Destroy or Be Destroyed

battle." In that utterance we heartily concur. … The ministers also cry "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." If sturdy individuality took up the matter, and godly men were determined not to remain in league with those who depart from the truth, the issues would be speedy. … Every man who keeps aloof from the struggle for the sake of peace, will have the blood of souls upon his head. … The crisis becomes every day more acute: delays are dangerous; hesitation is ruinous. Whosoever is on the Lord's side must show it at once, and without fail.

1

S purgeon viewed truth strictly in terms of divine revelation. He was neither conservative nor liberal. Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism both were conservative, holding to a long pattern of tradition that sought to conserve liturgical and doctrinal developments in the church. Both of these bodies saw these as defensible on the basis of a priesthood that had been granted divine guidance beyond the pages of Holy Scripture, but justified on the basis of centuries of accumulated consent to certain ideas and practices.

Protestantism had brought in a resistance, no, a rebellion against, the powermaintained privilege of tradition for a return to the Bible alone and a confidence in Christ's distribution of gifts to all members of his elect body, not just the ordained few. Protestantism, however, throughout the nineteenth century had moved its locus of authority from the Bible alone with a confidence in its clarity, to a confidence in the intellectual progress of human learning. This was accompanied by a growing hegemony of naturalism; it de-objectifed and internalized Christian truth to conform to modern patterns of thought, and constituted liberalism.

Spurgeon looked to be a plague on both these houses. The conservatism of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism either destroyed or tamed the gospel to fit their respective cherished traditions. The liberalism of modern-thought Protestantism massacred the gospel with a smile as if it were an act of benevolence. Spurgeon could make no treaties of peace with either option. True biblical Christianity would not vanish from the earth, for God would never fail to

build his church and call his elect. But if its present adherents failed to wage war against the foe, they would be disloyal to their Master and deserved to be destroyed and have the mantle of stewardship passed to another generation. He was determined not to fail his.

Roman Catholicism

Spurgeon considered both Roman Catholicism and High Church Anglican claims as the true church and thus the only center of Christian union as utterly absurd. The true church of Christ was older than either. Roman Catholicism had the oldest institutional claim to such but no amount of time can make its distinctive errors into truth; Anglicanism arose out of the Reformation rendering demonstrably vain their claim to antiquity. "Taking Holy Scripture as our guide," Spurgeon proposed, "we are amused at the effrontery which is shown by those two bodies of ecclesiastics when they boast of being the church of Christ;

they might as well profess to be a company of angels, or a herd of buffaloes." ² He often employed such amusing metaphors and felt no inclination to be less aggressive in his ridicule. He felt sure that "the powers of sarcasm, ridicule, and contempt are never more fittingly exercised than upon the fallacies and

blasphemies of idolatry." ³ By this he did not refer to the Old Testament Canaanites but to nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism.

When one journalist accused Spurgeon, because of his denunciation of priests, of having less Christianity than the monk that brought Christianity to England, Spurgeon responded, "It would have been a great blessing if that monk had never touched these shores, and it will be a day of jubilee when the last monk, friar, nun, and priest shall die out from among them." Showing charity to priests

is like showing charity to tigers and rattlesnakes. ⁴ Throughout his ministry, Spurgeon never was reconciled to the universal pretensions and the implied sacramental implications of these two establishment bodies. He resented the nomenclature of "sect" placed on those orthodox evangelical Christians that resisted conformity to those power-vested ecclesiastical institutions. Instead, that kind of failed exclusivism was the

"essence of schism" and the "soul of sectarianism." ⁵ In January 1872, he recounted his experience of a Sabbath in Rome, "where Satan's seat now is." Though Spurgeon sought a place of pure worship, he still found sufficient provocation for being appalled at the superstition and idolatry which "defiles St. Peter's." Paul would be puzzled at the credentials of Pius IX in his claim to apostolic succession, when "his palaces, and his teachings, and

his pretensions are things unknown in the word of God." ⁶ Spurgeon considered Pius IX, Pio Nino, the "most blundering of living men," no less than "the most

incomprehensible enthusiast in existence." ⁷ The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the decree of Papal infallibility of Vatican I, and the Syllabus of Errors have marked that Pope as the "assailant of all the best hopes and

aspirations of the human race." Having risen to the position in 1846, each succeeding stage of his reign has marked him as an enemy of "moral progress and evangelical religion" as well as the "bitter enemy" of all attempts to distribute the Bible to all people. He is the leader of a conspiracy in Rome to reimpose on the world the "pre-Reformation thralldom" during which time the Pope's law could blight a nation. Patriots as well as Christians must take note.

Though Spurgeon supported liberty of conscience and was a firm advocate of disestablishing the Anglican Church, he found the deceit of Rome and its historical brutality toward dissent sufficient reason for warnings against Rome not only as a soul-destroying religion but a nation-threatening political force.

Gaspard de Coligny, the "gallant defender of the Huguenots," had a "great and candid mind" and threw off the yoke of priests in exchange for submission to the word of God. He labored hard to form colonies to which French Protestants might flee from Catholic persecution, hoping for a state in which "Catholic and Calvinist might dwell together without cutting each other's throats." Coligny's candour and his generous, conciliatory, and trustful spirit, admirable in every way in itself, gained for his efforts the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's day. "Rome," Spurgeon reminded England, "does not understand the milder qualities of good men," for the scarlet woman always scoffs at truth and righteousness.

She always deserves suspicion and "by energy she ever needs to be held in check." The murdered body of Coligny should send fair warning to all that wariness of Rome must be a constant principle, and "when she speaks like an

angel, believe her not." ⁸ In an article entitled "The Religion of Rome" describing a variety of pious frauds invented by Rome to astonish and overwhelm the gullible, Spurgeon closed with a species of the contempt he felt Rome deserved for such deceit. "Our ancient enemies have small belief in our common sense if they imagine that we shall ever be able to trust them, after having so often beheld the depths of Jesuitical cunning and duplicity." English Protestants must give no uncertain sound in informing archbishops and cardinals that "we are aware of their designs" and will cooperate with them in nothing. Spurgeon knew that such an immutable stance would be ridiculed itself as bigoted. The accusation would only bring a smile, for it comes from the "church that invented the Inquisition."

Spurgeon's stance toward Rome was summed up in the words, "No peace with

Rome." ⁹ He commended, in fact, a historical novel, a rare bit of condescension for Spurgeon, based on the English Reformation, for he believed it would "inspire a wholesome hate of the machinations of the Papacy, love for the word of God, and faith in the God of the word." Because of these effects Spurgeon,

called the book "charmingly entertaining and instructive" and worth a "cart-load

of the so-called religious novels now so plentiful." ¹⁰ Spurgeon posted a review of A Glimpse of the Great Secret Society by William Macintosh, "a clear orderly statement of facts" about the Jesuits.

Spurgeon believed that "of all the mysteries of iniquity to be laid bare when 'there is nothing secret that shall not be made manifest,' this must surely have the pre-eminence." The Jesuits were wickedness clothed as piety, more infernal that human, and thus necessarily hidden. Their machinations had been responsible for some of the most tragic events in European history since the sixteenth century and were largely responsible for the outrageous developments of the recent ecumenical council at the Vatican in Rome.

The Vatican Council prompted Spurgeon to propose that "there is need that a new and deeper anti-papal feeling be produced, which, being sustained by knowledge, shall abide upon the public mind." The mere nominalism and tradition-based religion of most of Anglicanism had created a condition in which there was "a great falling-off in the old Protestant feeling of the country." He had hope that a book by John Kennedy would help accomplish a truly evangelical anti-papalism. Kennedy's Four Lectures on the Claims and Worship of Rome discussed the "infallibility of the Pope, the false basis of the papacy, Mariolatry, and the characters of the popes," in a masterly way. Though it might not convert Papists "it is at least laudable to instruct our own people, lest they fall into the same delusions." Kennedy's lectures should "go far to foster a healthy abomination of the superstitions and blasphemies of the Papacy;

therefore, let them fly abroad in thousands." ¹¹ The "superstitions and blasphemies" continued by the Pope's Council, had deep historical roots as Spurgeon observed in January 1874. The Scala Sancta in Rome had long been a major stop along the tour of pilgrims looking for places to achieve remission from penalty in Purgatory. Luther himself had made this stop.

Reflecting in the pious legend of the removal of the Scala from Jerusalem to Rome, Spurgeon quipped that it must have "required a considerable amount of angelic engineering to remove them to their present site" from Jerusalem. In years past, doubters of the veracity of the incredible legend of their removal to Rome "have been judged to be rank infidels, and have been considered worthy of the direst pains of perdition." Crawlers up the sacred staircase looked absorbed in their prayers and genuflections while the priests looking on seemed contemptuous of the crawling devotees, a pastoral transgression that made Spurgeon's blood boil. Spurgeon uttered words from some of David's fiercer Psalms excusing himself by contending that "a man must be even more perfect

than John Wesley or Pearsall Smith, if he can look upon such a scene without righteous indignation, intensified by a little mixture of human nature." After observing that the Church of England soon would be on the same road, Spurgeon summarized his reaction by assuring the reader, "Our abhorrence of Popery and everything verging upon it rose to a white heat as we saw how it can lower an intelligent nation to the level of fetich [ sic ] worship, and associate the name of

the ever-blessed Jesus with a groveling idolatry." ¹² Historical reminders of Rome's oppressiveness and superstition were diminished in no degree by a trip to Southern France in January 1877. "We were in the country of the Camisards and other heroic strugglers for our holy faith against the outrageous tyranny and sevenfold persecutions of Popish monarchs," he reported to his people. Valence, still the headquarters of the Reformed Church in the South, was there. Orange had provided safety as a city of refuge for the persecuted Huguenot. "The blood of saints has bedewed all that fruitful region, and watered the neighbouring desert with its priceless drops," Spurgeon recalled, while pointing to a more ominous historical reminder, "the monstrous dungeonlike pile of Avignon." Those sad walls were etched with the perpetual refutation of Rome's lying claim to apostolical succession, and perpetual unity and catholicity. Within them reigned the popes of the Babylonian Captivity and several successive Antipopes, "making the Papal church a two-headed giant, each head cursing the other with equal vehemence and infallibility." Dining within the shadow of those walls now provided no terror from the cave where, using Bunyan's figure from Pilgrim's Progress, "Giant Pope has gone to bite his

nails, and grin at Pilgrims whom he is not longer able to devour." ¹³ Anglicans and Roman Catholics argued as to which of their respective successionist theories constituted them as the true church. Spurgeon responded with entire candor: "A plague on both your houses." Correspondence between the Most Rev. Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, and Rev. C. Bullock gave Spurgeon an opportunity for reflection.

Bullock was a strong churchman but, according to Spurgeon "thoroughly

evangelical and far more a Christian than a churchman." ¹⁴ Bullock had vaunted himself over Spurgeon in the past "as if he had won a great victory" while Spurgeon thought "he had made a great stupid of himself, and proved nothing."

