by Timothy Merritt (Author), Wallace Jr. Thornton (Author)

Celebrating 200 years of American Holiness literature
The Holiness Movement was birthed and nurtured by literature, beginning with the writings of early Methodists like Wesley and Fletcher, as reflected in the career of the seminal Holiness work published in 1824 by Timothy Merritt, who distilled excerpts from these two, and other, writers into The Christian's Manual: A Treatise on Christian Perfection. Under its influence, numerous readers experienced entire sanctification, including Phoebe Palmer, the commonly acknowledged "mother of the Holiness Movement." Her own literary career formed the apex of writings that fueled the nineteenth-century Holiness Revival, shaping denominations, schools, and mission works far beyond the auspices of traditional Methodist contexts. Merritt's work played such a germinal role in this revival that several scholars consider its inception to mark the birth of the Holiness Movement. It thus proves fitting on the bicentennial of its initial publication to provide this commemorative edition of The Christian's Manual, along with prefatory essays relevant to "Reading Holiness" by Wallace Thornton, Jr.