper—in a word, changing the ‘earthly, sensual, devilish’ mind into ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus’.

That is life worth seeking.

Ryan N. Danker, Th.D., is an author, historian, and scholar of John Wesley and English Christianity who serves as the Director of the John Wesley Institute.