15 On this occasion Bullock sought to put Rome to flight in its exclusivistic claims. While he admired the effort, Spurgeon again thought that Bullock fell short. "If Romanism were capable of refutation and conviction by argument, this pamphlet would surely reveal to it its errors and follies; but when a system relies on its traditions and prejudices rather than upon Scriptural authority or common-

sense arguments for its existence, what can be done to overthrow it?" Bullock did not argue from a position of strength in Spurgeon's mind, for Anglicanism also perpetuated itself in the same manner—tradition, prejudice, and secular power. He expressed his resolute conviction, unshared by Bullock, that "the best testimony against Romanism and Anglicanism is a sturdy Nonconformity that knows nothing of priests, or liturgies, or saving ceremonies, and believes in

deed, not merely in word, in the headship of Christ over his church." ¹⁶ Though Anglicanism, through it confessional assertions, could produce robust evangelicals, many of the criticisms to which papal Rome was subject could just as easily fall on the shoulders of the power-maintained privilege and sacramentally disposed defenders of the Tudor-created Church of England.

Church of England

In the heat of his spiritual resentment toward the pretensions of Anglicanism as an "established" church, Spurgeon said, "I remember reading about a threeheaded dog which kept the gates of hell, but I never dreamed of a two-headed

church till I heard of the Anglican Establishment." ¹⁷ Though he had, and openly professed, nothing but the greatest respect for Victoria as a person and honorable monarch for England, her "royal will and pleasure" had nothing to do with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. No head or governor can share the authority with Jesus over his church, its truths, its prayers, its worship, or its members.

The Church of England has bowed before the kingdoms of this world, but, as for Spurgeon, "We have another king,—one Jesus." None can rule in the church beside him; moreover, the queen, "honored and beloved as she is, she is by her sex incapacitated for ruling in the church." Paul, as an inspired apostle, forbad it when he said, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." A church that bows to the authority of any mortal, man or woman, "commits fornication with the kings of the earth, and virtually renounces her allegiance to Christ to gain the filthy lucre of state endowments."

18 Where it was Protestant in its true doctrinal sense, Spurgeon looked on the Church's witness with gratitude and a sense of unity; where it was jealous for its political ascendancy and its liturgical longevity, Spurgeon found it distasteful and bordering on apostasy.

The consistent tension between Spurgeon and the Church of England arose from his theological convictions on several fronts. In its basic evangelical exposition of the gospel in the Thirty-nine Articles, Spurgeon found strong consent. At Exeter Hall in 1855, he told the large crowd, many of whom probably were members of the Church of England, "Now, my hearers, 'the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants;' but whenever I find a certain book much held in reverence by our Episcopalian brethren, entirely on my side, I always feel the greatest delight in quoting from it." He sought their incredulity when he asked, "Do you know I am one of the best churchmen in the world; the very best," and went on the explain, "if you will judge me by the articles, and the very worst, if you measure me in any other way." Measured by the Thirty-Nine Articles, Spurgeon professed to stand second to no man in preaching the gospel contained in them. He found those articles to be "an excellent epitome of the gospel." In particular, on this occasion he quoted at length the article on original sin, concluding, "I want nothing more. Will any one who believes in the Prayer

Book dissent from the doctrine that 'the carnal mind is enmity against God'?" ¹⁹ The Trinity, the Person of Christ, the inspiration and sole authority of

Scripture, justification, indwelling sin, sanctification, election, and other teachings Spurgeon approved and found reason for deep appreciation for this heritage in England. In preaching on election, Spurgeon set in context the things that he appreciated and those that he abominated concerning Anglicanism. "There are some of you who belong to the Church of England," he noted, "and I am happy to see so many of you here." He acknowledged that "now and then I certainly say some very hard things about Church and State," yet acknowledged that he loved the church for its "many godly ministers and eminent saints."

Assuming that they were "great believers in what the Articles declare to be sound doctrine," he quoted article ¹⁷ on predestination and election. Any churchman, Spurgeon concluded, "if he be a sincere and honest believer in Mother Church, must be a thorough believer in election." Other portions of the Prayer Book contained practices and teachings "contrary to the doctrines of freegrace, and altogether apart from scriptural teaching." But by staying close to the Articles, one would find the biblical doctrine of election of a specific people to eternal life. While admitting that he himself was "not so desperately enamoured" of that book as they, he pointed again to the article to prove "that if you belong to the Establishment of England you should at least offer no objection to this

doctrine of predestination." ²⁰ Power-maintained privilege, however, offended his understanding of the gospel and assaulted his sense of the rights of Englishmen. The church's status as state-supported incorporated all the badness and poison that seeped into Episcopalianism and had a tendency to corrupt even the best of its "godly ministers and eminent saints." It flew in the face of true gospel ministry. "The establishment is, as we believe, itself an error; and it works for error rather than

for truth." ²¹ "The days of establishment are numbered," he believed, even as he talked about the Church of Scotland. "A State Church is to us a gross injustice, and a terrible blunder, and so we war against it."

State support engendered a host of evils including the sale and exchange of "livings." Spurgeon pointed out that they were advertised in "The Church and School Gazette" where "by the dozen these sons of Simon Magus advertize their wares." Guilt for this abomination is widespread in Spurgeon's opinion, for "every churchman is morally responsible for all this iniquity, for by his connection and support he countenances the system under which such things are tolerated." Further than that, however, "since the Anglican Establishment is a National Church, we are all guilty of its iniquities unless to our utmost we

express our dissent and discharge ourselves from the responsibility." ²² In Spurgeon's exposition of Isaiah 49:20-23, he rejected the ancient

contention that it gave any support to a state church with monarchs as nursing fathers or mothers. The passage teaches no headship, but humble submission to the truth expressed most appropriately when the state gives "full liberty to the preaching of the gospel. This is all that the true Church asks, and all she can ever

fairly take if she is loyal to her Lord." ²³ This unfettered, as well as unaided, freedom Spurgeon admired in the American experience. "Brethren in the land of the West," he addressed them in 1857, "I am linked to your great republic by ties which daily multiply." Among the advantages he noticed was this: "Ye are unfettered; no State Church spreads its upas shade over your churches, and no

reverence for antiquated errors checks your progress." ²⁴ Six volumes of American sermons later, in the year following the publication of his "Baptismal Regeneration" sermon, Spurgeon wrote his American brethren again with a familiar theme: "Your ever growing nation is the hope of the world.

Untrammelled by a State-church, free from a thousand traditional bondages, you occupy a vantage-ground denied to us." He went on with what he felt were byproducts of a country unshackled by the flaccid Christianity of a state church: Much then is expected of you; and your brethren in England confidently look for great things at your hand. May you be rich in grace at home and abundant in labors abroad. May the millions who fly to you from every shore, never lower your moral and spiritual tone, but rather may they be drawn upward by your elevated godliness, and become "holiness unto the Lord." Across the ocean, my brethren, I salute you.—"The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give

you peace!" ²⁵ What was true in America was not true in Ireland. In August 1869, Spurgeon denounced the House of Lords for a "tyrannical action" that made him query "how long these titled defenders of injustice are to rule a free people and forbid the nation to fulfill its will." He believed that the bishops should be removed from the Upper House, sent to their flock where they should have enough to do of true gospel labor. They are always the friends of "everything oppressive" and continue the "monstrous injustice of compelling the Dissenters to support a church with which they have no sympathy." Spurgeon even sought sympathy for the Catholic population of Ireland. "How men calling themselves Christians, much less Christian bishops, can have voted for the gross wickedness of compelling a Romish population to support a church which they abhor, utterly staggers us," Spurgeon wrote. He believed that the actions of the Lords stamped "the whole party consenting to such a scheme with the black brand of hypocrisy

and covetousness." ²⁶ The Prayer Book's teaching of baptismal regeneration set the evangelicals in

the church in a severely compromised position, Spurgeon believed. The rise of Puseyism convinced Spurgeon that the real tendencies of Anglicanism were toward Rome. "Witness the Rome-ward tendency of many officials, and the sacramentarianism preached from so many pulpits, and judge whether a Protestant Dissenter can think the Anglican Establishment a bulwark for the

faith." ²⁷ The "Baptismal Regeneration Controversy" was provoked by a sermon on the subject on June ⁵, 1864. Spurgeon said it was delivered with the full

expectation that the "sale of the sermons would receive very serious injury." ²⁸ Spurgeon told his publishers that he was about to destroy their market for sermons in one single blow. He counted on losing friends and receiving many a blow from angry foes. The latter he received, but the sermon sold in massive numbers and gave a rousing call to evangelicals in the Church of England to live consistently with the truth.

While they believed in the doctrine of salvation by faith their church catechism taught that infants experienced regeneration at their baptism.

Spurgeon knew that a considerable number of faithful hearers and readers would not only censure but condemn him for this intrusion into the conscience of Anglican evangelicals. "If I forfeit your love for truth's sake, I am grieved for

you," Spurgeon implored, "but I cannot, I dare not, do otherwise." ²⁹ After a demonstration that the Catechism indeed taught that baptized infants were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom, he lamented the case of evangelicals bound up in a scene of contradiction. He then congratulated those for their honesty who believed it and taught it openly. "Let us oppose their teaching by all scriptural and intelligent means, but let us respect their courage in plainly giving us their views." The case differs entirely for those, however, who believe otherwise, yet gain the livings by subscribing to words they repudiate in their preaching. How can anyone stand up in his pulpit and say, "Ye must be born again," when he has already assured them by his "'unfeigned assent and consent' to it, that they are themselves, every one of them, born again in baptism." The rapid advance of "popery" can only be increased by such want of straightforwardness in evangelical ministers. Worldly people cannot be impressed when a minister

preaches a doctrine opposite to what his Prayer Book teaches. ³⁰ For the bulk of the sermon, he sought to prove, and passionately so, that it was a false doctrine calculated to damn sinners through false assurance. The dogma has no support from the facts. Moreover, promises are made in the first person on behalf of the child that the most godly person on earth knows cannot be kept in this life; only true belief and a work of the Spirit of God can give any desire

for the realization of such promises. ³¹ Many godparents themselves are ungodly and make promises for the child that they themselves have no intention of fulfilling. "I do beseech you to remember," Spurgeon urgently reminded, "that you must have a new heart and a right spirit, and baptism cannot give you these." "You must run from your sins," he continued, "and follow Christ; you must have such a faith as shall make your life holy and your speech devout, or else you have not the faith of God's elect, and into God's kingdom you shall never come." He called baptismal regeneration a "wretched and rotten foundation" and a "deceitful invention of antichrist." Whether a man call himself Baptist, Presbyterian, Dissenter, or Churchman, if he states that baptism saves the soul then "he states what God never taught, what the Bible never laid down, and what ought never to be maintained by men who profess that the Bible, and

the whole Bible, is the religion of Protestants." ³² Spurgeon then explained why faith and faith alone saves followed by an exposition of how faith is connected to baptism. How dear the theological truth was to Spurgeon and how deeply he felt its importance may be seen in how severely he was willing to characterize the Anglican ministry, both sacramentalists and evangelicals. "We have been cultivating friendship with those who are either unscriptural in creed or else dishonest; who either believe baptismal regeneration, or profess that they do, and swear before God that they do when they do not. The time is come when there shall be no more truce or

parley between God's servants and time-servers." ³³ Friendship and fellowship must never be bought with the blood of souls or gained at the forfeit of truth.

