Perfectionist
in ecclesiastical and Church history, one who believes in the possibility of living without sin; a perfectibilist. Any member of an American sect of Antinomian Communists, which was founded about 1854, by John Humphrey Noyes, who had been an Independent minister at Yale College. He professed to have discovered from the writings of St. Paul that all Christian sects were in spiritual darkness, and determined to establish a church of his own. He founded a community at Oneida, N.
Y., and others subsequently at Wallingford, New Haven, and New York, in order to carry out what he asserted to be a divinely revealed system of society, based on the following principles: (1) Reconciliation with God; (2) salvation from sin; (3) brotherhood of man and woman; and (4) community of labor, and of its fruits. They are called also Bible Communists. All possessions of the sect are held in common.