PASTOR'S CHOSEN QUOTE

Here is a quotation from a statement made by C H Spurgeon on April 11th, 1861 concerning his own doctrinal position.

That doctrine which is called "Calvinism" did not spring from Calvin; we believe that it sprang from the great Founder of all truth. Perhaps Calvin derived it mainly from the writings of Augustine. Augustine obtained his views, without doubt, through the Spirit of God, from the diligent study of the writings of Paul, and Paul received them of the Holy Ghost, from Jesus Christ the great Founder of the Christian dispensation... All the difficulties which are laid against the doctrine of predestination might with equal force, be laid against that of Divine foreknowledge. God hath predestinated all things from the beginning but there is a difference between the predestination of an intelligent, all-wise, all-bounteous God, and that blind fatalism which simply says, "It is because it is to be". Between the predestination of Scripture and fate every sensible man must perceive a difference of the most essential character....I hold God's election, but I testify just as clearly that if any man be lost he is lost for sin ... If he be lost, damnation is all of man; but if he be saved, salvation is all of God. ..

A charge against us is that we dare not preach the Gospel to the unregenerate, that in fact, our theology is so narrow and cramped that we cannot preach to sinners. Gentlemen, if you dare to say this, I would take you to any library in the world where the old Puritan fathers are stored up, and I would let you take any one volume and tell me if you ever read more telling exhortations and addresses to sinners in any of your own books. Did not Bunyan plead with sinners, and who ever classed him with any but the Calvinists? Did not Charnock, Goodwin and Howe agonize for souls, and what were they but Calvinists. Did not Jonathan Edwards preach to sinners, and who more clear and explicit on these doctrinal matters. The works of our innumerable divines teem with passionate appeals to the unconverted….Did Whitefield's eyes weep the fewer tears or his bowels move with less compassion because he believed in God’s electing love and preached the Sovereignty of the Most High? ... I speak of Calvinism proper, as I find it in Calvin's "Institutes", and especially in his Expositions. I have read them carefully. I take not my views of Calvinism from common repute but from his books... ...I mean that glorious system which teaches that salvation is of grace from first to last.' "