The turmoil and personal criticism brought on Spurgeon by his public accusations of theological inconsistency did not make him shy of the subject. On July ²⁴, in light of a text that had often been quoted against him, Mark 10:13-16, he preached "Children Brought to Christ, Not to the Font." He set the sermon in context. "Replies they certainly are not, except to one another," Spurgeon remarked. "I marvel that a Church so learned as the Anglican cannot produce something a little more worthy of the point in hand." They may have read the discourse but "by reason of mental absorption in other meditations, or perhaps through the natural disturbance of mind caused by guilty consciences, they have talked with confusion of words and have only been successful in refuting themselves and answering one another." He called them "the worst shots that

ever practiced polemical artillery." ³⁴ The text they marshaled to the defense of infant baptism, in Spurgeon's words "has not the shadow of the shade of the ghost of a connection with baptism." As Spurgeon developed the theme as to the necessity of bringing little ones to Jesus,

and excoriating every device used to keep them back, he declared, "Faith is the way to Jesus, baptism is not. … Coming to Jesus Christ is quite a different thing

from coming to a font." ³⁵ He reinforced his denunciation of the font ritual by emphasizing, that "the font is a mockery and an imposition if it is put before Christ." To be baptized after coming to Christ is well and good. "But to point you to it either as being Christ, or as being inevitably connected with Christ, or as being the place to find Christ is nothing better than to go back to the beggarly elements of the old Romish harlot instead of standing in the "liberty wherewith Christ has made us free," and bidding the sinner to come as a sinner to Christ

Jesus and to Christ Jesus alone." ³⁶ He went deeper and preached an all-out attack on the Book of Common Prayer. One evangelical in the church sought to dismiss his views through accusing him of ignorance and a simplistic approach to complicated theological issues. Spurgeon, therefore, in light of such profound ignorance asked for help from the "fathers in the faith" who are "expressly ordained to instruct the ignorant." The Rev. W. Goode, the Dean of Ripon, had written, "As to that young minister who is now raving against the Evangelical clergy on this point, it is to be regretted that so much notice has been taken of his railings." Spurgeon was to be pitied "because his entire want of acquaintance with theological literature" left him "utterly unfit for the determination of such a question, which is a question, not of mere doctrine, but of what may be called historical

theology." ³⁷ Were Spurgeon wiser, he would realize how little were his qualifications for passing judgment on such a point and how groundless, based on court decisions, were his charges against the evangelical clergy. He is free of course to hold what theology pleases him but "when he undertakes to determine what is the exclusive meaning of the Book of Common Prayer and brings a charge of dishonesty against those who take a different view of that meaning from what he does, he only shows the presumptuous self-confidence with which he is prepared to pronounce judgment upon matters of which he is profoundly ignorant." So incapable was Spurgeon of rational discourse that "to hold a controversy with him upon the subject would be to as little purpose as to attempt to hold a logically-constructed argument with a child unacquainted with logical

terms." ³⁸ Since he was so simple, Spurgeon asked for only one answer to his many inquiries. For all that the Prayer Book requires, where is the "Thus saith the Lord?" Where is that authority for the clearly-stated assertion of regeneration for the baptized infant? Indeed where is it for confirmation and for its special details. Wherein lies the authority for the power of absolution of sins for a dying

man. "You evangelical clergy," he queried, "dare you claim to be successors of the apostles, and to have power to forgive sins?" Where is the word in Scripture that warrants a burial to every baptized "thief, harlot, rogue, drunkard, and liar who may die in the parish 'in sure and certain hope of the blessed resurrection?'"

39 Spurgeon would not be intimidated; he must drive the point home. He pictured a solemn scene in hell when the falsely assured communicant confronts his equally deceived priest: "And what think you, sirs, must be the curse that fills the mouth of damned souls, when in another world they meet the priest who absolved them with this sham absolution!" What kind of reproaches will fill the ears of the priest that sent his parishioners to perdition with a lie in their right

hands?

I have been severe, it is said, and spoken harshly. I do not believe it possible to be too severe in this

matter! But, Sirs, if I have been so, let that be set down as my sin if you will, but is there any

comparison between my sin and that of men who know this to be contrary to the Word of God and yet

give it their unfeigned assent and consent? Or between the sin of those who can lie unto the Holy Spirit

by pretending to confer Him, who goes where He wills, upon men who as likely as not are as graceless

as the very heathen? 40

Spurgeon continued his criticism of Anglicanism in general, as an established church, its contradictory confession that endorsed justification by faith and practiced sacramentalism in baptism, and the inconsistency of the evangelical within its borders. In 1870 Spurgeon, writing in general about theological inconsistency, pointed out that "Ministers are to be found who deny baptismal regeneration, and yet put into the mouths of children such words as these, 'In my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an

inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.'" ⁴¹ He wondered how the Christian conscience could give such language to a moral being unaware of a commitment to status made by another for him, especially when its substance was denied by the very instigator of the pledge.

With the smile of vindication moving his pen, Spurgeon printed and made brief comments on an article that appeared in The Irish Church Advocate.

Footnoting the article as his own introductory comment, Spurgeon recounted, "When we preached our well-known sermon upon Baptismal Regeneration we were favoured with so abundant a measure of abuse that the charge of slander and vituperative declamation brought against us in this article sounds very mildly in our ears." The article was "thoroughly Irish" and Spurgeon reprinted it

without alteration, as a complete vindication of his sermon. ⁴² The writer quoted Spurgeon's sermon as an example of how the disputed paragraphs on baptism "afford slanderous tongues strong ground for misrepresenting the true doctrine

of our church, and impugning the morality of the whole body of our evangelical ministers." Spurgeon, in his "vituperative declamation," provided a "painful illustration of this evil." When the writer suggested that Spurgeon assumed that "baptismal regeneration is the doctrine of the Church of England," Spurgeon noted, "And very naturally too, since the writer admits under the head of secondly that 'the paragraphs alluded to in their plain grammatical meaning teach the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.'" The writer reminded his readers that the "highest ecclesiastical tribunal" in England (Parliament) had ruled "baptismal regeneration is not a doctrine which every man who has honestly accepted the Prayer Book is bound to teach," and that he is "as free to denounce the figment of baptismal regeneration as [Spurgeon] is." Spurgeon wryly continued, "Yes, and then they go on teaching it all the same." An Act of Parliament can not make right what is wrong or make it seemly for one to denounce a doctrine in one form and inculcate it in another. If the Romanist may be condemned by evangelicals in the Church of England as being out of accord with the Prayer Book, Spurgeon wondered, by what reason may an Evangelical, equally out of accord, be found excusable? The writer asked, "Why retain in our baptismal service these objectionable paragraphs, which not only give a plausible ground of accusation to the enemies of our church, but which sorely wound the consciences of many of its best friends."

The writer objected to the verbal subterfuge exercised in seeking to circumvent the apparent meaning of the paragraphs. In addition he regretted the thoroughly sacramental tone of preaching it engenders in those that actually do believe in baptismal regeneration, when they announce to their audiences that in baptism they have been born again. Retaining the "more than ambiguities" of the Prayer Book would, according to the Anglican author, make the minister instrumental in the "positive inculcation of one of the most radical and dangerous errors of the apostate church of Rome." Spurgeon wondered what the phrase "more than ambiguities" meant if it did not mean precisely what he had said eleven years earlier without any ambiguity. Spurgeon closed his interaction with a note of irony: We hope the writer will continue to dilate upon the same subject. He is a very helpful fellow-worker, and he is welcome to abuse us to any extent. An abler advocate we could hardly wish for; he not only proves our point, but in his own way honours us with his commendation, for although "vituperative declamation" in the plain, grammatical sense means something rather objectionable, we have no doubt that the writer, by "a laboured explanation" could show that he intended—"honest outspoken rebuke." We thank him heartily. ⁴³

Puseyism, the name given to the strong high church sacramentalist movement in the Anglican Church led by Edward Pusey, embodied in Spurgeon's opinion everything he loathed in the theology of Rome and the dissolute tendencies of a state church. As to Pusey himself, to Spurgeon he remained "one of the greatest puzzles,—an eminently devout, humble Christian man, supporting a claim to priesthood which is in itself unholy, arrogant, and antichristian!" Spurgeon could only exclaim when he considered the contrast between his person and the office

to which he laid claim, "Lord, what is man!" ⁴⁴ Foundationally, every objection to Roman Catholicism applied to Puseyism. "Popery, with its secret confessional and priestly interference at dying beds, is essentially a fox. Puseyism, pretending to be Protestant, and gradually bringing

in all the foolery of Rome, is a deep fox indeed." ⁴⁵ Some called it a fungus on the church, but Spurgeon argued that it was "the legitimate form of that community, sanctioned by its past history, and prescribed by its liturgy and

catechism." ⁴⁶ Though modest in its early pretensions and heavily disguised, Spurgeon saw it now (1866) as "openly and avowedly what it has always been— ritualism, sacramentarianism, priestcraft, Antichrist." It has clothed itself piece by piece with the garments of Rome cast on the dunghill in the Reformation until "at last her likeness to the Apocalyptic sketch of the woman on the scarlet-

coloured beast is as clear as noonday." ⁴⁷ Spurgeon did not diminish his outrage that, under the guise of Anglicanism, Rome had weasled its way back into Protestantism. In 1875 on reviewing The Mother of Jesus not the Papal Mary, he listed some of the prayers to Mary currently lifted in High Church Anglican worship and demonstrated the deepseated perplexity at the historical and theological irony. "Is it not time that these abominations came to an end?" he queried. Then he answered by query, "How can they end while the motley crew who man our Established Church find themselves able to eat the bread of a Protestant nation and teach as much of Popish idolatry as they please?" If they have to have their Maries, they should pay for them with their own money, Spurgeon fumed, and then, announced, in

another obvious irony, "but to tax us for this abomination is tyranny." ⁴⁸ This assertion ¹⁰⁰ years earlier had bolstered a revolution.

Spurgeon called for a doctrinal crusade against Puseyism for the "gospel of Jesus is assailed by its ancient enemies." Who will stand? Someone must have courage instead of prudence, faith instead of policy and be "simple-minded, outspoken, bold and fearless of consequences." As a minister of Christ, Spurgeon with transparent forthrightness answered his own call: "We are willing so to act as the Lord may enable us, for such is well becoming in a soldier of

Jesus Christ. A constant, unmistakeable, and uncompromising testimony against Puseyite idolatry we desire to bear; let every one of the pastors of our churches

be of the same mind." ⁴⁹ Characteristically, this crusade must be waged with

doctrine.

Personal effort must also be used to propagate the truth upon the matters now assailed. … Not alone

the first rudimentary truths of the gospel must be taught, but the whole circle of revelation; we must

conceal no distinctive doctrine, and withhold no unpalatable dogma. In the parlour and the kitchen, in

the shop and in the field, we must lift up the cross and abase the crucifix, magnify the gospel and

ridicule superstition, glorify the Lord Jesus and expose priestcraft. 50

The impact of this movement merely demonstrated the reality of what Spurgeon contended about the Anglican state church. A loyal layman in the Church wrote an expose of Puseyism entitled Puseyism the School of the Infidels, or "Broad Church" the offspring of "High Church" with a few Words to the Evangelicals.

Spurgeon reviewed the book with a note of joy that honest Protestantism might still survive in England. "Our battle," Spurgeon explained, "is not against, but for all true Evangelicals in the Church." He sought to prompt one of two responses in his severe dealing with their inconsistent position. One, that they "may be nerved to leave it." Two, that they may be "roused to demand alterations, which will make it honestly tenable."

Though Spurgeon had clear views on Puseyism and the dangers of its road to Rome, and he was clear about calling for disestablishment of Anglicanism, he was ambivalent about a clear break between government and religion. When he looked at the reality that only an act of the divine Spirit could ever make a man a Christian or build the House of God as a true spiritual habitation, he wanted no favors from Parliament for any aspect of religious conviction. Government could only produce hypocrisy from a religious standpoint, for the gospel alone by the Spirit's power produced true worship of God. The only good Parliament could ever do religion was "by mistake." Proposing laws of the land to touch religion brought from Spurgeon the protest, "Hands off! Leave us alone!" He wanted no "Sunday bills and all other forms of acts-of-Parliament religion," but only a "fair field and no favor." Faith had nothing to fear and "Christ wants no help from Caesar!" Rather than dabble in formalizing religion, Members of Parliament should "repent of the bribery and corruption so rife in their own midst before they set up to be protectors of the religion of our Lord Jesus!" He feared the result of borrowing help for religion from government for it looked as "if I rested on an arm of flesh instead of depending on the living God." Even Sabbath enforcement was no place for government to meddle. Certainly the Lord's Day must be respected, "and may the day soon come when every shop shall be closed

on Sunday—but let it be by the force of conviction and not by force of the

policeman." ⁵¹ Spurgeon had the old Puritan/Baptist zeal against all unbiblical, gospelcompromising forms, teachings, and practices. He constantly was on the look out for opportunities to lampoon Anglican theology and ritual as well as the pretensions involved in its establishment as the state church. He asked for people to distribute his articles against Anglicanism. "A crusade upon the doctrines of the Anglicans is needed." He would support political action toward disestablishment, but "the religion question is the more important." "If the Church of England were disestablished tomorrow," he could affirm without

hesitation, "it would be equally needful to protest her deadly errors." ⁵² In 1869 Peter Bayne wrote an article for The Christian World that most certainly would please Spurgeon. An address to Lord Shaftesbury entitled "The New Alliance between Church and State" called on Shaftesbury to seek a disestablishment of the church by throwing the evangelicals on the good will of Christian people rather than seeking by political means an overthrow of the ritualists and the latitudinarians. Bayne had some analyses that sounded Spurgeonic in theology and power of conviction. In fact, he referred to Spurgeon's answer to an evangelical clergy that wrote him complaining of Spurgeon's contention that Anglicanism had been given over to the ritualists, that he considered "the right of the ritualists to remain in the Church to be

exactly as good as that of the Evangelicals." ⁵³ Bayne clearly agreed, and asked, "Has not the ambiguous position of the Church breathed a subtle poison into the moral life of the nation? Has it not promoted a slippery prudence, a judicious meanness, a sanctity, sly and sleek, a sordid contentment with half-truths and half-falsehoods, a tolerance, nay, an admiration, for 'the glistening and softly spoken lie?' Can the conscience of England be as noontide clear if the Church of

England is an organized equivocation?" ⁵⁴ More severe and dangerous than this callousness to moral clarity, Bayne spoke of the theological compromises necessarily involved in such a union between church and state, the gravitational pull of which would end in Romanism on the one hand and universalism on the other. Bayne call on Lord Shaftesbury, therefore, to lead in the formation of a Protestant church in England [mentioning only the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists], free of state control and state support, and thus free for missionary, benevolent, evangelistic, and philanthropic work of the sort that arises from "spontaneous, personal, present, giving of intelligent, active-minded men." He argued that "to hand back her emoluments to the nation and to go free would be to get rid of all

that is anomalous, depressing, shameful in her position, and to give new power to all that has secured her the respect of Christendom and the affection of her

children." ⁵⁵ Spurgeon would be sympathetic with much of Bayne's proposal, even though his perceived union was of paedobaptists only, because of its call for a "free church in a free state" and the complete equality of all dissenters. Spurgeon hated the union of church and state. His sermon on the Prayer Book in 1864 rose to a height of indignation on this issue that must have been withering to any Anglicans that visited the Tabernacle on that day. He described the charade of creating a newly-minted priest as "fresh from the dissipations of college life, the sinner bows before the man and rises a full blown priest—fully able to remit or retain sins! After this, how can the priests of the Church of England denounce the Roman Catholics?" How convenient to have the Puseyites and Papists to fume against, but when the admonition begins "at home and we give our Evangelical Brethren the same benefit which they confer upon the open Romanists, they are incensed beyond measure!" Spurgeon would not spare them, for they, "despite their fair speeches, are as guilty as those whom they denounce" He exclaimed with a deep-seated conviction, "Protestant England!

Will you long tolerate this blasphemy? Land of Wickliffe, birthplace of the martyrs of Smithfield—how long is this to be borne with?" If one contradicted his concern by saying it was none of his concern, he asked pertinently, "Is it not the National Church?—does not its sin rest, therefore, upon every man and woman in the nation— Dissenter and Churchman—who does not shake himself from it by open disavowal?" The church claimed him as a parishioner and if it could to pay its church rates and did indeed "take from me my share of tithe every year." In light of such abominations, Spurgeon called, "Arise, Britannia, nation of the free, and shake your garments from the dust of this hoary

superstition!" ⁵⁶ In 1871, in fact, he led his congregation, "the church at the Tabernacle," to petition Parliament for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. It was more and more a feeder to the church of Rome.

Its position as a "government-favored sect, is an insult and a wrong to all other

churches." ⁵⁷ His apparent call for a secular Parliament combined with his strong convictions that the church should be disestablished does not tell the full story about Spurgeon. His involvement in the Liberation Society and his call that

"perfect religious equality be found everywhere" ⁵⁸ confronted the inevitable test of context. When faced with all the implications of an a-religious government, he modified the nature of his argument. If one wanted a purely spiritual church,

and wanted religious persuasions of the people to arise from the power of the Spirit of Truth and that only, then one way of thinking was in order; if one wanted justice and public morality built on revealed principles of equity and human dignity then he looked to a general Christian consensus. It was, after all, on the basis of Protestantism, the blood of English martyrs, and the nature of English freedom that he warned against the danger of Rome. This was Protestant England.

The radical stance of some of his Liberation Society cooperants, therefore, he could not bring himself fully to support. In 1870 he posed "A Few Questions for Present Consideration." Though he consistently contended that the state, as such, "ought neither to patronize nor persecute religion," he firmly dissented from the

idea that "the State has nothing to do with religion." ⁵⁹ In a series of well-formed queries, Spurgeon outlined several spheres in which he believed it impossible for religion, specifically, Christianity, and the State to go separate directions. Jesus has not relinquished his Lordship over the earth, and he does not intend for his people to act as if the earth were not the Lord's. On matters of policy where people cast their vote, Christians must vote according to the Word rather than in line with infidelity. Sabbath rest is instituted both for church and government and may not be cast aside without a violation of God's law. Spurgeon had a strong aversion against the repeal of any laws that honored the day as a day of rest for all. It already provided chaplains for the armed forces, allowed Bible studies in jail, dismissed Parliament on Sunday, closed public houses for part of the Sabbath, as well it should. Should a government disregard the claims of God in these matters, it would still be religious, but religious in the lowest sense and "to all intents and purposes atheistic." Spurgeon believed that a minority of the nation were in a position of non-faith and proposed that the government should not be controlled by the "negative faith or non-faith of the minority." In questions regarding religion, "must not the government decide for respect to God

and his Word?" ⁶⁰ He challenged the "believers in the non-religious principle" to carry the logical inferences of their scheme to its end and see the devastation. He hoped they would never succeed. He worked, in fact, to extend the prohibition of mail delivery on Sunday by supporting a motion by Charles Reed in the House of Commons to do away with postal service on the Lord's Day throughout England. It was not done in London and the rest of the country would not suffer for its loss. Sunday deliveries involved ²⁰,000 postal employees "needlessly." "A letter-carrier's life must be sheer slavery," Spurgeon noted, "when he has to work seven days in the week, and rest never. " He urged the churches to take up the cause for "It amounts to a national sin." ⁶¹ By ignoring the Sabbath,

Spurgeon argued, the government would become a persecuting government. ⁶² In questions that necessarily regard religion the government must "decide for

respect to God and his Word." ⁶³ Suppose all religion must be removed from the classroom; how could any desire teachers of such colorless character? How could non-conformists look with pleasure upon the country when praying for it?

He strongly supported the teaching of biblical knowledge and ethics in the school system as long as it was not the catechizing of students into Anglicanism.

Spurgeon posed another question that showed his commitment to religious instruction in schools as a means of building character needed by all levels of society. "Is it really believed by Christian men that mere reading, writing, and arithmetic, without religious instruction, will elevate our street Arabs, and train

the waifs and strays of London to be honest men and good citizens?" ⁶⁴ Did Englishmen bleed and die to gain a liberty that would deny permission for children to read the Bible in school? Christian men must not join with the pagan nations of Psalm 2 that conjoin in the chant, "Let us break his bands asunder,

and cast his cords from us." ⁶⁵ Even as he revolted against state-churchism, he confessed, "all the instincts of our soul revolt against the unreligious teaching which certain Nonconformists would impose upon this nation." He acknowledged that a strict logician might make him appear inconsistent, even as a man that felt logic demanded that the straightest and quickest route to a destination should always be taken would break his neck through consistency by jumping off a cliff rather than take a zigzag route down. He knew that the mass of his brethren were convinced by the radically secular non-conformist argument. On his opponent's premises, Spurgeon could argue that Parliament should sit on Sundays in order to avoid all religious favoritism and the Civil Service should be compelled to work seven days a week "because any preference shown to the Christian religion by the State would clash with the Nonconformist principles." Thus, try as he might, his heart recoiled against the so-called Manchester solution, an attempt to eliminate

Bible instruction in the day schools. ⁶⁶ Though he shrank from pure secularism as a governing principle of the nation, he had nothing but pure disdain for the arrogance generated by the privileged position of Anglicanism. In an article entitled "Our Own Dear Popish Church," Spurgeon applauded Rev. Fredrick Aubert Gage, Vicar of Great Barling, Essex, for his pristine clarity in stating his theological views and his corresponding hatred of Dissent. Gage was not guilty of using words of worldly charity to gloss over the differences between his Anglicanism and the doctrines of evangelical Dissenters. By the same token, "Towards the church of England as a State

church, and as maintaining many Popish doctrines, Nonconformists only stand in truth and sincerity when they avow themselves decidedly hostile." Man to man and Christian to Christian, charity must prevail, but "charity toward a corrupt system is falsehood to truth, danger to ourselves, injury to our fellow men, and dishonour to God." The differences between non-conformity and Anglicanism are not trivial, but clearly distinct on matters that corrupt the gospel. A façade of worldly charity toward such a system is a pious fraud and a traitorous desertion

of "Christ's truth for the sake of pleasing men." ⁶⁷ The Vicar could not have made the options more clear.

Gage's catechism did not mince words in declaring that infant baptism was the means of regeneration, sanctification, and indeed, justification. Gage also lacked no clarity in declaring dissenters as engaged in idolatrous worship, heretics indeed that are protected unnaturally by the laws of the state so that the "wholesome law of the Church" cannot be acted upon. "Bravo!" wrote Spurgeon with the wish that Gage's brother priests would be as honest "and then the land would the sooner be rid of you." Spurgeon saw in such speech the "lion's claw to which soft words about charity act as a pad." He thought he could smell "roast man somewhere, and hear the chains of the Lollard's Tower rattling anew."

Those dissenters that had parted least from the form and order of Anglicanism were most dangerous because most likely to mislead. Spurgeon agreed entirely, and hoped that the Great Barling Elijah would "end their halting between two opinions, and make them good, sound Dissenters." Even to enter a dissenting meeting house, according to Gage, would produce spiritual havoc in the life of the Anglican faithful, but the same was not true of Romish chapels. Spurgeon urged all fellow dissenters to enter their protest against the downright idolatry, the full acceptance of Roman Catholic superstitions, that prevailed in the State church. "It is true," he conceded, "that there are good men, yes, very good men in the Establishment, but this is no reason why we should deal leniently with a

system which allows and supports deadly error." ⁶⁸ Nothing but clear and relentless opposition would help the good men in the establishment to come out; false charity would serve no good and be infidelity to truth and unloving to fellow men. Dissenters must be as vigilant against Anglicanism and Romanism

as Rome was against Carthage.

No peace, no truce, must there be between the champions of a spiritual faith, and the devotees of

Sacramentarianism. We must teach our children the protests for which our fathers died; we must

expose to their detestation the fopperies and elegancies which cover up the enormities of priestcraft;

we must break up the inclined plane down which weakly Nonconformists descend, by the halfway

house of Evangelicalism, into the abyss of Tractarianism. An end to all truckling and coquetting; we

are the determined foes of the system which is now styled our National Religion, and can never cease

to oppose it while we reverence the Bible, while we love the souls of men, while we obey Christ, and

believe in God. 69

By 1877 Spurgeon believed Anglicanism's complete capitulation to Rome was entirely possible. The

ritualists, these "double-faced gentlemen," gained ground steadily and had virtually succeeded in

mesmerizing the evangelicals. Staunch Anglicans at first disliked the Popish revival, and progressed to

toleration, excuse, and admiration. Spurgeon found it amazing that in so short a space of time, daring

men "should have set up the old idols, and brought back the entire Romish paraphernalia," 70

Reunification within ten years would not astonish Spurgeon. Only secular interests and the dread of

disestablishment prevented it. The National Church was "drunk with the wine of Rome's

abominations." 71

In a time of acute despondency about the religious state of England, Spurgeon listed superstition as one of the evidences of "sad times." He called the Anglican church a "popish joss-house" in which "self-styled priests entice silly women to the confessional, and amuse them with masses and processions." He could not restrain himself: "Vile imposters!" he named them—the clergy of an "avowedly Protestant church, and supported by this nation, they are yet ravenous to eat out the very vitals of Protestantism" through their superstitious crucifixes and stations of the cross before which they can find fools enough to bow. The leaven makes its way in the meal.

Year by year Spurgeon warned against the dangers to men's souls implicit in the state-church system. "This is the delusion of England," he contended. "We have not half so much to dread Popery as we have that nominal Christianity, fostered by a national Church." He believed that millions of Englishmen think they are Christians because "they were sprinkled in infancy with holy drops, and because they have come to the Lord's Table." Miserably unaware they were that in so doing they ate and drank damnation to themselves, not discerning the Lord's body. So much profession and so little possession was the "curse and plague of England," a condition perpetuated by slumbering people listening to sleepy ministers that would not tell the truth for fear of hurting feelings.

Spurgeon was determined, however, to be clear of their blood should they go on and perish in this fatal delusion. He would thrust his hand into their soul to make

them tremble with the thought whether they be right with God or no. ⁷² When Alfred Potter, Rector of Ashton, produced a pamphlet in defense of Confirmation using an imaginary conversation with a cottager named John Blake as the vehicle, Spurgeon jumped on the opportunity to expose the fallacy of the Rector's argument. Continuing the literary convention, Spurgeon constructed an interview between John Blake and The Rector of Ashton. Blake had gone to another minister, Mr. Waterton who was "an Anabaptist and a Calvinist," to help clarify some things that had been confusing in the initial interview. Among the

issues set straight was the appropriation of a quotation from Calvin about laying on of hands. The Rector had suggested that Calvin affirmed the sacrament of Confirmation on the strength of that quotation, and Blake had learned from the minister Waterton the full context. In fact, so Spurgeon presented the industrious Blake, he had even copied that larger context from book four of the Institutes demonstrating that Calvin had not said at all what the Rector asserted. Blake did not take kindly to the attempt "to make a poor man out to be a Simple Simon" and, therefore, he had taken liberties "to put matters on the square a little."

Having finished reading the revealing quotation, cottager Blake said, "I feel awfully sorry for you, you had better have done without Calvin." Even if one could construe that Calvin made room for some kind of laying on of hands, "what he would have meant by it was as wide as the poles asunder from what you mean by Confirmation, for you told me that in Confirmation 'the Holy Spirit supplies grace for growth in holiness.'" The Rector, offended that a simple cottager had dared question his presentation, had "insulted him to [his] face," asked the cottager to leave at once. He did but, having foreseen that the Rector would so excuse himself of the expose, Waterton had written a letter for Blake to leave with him. "I meant no offense," said John, "but if truth offends, so must it be."

Spurgeon did the reader of the Sword and the Trowel the favor of printing the letter for the benefit of all. In this letter, the Calvinistic Anabaptist Waterton undertook to show how every attempt to support Confirmation with Scripture was as ill-fated as the Rector's attempt to cite Calvin in its defense. "I say that the bishop cannot give the Holy Ghost, and you know he cannot," so wrote Waterton. No Scripture supports such a fable, and the effort to lead people to think so is not only an untruth, it is positively harmful. It promotes presumption of forgiveness and the graces of salvation where none exists, demeans holiness, operates under the trappings of superstition, fosters self-deception, and treats with unaccountable solemnity a practice that reduces reverence for God and

endangers the souls of men. ⁷³ In another piece of literary irony, Spurgeon considered, through the means of John Ploughman's cousin, William, the possibility of a country with a Baptist establishment. The dissenting Episcopalians would justly howl at the imposition of taxes for the support of a clergy for which they had no sympathy. The Baptists, taking warrant from their conviction that the original churches consisted of persons immersed upon profession of faith, had engineered an ecclesio-political relation that required the entire nation to support their church.

Others were schismatics. Cousin Ploughman sympathized with the Anglicans, that is, Episcopalians, and pointed out the injustice of the Baptists in betraying

their own commitment to a free gospel and a regenerate church in pursuing their ill-gotten power. They taxed the Episcopalians, as well as the Presbyterians and Methodists, for their baptismal robes, their water, and reserved for their cousins and nephews certain church positions that they blatantly call "livings." The means of education serve their own ascendancy and leave others, that they so unlovingly and in such an unbrotherly manner label as schismatics, to manage for themselves at great expense and sure disadvantage. They profess to believe the Baptist Confession of Faith but are divided into three distinct theological parties, but still all claim to be of the same communion. They refuse proper ground for burial to Episcopalians, Methodists, and Independents, isolate them to unsanctified ground as if an unimmersed person even in death could contaminate the orthodox with the heresy of sprinkling. Ploughman rises to a state of heightened incredulity in expressing his sympathy for the repressed Anglicans: Sir, ought these things so to be? Why should a Baptist oppress an Episcopalian? Why should the Episcopalian be blamed if he feels the oppression keenly and struggles to escape from it: Is there any justice in the state of things which I have represented to you? The gospel rule that we should do to others as we would that they should do to us appears to have been entirely ignored.

Episcopalians in that country have to support their own ministers, and do so with no little difficulty, because few of the great and noble cast in their lot with them; why should they be called upon to sustain those of a body with which they do not agree, which enjoys, moreover, the patronage of the highest in the land?

They ought in the eyes of the law to be equal to Baptists or any other religionists. I feel ashamed of Baptists who can occupy such a position of unrighteous vantage. Ask the Baptist Union if they are not also ashamed? Ask the Episcopalians of England if they are not indignant that such gross injustice

should be endured by brethren of their own faith and order? ⁷⁴ Sometimes, seeing things in reverse reveals the grotesqueness of reality.

Equally as grotesque was the proposal of the vicar of the parish of Elstow to build and repair his church and install a stained-glass window, gaining his contributions by making it a memorial to John Bunyan. "Why not repair a Catholic chapel as a memorial to Martin Luther?" Spurgeon queried, or make the Baptist chapel at Elstow as a memorial to Charles II? Bunyan needed no memorial to hold his place among the men of England. Should the vicar succeed in his project, Spurgeon was sure that the ghost of John Bunyan would haunt the

church until the stained glass window was removed. ⁷⁵ Not only did an Anglican try to rob the grave of Bunyan to find funds for Episcopalianism, the Rector of Newington thought that he could rob the

sheepfold of Spurgeon for new life for his parish. In a celebratory mood for his thought that he had found new blood for the parish and the Anglican establishment, Mr. Maclagan "loudly crowed at the Church Congress, because he had done this under the very eaves of Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle." Spurgeon had received scores of Anglicans into the Tabernacle but had never made it a matter of boasting at denominational meetings. Unaware of a single name that had gone from the Tabernacle to the parish, Spurgeon warned Maclagan, in a rural proverbial fashion, not to count unhatched chickens, or even worse, unlaid eggs. On an evening when Spurgeon had ¹,200 at a prayer meeting, he sent a friend to find out how many had "responded to the tinkling bell of our parish church," and found, including priests and officials, twenty-two persons present. "Great boast, little roast," Spurgeon concluded. He was not above pointing to numerical success as an indicator of spiritual power, especially when it came to Establishment vis-à-vis non-conformist.

The status of a state church, in Spurgeon's opinion, had the tendency to corrupt even so sound a man as J. C. Ryle. Spurgeon loved Ryle and commended his writings and ministry consistently, but felt that it was edifying in spite of his position in the state church and in spite of the titles he was forced to bear in that position. In a review of Ryle's addresses to children, Spurgeon publicly opined that "the esteemed author cannot be otherwise than soundly evangelical and gracious," although he exhorted children in a "manner which he would hardly use towards adults." Ryle simply manifested what Spurgeon considered "a common fault with many who talk to the young." But this manner gave comfort to Spurgeon for it showed that "our friend retains his simplicity though he bears the title of 'Right Reverend' and 'Lord Bishop.' It must need a great deal of grace," Spurgeon remarked, "to wear such dignities and retain one's naturalness." In spite of such titles Spurgeon viewed Ryle as a "Dissenter

inside the church." ⁷⁶ This observed persona, however, drove Ryle from time to time to justify himself to his fellow churchmen by showing his zeal for the establishment. Ryle had sought to do just that in a tract entitled Dissent and the Church and had been answered in a "very sensible reply" by a John Browne. Like others of the evangelicals, he can "put on priestly airs" when he pleases. "Strip a Russian," Spurgeon proverbialized, "and you find a Tartar." By the same token, "set certain Evangelicals agoing against Dissenters and you see a Pope." Spurgeon called Ryle himself, "good, very good," but at the same time his "churchianity is bad, very bad." Had he never heard of a mouton enrage, Ryle's threats and indignations would have caused Spurgeon to hold up his hands and cry

"Amazing!" ⁷⁷ Similar ambivalence met Spurgeon's readers when he noted that Ryle's Thoughts on Baptism "is certainly the poorest defence of Paedobaptism which has yet appeared, poor as most of these have been." Ryle's zeal for his church had outrun his discretion and would do no good to strengthen that position. At the same time Ryle's Thoughts on Sickness was "wise and helpful" and evidence that the Liverpudlian was "thoroughly at home in this kind of practical

teaching." ⁷⁸ Newman Hall came in for equal if not greater laudations from Spurgeon as a useful Anglican. Hall, in fact, avoided the ire of Spurgeon on two unusual accounts. One, he wrote a book of poetry, a pet peeve of Spurgeon, that Spurgeon described as "good and better." Second, in the heat of the Downgrade Controversy, "when all around, modern thought is poisoning the air, he remains true to the doctrine of the cross, and declares the gospel more boldly than ever."

Spurgeon could not let the fact that he was Anglican go entirely without chastening, so he wrapped his resistance to Anglicanism in the soft cloth of a true fondness for Hall and appreciation for his influence for the gospel. "He is fonder of a liturgical service than we shall ever be; but we have no quarrel with him on that account, for he loves the gospel," Spurgeon emphasized, "and

therefore we can forget his gown and prayer book." ⁷⁹ By 1874, Spurgeon had hope that the system of establishment was falling apart and attempts to salvage it would only bring about its downfall. The government had made two attempts to "patch up the old house of Establishment, but the concern is too rickety to bear any extensive repairs." Debate over the Patronage Bill and the Public Worship Bill, Spurgeon referred to as "pieces of new cloth pieced into old garments;" Disraeli, unintentionally, had "commenced

the separation of church and state." ⁸⁰ When the Church Times reported a letter by Archdeacon Denison that asserted, "Divorce between Church and State is become not right only, but necessary to the keeping of true religion," Spurgeon hoped that the Archdeacon "is evidently having his eyes opened to some things."

81

A perambulator through the city churches on a Sunday in 1883 noted the sparseness of the congregations, the incomprehensibility of services read from the Prayer Book, the museum-like quality of many of the city churches, the architecture (restorations by Sir Christopher Wren subsequent to the great London fire) and historic interest of some (e.g. the parish of Miles Coverdale along with the plaque erected to his memory, as well as another commemorating John Newton), and the genuine difficulty of serving such parishes when the

masses of the population had gradually moved to the suburbs away from the grime and crime of the city itself. Many of the ministers, some poorly remunerated and some exorbitantly beneficed, were feeding stalls without flocks, receiving pay for virtually no service to the cause of religion. Most remarkable, however, was the nature of the preaching, which the observer

assumed would be similar in most of the remaining city parishes.

This kind of gospel, which we take to be mere legalism is common enough in the Church of England;

at all events, it is the pabulum which is chiefly offered to seeking souls in the City pulpits, though, or

course there are exceptions now, as there were in the days of Newton and Romaine. This gospel

consists in leaving off sin, in being good, and in attending church. 82

The church could be greatly purified, the leaven removed, so Spurgeon believed, if the small band of hyper-Calvinists in its borders were given their way.

Commenting about Memorials of the Rev. Charles Rolfe, Spurgeon noted that Rolfe "belonged to the small but intense company who within the Anglican pale hold to Calvinistic doctrine in its severest form." Rolfe was a holy man, whose spirituality coincided with that of many that would not adopt the severities of his system, a demonstration as to "how the life of God in one man is to the same vital principle in another." To Rolfe, "Arminianism in any form was his abhorrence, and Ritualism his detestation." Though Rolfe would not have owned the language, Spurgeon viewed him as a "Dissenter within the Church." "He was a Particular Baptist who had lost his way, and stumbled into a rectory." Though Rolfe despised Arminianism, he loved genuine spirituality more and had high esteem for Jimmy Lee, a local preacher among the Wesleyans. Though in itself unbiblically constricted, Rolfe's theology was built for strength, and strength is needed now. Spurgeon proposed an experiment. "A few hundred HyperCalvinists in the Church of England, whatever they might be deficient in, would, at least, make short work of its Popery, and call the people back to the essence of Protestantism. We devoutly wish the experiment could be tried." ⁸³

The Growth of Rationalism in Theology

Spurgeon was seen as such a distinctive influence among evangelicals that some thought he was fully capable of founding a new denomination. The observation arose from America and was based on Spurgeon's minimal activity in the Baptist Union and his fervid activity from the base of his ministry at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Spurgeonism, similar to Wesleyanism, would gain its peculiarities by the influence of its own college, its missionary agencies, and its ministers "trained in Spurgeon's college, imbued with Spurgeon's intense spirit, copying with an unconscious but ludicrous fidelity even the minutiae of Spurgeon's manner of speech, proud of their connection with Spurgeon's name, and in

constant communication with the 'Head Centre' in London." ⁸⁴ Spurgeon reprobated any such attempt to do this and expressed his opinion on this matter in strong terms. That he had any desire to start a new sect or separate from the Baptist denomination was an "unfounded libel." "We preach no new gospel, we desire no new objects, and follow them in no novel spirit." He loved Christ more than any sect, truth more than any party, and, though he was not exclusively denominational, at the same time was in open union with the Baptists for the

simple reason that he could not endure isolation. ⁸⁵ He would have to endure that soon enough.

The charge of "Spurgeonism" re-emerged just a bit later, this time from a disgruntled, somewhat latitudinarian Baptist dissatisfied with the influence of Spurgeon within the Baptist Union. Amused and a bit bewildered by the same nomenclature used for two such radically different complaints, Spurgeon responded "now we find ourselves in hot water in precisely the opposite direction, having in the eyes of some been guilty of exercising too

preponderating an influence upon the Baptist body." ⁸⁶ He had picked up his participation in the Baptist Union, and had found it congenial and encouraging. "If our brethren feel that during the few months that we have been seen more manifestly among them we have been burdensome, we have been very much misled by their hearty manner toward us." He had no intention to surpass any other person in influence but was happy to contribute to the prosperity of the whole in maintaining the "purity of the gospel of Jesus, and a hallowed practical zeal for the Master's glory." Edward White, a Baptist minister in Camden Town, seceded from the Baptist Union because Spurgeon did not "bend the knee to the modern liberalism which is just now so popular" and represented the "orthodoxy which it is fashionable to depreciate." White found the atmosphere Spurgeon created repressive and therefore left for a more suitable theological climate.

Spurgeon found it strange that "one of the freest of all denominations has not

room enough in it to hold us both." If others of the same doctrinal ilk, influenced by an "abundant portion of the vagaries of modern thought," were influenced to leave, and then received by the Congregationalists, it would indicate that more than friendly discussions about ordinances separated them—the issues would be truth and vital godliness. In light of the developments over the next two decades, Spurgeon's analysis of this phenomenon is worthy of note. "We are suspected of bigotry," he observed, "but we do not leave a denomination because all do not swear by our Shibboleth." Nor did he want another denomination to become the receptacle for malcontents who were offended simply by another man's influence, especially when those denominational migrants were leaving a "free community which has never tried to fetter them." If the presence of one of the preachers of orthodoxy rendered the denomination an unsavory home for the broad school, Spurgeon observed, "the old faith is evidently safe without the

safeguard of tests." ⁸⁷ Within two decades Spurgeon would call for the necessity of a doctrinal test for membership in the Baptist Union. Mere influence was no longer sufficient to preserve purity.

In 1877 Spurgeon wrote of "spots of rationalism" that should cause concern among the Dissenters. He knew of a denomination in England "which is sadly gangrened with a pseudo-intellectualism which counts it manly to doubt." The orthodox believer they considered weak-minded, only worthy of their sublime pity. This kind of thought Spurgeon argued would alienate people from churches that espoused it, wither all that was worth preserving. Even the superstitions of Rome would appear more lively than the "cold negations and the chill of

perpetual questioning" generated by modern thought. ⁸⁸ The desire to be held in honor among one's peers often pushed students and tutors into the stream of the avant-garde thought of the day. An affectation of liberalism, to be regarded as original and possessed of a breadth of mind and candor of judgment that rescued one from the mere parroting of outworn dogmas and repeating another age's thought, soon became the new manliness. "To be mere old-fashioned teachers of a time-worn faith is not a tempting object for ordinary carnal ambition," Spurgeon warned and further observed that "everywhere the noxious endeavor to do something more than rehearse the teaching of revelation and obey the rules of King Jesus is working evil." He and his colleagues believed the "doctrines of the gospel to have been settled when

the Spirit first inspired the Bible." ⁸⁹ Among the most susceptible of the formerly received doctrines of revelation to the ravages of the newly enlightened age was the doctrine of eternal punishment. The rational elite proposed several options to the teachings of a

strict and eternal manifestation of retributive justice—anything but hell!

Spurgeon carried a series of articles by his friend, and the principal of the college, George Rogers, on the subject of annihilationism. In 1871, Rogers responded to the arguments of Edward White that the Scripture was not clear enough on the subject of eternal punishment to declare it a truly biblical teaching. Dr. Leask, the editor of a periodical named The Rainbow sought to put an end to the controversy by the bald assertion "Eternal suffering is not the doctrine of Scripture." He refused to insert a letter from Rogers in his paper, so Spurgeon printed the exchange of correspondence in The Sword and the Trowel.

Though Rogers dealt with other interpretive issues, all hinged, in his opinion, on the answer to the proposal, "Whether there are not instances in the New Testament in which the doctrine of eternal punishment is affirmed as decisively and fully as it could have been affirmed in the Greek language? Whether in fact the eternal happiness of the righteous, or the eternity of God, is expressed in stronger terms?" White maligned him in a brace of exquisite sarcasms as a "gentlemen who always writes in the tone of a tutor, and one possessing the rare power of assertion requisite for converting untrained youths, from town and country, in little more than two years into expositors of God's word, and pastors of Baptist congregations." Rogers' response was measured and to the point, dealing in no ad hominem thrusts but only with the specific questions at hand.

He closed his letter with the observation: "His allusions to myself personally, and to the College with which I am connected, are wholly irrelevant to the occasion; and in my opinion would have been better omitted for his sake rather than my own. I trust I have had no other aim that to defend what I hold to be the teaching of the word of God; nor am I conscious of having transgressed the rules

of fair controversy in so doing." ⁹⁰ Spurgeon traced the development of anti-hell theory through its appearances in numerous books through the years. He found that restorationism was vying with annihilationism as the alternative to hell. Jacob Blain in his book Hope for Our Race, or God's Government Vindicated moved from a former defense of annihilationism for a more optimistic restorationism. He was as "sure about it as he was about his former error." Spurgeon found the penchant for novelty a childish trait and biblical interpretation the mere servant of such novelties. "When men wish to defend a theory, with what ease can they wrest Scripture, and argue so as to convince themselves and bewilder others!" He had observed a "mob of reasonings, fancies, whimsies, heresies, crazinesses, imaginations, and wickednesses," vying to devour one another as they seek to be the victor over "the old doctrine of eternal punishment." Spurgeon was "content to abide quiet, for they will surely eat up one another" The opposition was divided even against

itself "and will come to nought." The devil of unbelief was tearing those whom

it has possessed. Spurgeon hoped it would come out of them. ⁹¹ Spurgeon gave much more thorough and serious attention to this in 1874, in a review of Everlasting Punishment and Modern Speculation. Spurgeon commended this as a balanced and thorough treatment of the subject from the standpoint of the whole Bible. "No such thoroughness of statement and Biblical research has appeared on the other side," Spurgeon commented, but instead, the "wonderful discoveries of modern thought upon the subject" had to be gathered from "pamphlets, periodicals, and religious newspapers." Partial views and

isolated criticisms prevailed but none afforded "a fair and full investigation." ⁹² Spurgeon still held that the variety and contrariety within the opposition favored the truthfulness of the belief in the eternity of future punishment, belief in which to that point had been virtually universal. New views included immediate annihilation at death, temporary punishment to be followed by annihilation, temporary punishment to be followed by a new probation, or by restoration to innocence and bliss. Each of these propounded insuperable difficulties in the others while agreeing that punishment cannot be eternal. This cacophony favored a presumptive argument "that the old doctrine is not false,

because no opposite can be found that is agreed upon to be true." ⁹³ Spurgeon believed that the resistance to eternal punishment lay not so much in any truly doctrinal or exegetical difficulty as in the personal dispositions of the objectors. "Some few who are in all other matters sound in the faith," Spurgeon admitted, "may have been troubled in mind upon this subject." In general, however, it was in company with a falling away from other vital evangelical truth. "Its effect, in fact," Spurgeon explained, "upon all our ideas of sin and holiness, and consequently of the remedial scheme of redemption, is one of the

strongest objections against it." ⁹⁴ In the final analysis, the effect of all these schemes was to render impertinent the distinguishing doctrine of historical orthodox Christianity. For example, universalism, a very popular option, supposedly presented a system full of mercy, but is "subversive of all the first principles both of law and gospel."

Universalism eventually resolves all things into one and supposes no qualitative difference between good and evil, atheism and the worship of the true God, the utmost degree of profanity and the highest degree of piety, rejection of and the reception of Christ, and Nero and the Christians he burned. Only time distinguishes them. "Wait a while. All in the end will be equally holy and happy." Evil will become good, impiety will grow into piety, "the germ of heaven is in hell." Give enough time and "it will burst as from a bitter bud into

all the blessedness of heaven." Against all scriptural principles, these schemes dissolve any essential difference between sin and holiness, or the standing of being under the law and under grace? "They are the same species, only one is of longer growth than the other."

This calling evil good shows clearly the origin of such a contrivance.

Revolting to human reason as it may be, the eternity of future punishment is in harmony "with all the principles of the divine government, and as such is clearly revealed in the Scriptures." Two questions related to the Bible have been unanswered by the opponents to the doctrine of hell. First, should God intend to teach his creatures that there is an eternity of punishment for unforgiven, unredeemed sinners, could he have chosen more explicit language and more clear discourse than that found presently in Scripture? Second, "supposing eternal punishment to be derogatory to the divine character," why does Scripture

not give cautions against entertaining such an idea. ⁹⁵ By 1878 Spurgeon said the "new doctrines have certainly gone tolerable lengths now, and from annihilationism to restoration has been a mere foot-race."

Soon he expected the ungodly to be exalted at once, with no stop in between, to heaven and the righteous sent to outer darkness. The sympathies of modern preachers were toward the unbelieving, doubt was celebrated and viewed as a sign of salvation. "We may naturally look for a heaven prepared for loose thinkers, who are so brave as to despise all creeds and believe in nothing whatever." Those deserving of being cast aside were believers in plenary inspiration, who view sin as a terrible evil and therefore affirm the justness of eternal punishment. Liberal modern thinkers see such folks as narrow-minded bigots. "Everybody is received as a Christian nowadays by the Broad School

except those who are so indeed." ⁹⁶ Though Spurgeon had great distaste for argument by mere assertion, he found apologetic assurance in the reality that pamphlets degenerated into such on this subject. It cemented his cynicism toward the viability of the opposition. Robert Reynoldson's book Everlasting Punishment not Everlasting Pain was materialism under the guise of annihilation. The publication was as feeble as it was fallacious for it substituted assumption for argument, and dogmatism for demonstration, thus, instead of seeking to prove the truth of his position, engaged only in dogmatic assumption. "Instead of the infallible standard of Scripture," Spurgeon noted with a weariness of such frustrating contrivances, "we are constantly referred to the 'instincts of humanity.'" This amounted to a "kind of religious rationalism" as a usurper to "devout faith in the Bible and its declarations." At this point, Spurgeon did not see religious rationalism as

capable of wooing to itself many converts. It was not manly enough. Only the

most feeble would embrace it. ⁹⁷ Feeble or not, manly or not, Spurgeon was at the front edge of finding such rationalism to be more of a threat than he originally discerned.

In the 1877 Inaugural Address at the College Conference, Spurgeon produced a lengthy admonition to the attendees to preach in such a way as to put to flight all the uncertainties and doctrinal dissipations engendered by the sophistical pretensions of modern thought. Their idea of progress is progress from the truth; they are "progressing backwards." Their ideas of reaching new heights in intellectual development is an "ascending downwards." Spurgeon had seen too much of chapels that formerly were places of conversion power now shut up to green grass in the front and spiders inside. A Unitarian Baptist Chapel promotes a frost-bound religion because Christ is not lifted up and thus none are drawn to him. "Where are your converts? Where are your hearers? Where will your

churches soon be found?" These are questions that must be asked. ⁹⁸ The answer already existed in the generation of Socinian Dissenters who graduated from dissenting academies like that of Dr. Doddridge. "That worthy man did not dogmatize to the 'dear young men' who came to his college, but adopted a plan of letting them hear the argument upon each side that they might select for themselves." The method brought as much destruction as if error had been firmly promoted, for "nothing is worse than lukewarmness to truth."

Should his alumni have time to read some of what the modern-thought men produce, "you will not be long before you are weary of their word-spinning, their tinkering of old heresies into original thought, and their general mystifying of plain things." Until they produce a man worth following, Spurgeon advised against their answering the call of these progressives, "At the present we are not

likely to leave Calvin and Paul and Augustine to follow you." ⁹⁹ Spurgeon, in fact, believed that the preaching of Calvinism left very little room for one's falling off into modern thought. One of his brother ministers was not surprised that Spurgeon had little trouble with his church members being lured away, for Calvinism "does not allow them enough scope." His advice, therefore, was "Preach the doctrines of grace, dear brethren, and those who like

not your Lord will either be changed themselves or change their minister." ¹⁰⁰ Spurgeon grew weary of the ever-renewed challenges to the "old faith" that animated the creeds of the Puritan tradition, and felt, therefore, a particular blessing in being without religious periodicals for brief periods. They were among the "heaviest affliction of the church of God." The consistent recycling of infidelity under the guise of "modern thought" ("too cowardly to wear its proper

name") brought ever-increasing compromise to the biblical certainty of eternal punishment until Spurgeon would not be surprised to see the opinion that "the devil himself is God." He felt happy relief in getting "away from the continual smother of their deceitful teachings." He read the Bible "by sunlight" and the more he turned to that volume the more he was confirmed in the old creed, and the more certain he was that "the modern spirit is deadly to grace, fatal to zeal,

and hostile to the truth of God." ¹⁰¹ When a man bears testimony to conversion, one finds the same words and feelings that would have been expressed 500 years ago—the same loathing of sin, the same fear of wrath, the same sense of utter dependence on a perfect redeemer. He found that predestination and election still stirred up consciences, even though these old-fashioned truths by 1886 had long ago been ignored by

the mass of public teachers. ¹⁰² Despite opposition and derision, these doctrines stirred up the nests of many and drove them out of themselves to Jesus. The Holy Spirit "has not changed his view of things, nor has he set his seal to modern thought, nor withdrawn it from the cross." Saving faith in Christ still fastens itself "upon the atoning blood and the substitutionary sacrifice, just as it used to do a hundred years ago." In 1886, John Newton could still have found "gracious hearts feeding on the self-same verities as in his own day, and their

voices of need or of satisfaction would be precisely the same." ¹⁰³ When Spurgeon began to notice the decline of old-fashioned doctrinal piety much closer to home, that is, within his own Baptist Union, the crisis began to transform his world from cosmos to chaos. As late as 1878, in spite of the increasing pressure to capitulate to modern thought, Spurgeon still viewed the Baptist Union as a place of genuine fellowship and joy, referring to a meeting at the Tabernacle as a "true love feast" of about 450 ministers. After-dinner addresses by a number of the preachers were "thoroughly hearty and fraternal."

104

By 1883, however, he saw a division coming soon as he observed that the darkness of heterodoxy stood out more boldly in silhouette against the brightness of orthodoxy. "There is sad need to keep the Sword out of its scabbard," Spurgeon announced, for he saw doctrinal decline all around —decline of the most egregious and killing sort. No doctrine was left unassailed or holy thing regarded as sacred. "Truths once regarded as fundamental, are either denied, or else turned inside out till nothing of their essence remains. Holy Scripture is no longer admitted to be the infallible record of revelation; but is made to be a door-

mat for ' thought' to wipe its shoes upon." ¹⁰⁵ The first Sword entry of 1883, "A Languid and Limp Young Man," denoted certain elements of the days of

overwrought conviction and heretic-hunting bigotry that Spurgeon was not sad to see go, but the loss of men of mettle and truth was not healthy. Now he found that men were "disloyal to God in order to be charitable to men" and propounded a Christianity "from which the Fall and the Atonement have both been

eliminated." ¹⁰⁶ While he attributed this increasing laxity and modernization, a degeneration from the oak to the willow, to the "various denominations," he saw Dissent in general as highly susceptible to this decline. He still maintained the consolation that "brave spirits can afford to bear the present phase of the world's madness, confident that, when the Lord gives sanity, men will return to the

primitive truth, and cast their idols away." ¹⁰⁷ As the autumn meeting of the Baptist Union approached for 1883, Spurgeon informed his readers that his absence should not be misinterpreted. Though he had been pressed to preach, he had successfully declined because of "conscious physical weakness." Younger brethren must be asked and they should not fail to appear through an excess of modesty. Though he laid no claim to modesty, his numerous appearances at the autumn meetings, under the insistence of valued

brethren, made him choose now to "shrink from being too conspicuous." ¹⁰⁸ Perhaps he wished that he had been more conspicuous, for when friends reported what they viewed at the meeting, Spurgeon was sobered. Though Union officials declared that the event had nothing to do with an official invitation or even approval of the Union, a "denier of our Lord's Godhead" was given a welcome by some and the "loudness of loose thinkers," though disproportionate to their number, disturbed some deeply concerned brethren. Vital truths held by a group are not to be trifled with, Spurgeon pronounced, and, as a mater of personal conviction, "I for one, have not Christian fellowship with those who

reject the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, neither will I pretend to have any." ¹⁰⁹ Then in giving a preview to a refrain that would be heard more frequently and insistently four years hence, he warned: This much is very clear to me,—there is a point beyond which association may not be carried, lest it becomes a confederacy in disloyalty. This point can be speedily reached, if it be not felt by all that the unwritten law of the Baptist Union takes it for granted that its members adhere to those grand evangelical truths which are the common heritage of the Church. We cannot remain in union on any other basis. Creeds are of little use as bonds; for men have learned to subscribe to words and to interpret them in their own sense; but there can be no real union among Baptists unless in heart and soul we all cling to the Lord Jesus as our God, our Sacrifice, and our Exemplar. We must be one in hearty love to the gospel of his grace, or our unity will be of little worth. ¹¹⁰

Spurgeon would give a greater importance to unity in a creed as the infant controversy developed, but for the mean time he wanted to assure his brethren in the Union of his confidence in their soundness and of his love for them. "No number of men under heaven are heartier in love to Christ crucified, and to one another, than the great majority of our Brethren in the Union." He affirmed that he was at one with them, and that he intended no pain by his writing, but "I can

say no less if I am to bear a conscience void of offence towards God." ¹¹¹ Some of the brethren did take offense, however, and sought an audience with Spurgeon to set him straight on the facts of the Union meeting in order to give him a chance to "modify his harsh judgments." He had not sought carefully enough to ascertain the facts and thus postured himself in a contemptuous and cruel way toward those "who are as faithful to the Master, and as anxious to know and teach the truth, as himself." The letter calling Spurgeon to account appeared in The Baptist for November ⁹, 1883, and was written by J. G.

Greenough and James Thew. ¹¹² Responding in a way that would become more common in months to come, The Christian World published letters critical of Spurgeon's confrontational stance and dated theological propensities. "The pretended advance is evil, and only evil," he responded, and he only asked to be "clear of complicity in this boastful progress beyond what is plainly revealed." He had no time to "pretend to a fellowship which we do not feel." His theology was not regulated by the clock or calendar but "by eternal truth."

In late 1884, when one of Spurgeon's correspondents accused him of "having fellowship with all the heresies of the Baptist Union," he denied to be a party to any such thing. His connection continued only through contribution to the fund for helping poor and aged ministers and the support of home-mission work. "For what may be done at the debating meetings we have no sort of responsibility, for we have ceased to attend them." He did not plead consciousness of physical weakness this time but stated plainly, "It would pain us greatly to be supposed to have any fellowship with modern doubt." His fellowship was not with the Baptist Union per se but only with the "great mass of our brethren" that still were "quite free from loose views." With those that love the gospel he felt

"fellowship of the heartiest kind." ¹¹³ In January 1885, he printed an article showing the moral weakness of universalism from the Millennial Harbinger, an American publication, and commented, "As Universalism is appearing in England, and is even to be found in Baptist pulpits, it is well to have a good look at the intruder." He wanted to bring universalism to light and expose it as unscriptural, immoral, and heretical.

His observation concerning the growth of false theology, his warnings against its dangers produced a resurgence of criticism from the press. A periodical entitled The Preacher's Analyst devoted some space to Spurgeon in 1884, to which Spurgeon responded in February 1885. "One of the numbers of this periodical contains a most amusing denunciation of that dreadfully bitter bigot, C. H.

Spurgeon." What a charming display of literature, and such edifying insight to "see him castigated for his well-known uncharitableness," He noted how easily the editor could move from one piece in which he would "rave and foam at the mouth" into another that displayed a temper "quite kind, and good, and rational."

Spurgeon was happy for the remarks upon himself because it helped him to give

a more objective evaluation of the rest of the volume. ¹¹⁴ When he wrote the Preface to the 1885 volume of The Sword and the Trowel, Spurgeon summarized his concern, "For the moment, the main battle is with Rationalism." He observed little overt atheism, deism, or honest infidelity but saw plenty of examples of "men who subscribe our creeds and hate them, employ our terms and attach false meanings to them, and even use our pulpits as places of vantage from which to assail the vital verities of our faith." His previous efforts to warn were greeted with censure in the periodicals and he was resistant to being pushed into a position of crying "Peace, peace," where there is no peace. For him it became increasingly needful to "strive against a love of quiet than against its opposite." Trimmers drone on about union, but "peace with

deadly error is falsehood to souls, and treason to God." ¹¹⁵ At every opportunity Spurgeon sought to expose the presumptuousness and arrogant claims to priority that the modernists assumed as they intruded into traditional conservative places of preaching and witness. Professedly Christian ministers "entered by stealth into pulpits once occupied by good men and true."

They inserted into the ministries and messages "universalism of the most pernicious kind," defended Socinianism, scoffed at the inspiration of Scripture while hiding behind the motto that the Bible alone is the religion of the Protestants. A convenient motto when needed to escape the supposed oppression of a creed. Add to that mere professional preaching and ex officio creedrepeating and one has a combination of wretchedness and despicable ministerial posturing that is the "devil's most effectual method of propagating falsehood and

defeating truth." ¹¹⁶ In 1884, Samuel Cox, a Baptist, was dismissed as editor of The Expositor because of his increasingly liberal viewpoints that began to color the magazine more boldly in that direction. "No amount of ability on the part of a writer can make him less dangerous if his views are unsound," and none that teach unscriptural doctrine should be continued in employment "merely because

they make a magazine pay." Each man must spread truth as far as he knows and must not be a party to the circulation of error. The publishers settled with Cox on generously fair terms but that did not stop the liberals from lifting a shriek of "persecution." Spurgeon was not surprised at this for the advanced school had no true idea of mental liberty. With a keen sense of irony, Spurgeon personified what he felt was the real arrogance of the proponents of modern thought: Superciliously they reckon that they do us honour by allowing us the privilege of being snubbed. Know ye not that the orthodox fools are bound to let their enlightened opponents say whatever they please, and to thank them and pay them for saying it? The orthodox have, in fact, no right but that of being exterminated. The men of advanced views have a right to take their pulpits, edit their periodicals, and in general play all the tricks they please; and if this be in

the least objected to, the protester is a persecutor! Bah! ¹¹⁷ Contributing to the sick spell he experienced in the winter of 1885 was the mental burden of considering that the "times are dark, false doctrine abounds, and a doubting spirit is in the air." He hoped for a Pentecostal visitation, a heavenly fire that would descend on the annual Conference of Pastors' College

graduates and students. ¹¹⁸ Sick and distressed, and so tired that the "bow was ready to snap," but nevertheless determined, Spurgeon preached at the

conference on Isaiah 50:7, "Therefore have I set my face like flint." ¹¹⁹ He told his congregation in the autumn of 1885 that in this day of "declension and vanity" they needed a revival of "old-fashioned doctrine." At first, so the critics harped, Calvinism was too harsh, then evangelical doctrines were antiquated, and now the Scriptures themselves must be altered and improved.

Neither total depravity nor the atonement are preached—punishment for sin has obediently stayed hidden from view—and though the deity of Christ is not assailed, the gospel he gave is questioned, criticized, and set aside. Missionaries are sent, not to deliver the nations from the wrath to come but to prepare them for the new and higher realm into which they will enter at death. "I confess," Spurgeon snorted, "I have better hopes for the future of the heathen than for the

state of those who thus write concerning them." ¹²⁰ A revival of preaching that had the infallible standard of the Bible at its foundation, and ruin, redemption, and regeneration as a summary of its content, was the immediate need of the hour. "Beware of those who say that there is no hell," Spurgeon warned, "and

who declare new ways to heaven. May the Lord have mercy upon them." ¹²¹ By March of 1886, Spurgeon had had enough of the apparent policy of gradualism tolerated by the Baptist Union in allowing the infidelity of modern thought to infiltrate the fellowship. He had given much, preached at the

meetings, defended the theological integrity of the Union, engaged in and complimented the fellowship but now believed a dangerous spirit of toleration had become a destructive principle. Correction was needed. "Who Are the Persecuted?" he asked in an article. The days of narrowness and bigotry clearly are gone, and good riddance said Spurgeon. But firm adherence to principle has been thrown out with it, and now, any that desire doctrinal guidelines and clear exclusive statements of truth are viewed as uncooperative, intolerant persecutors.

Bur liberalism, Spurgeon contended, is "more bitter than the old bigotry, more intolerant than the old sectarianism. It will not allow orthodoxy to call anything its own; it would filch from it every house it has built, every pulpit it has raised."

122

They clamor for charity while giving none, ask for a generous spirit while robbing the treasury of truth, and assault the consciences of believers and complain of being persecuted. They claim a right to pulpits whose creed they detest and of whose worship they do not approve. "Until it can be proven," Spurgeon boiled, "that it is the natural right of hogs to root up our flowergardens, it will never be proved that it is the right of rationalists to destroy our

churches." ¹²³ Their ideal of freedom would eliminate any rights of worship and theological discretion of a local congregation: Let him take his opinions anywhere he likes in the open market; nobody denies his liberty of speech; the world is large enough. But if Christian people are so simple as to say that they do not desire to hear him blaspheme their God and his gospel, in the name of justice what right has he to force himself upon them? What right have newspapers to denounce those who will not receive him? What justification is there for his outcry that he is persecuted? Forsooth, he is persecuted by not being

allowed to persecute other people! ¹²⁴ Spurgeon had taken strong positions through the years on modern thought, its sinister destructive influence, its arrogance and haughty claims to superiority, and its grasping for ecclesiastical prerogative, but had focused his attention mostly on other denominations. That Spurgeon had in mind activities within his denomination became clear in the final two paragraphs of this broadside. "We have desired peace, and therefore have been quiet," he noted; "we have hoped for the best, and have waited in patience." He had believed in the brethren and expected to see them return to a better mind. His patient endurance and hope for change had been met only with effrontery and greater boldness in proclamation of error. He lamented division of the past and foresaw that more would be calamitous without bringing relief. Plain, honest witness-bearing was always a biblical action, however, "and if it be coupled with a decided withdrawal from

fellowship with error, it may in due time work for good." None could expect him to "meet in professed communion with those who insult our religion," nor to supply pecuniary aid for the advancement of error. He would not erect a platform and furnish an audience for adversaries of the faith. "When the interests of our Lord clash with those of denominations and societies, we need no time for deliberation. The ties of friendship, and the bonds of ecclesiastical union, are as rotten threads compared with the bands of love which unite us to Christ and to

his holy gospel." ¹²⁵ In April, Spurgeon commented, "Denominational papers are silent upon the solemn matters upon which we wrote in our first article last month. No doubt they have their reasons." He quoted with approval the comment made in the Word and Work when it reprinted Spurgeon's article fully. "Surely the time is not distant when those who are in agreement upon fundamental truths must take

some definite action towards a firm and united testimony." ¹²⁶ When he spoke about these sobering realities to his Pastors' Conference in May, Spurgeon's tone was different. He thought he saw the energy waning in the camp of infidelity; if so, he was wrong. Perhaps he simply took a look at it in the light of eternity and saw it as a mere speck to be wiped away in accordance with divine decree. On closer inspection, the "modern thought" that had looked very much like a terrible lion, now appeared like a fox, or even a wild cat. The mountain had brought forth its mouse and soon "advanced thought" would be mentioned only by "servant girls and young Independent ministers." The purveyors of modern thought had seen their congregations dwindle away beneath its withering power and "they are, therefore, not quite so enamoured of it as they were." Looseness in doctrine usually was of a piece with general looseness of religion. "Want of soundness in the faith is usually occasioned by want of conversion" and the people to whom these speak have observed that they have not been "remarkable for abundant grace." More than the changing tide of theological opinion, however, Spurgeon trusted in the eternal truth of divine revelation and the certainty that those who fear the name of the Lord shall

"pass on to possess the promised inheritance." ¹²⁷ Spurgeon also had come to think that great crusades for radical change were doomed to failure. He admired the valor and conviction of those who believed they could halt the decline of the denomination, but Spurgeon advised his men, "Even our own denomination must go its own way." They should use their powers for work well within their reach, and realize that they could not remove the earth of the curse of thorns but should make a few blades of grass grow in their own little plot. They must learn to do more by doing less. ¹²⁸ The

man who previously could not be restrained within the bounds of a single congregation, but must itinerate throughout the land, now only prayed for sufficient strength to be faithful to the charge immediately before him.

Spurgeon could not rest in good conscience, however, until he had given one last shot at calling his brethren back from the edge of a theological death-

plummet.