Rough Words for Great Evils

A midweek dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.

The following tidbit is from the October 1868 issue of The Sword and the Trowel. Spurgeon had long opposed the Anglo-Catholicism that dominated the Church of England in the wake of the Oxford Movement. That movement was also known as the "Tractarian Movement," after a series of tractates written to promote that generation's most popular New Perspectives.

When Spurgeon preached against the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, it stirred a great controversy. At the height of that controversy, Spurgeon published some short, satirical tracts of his own, including this one and this one, which were published together in an issue of Spurgeon's magazine and generated an unusual outpouring of protests from people who complained that they were uncharitable and overly "harsh."

Since we've heard from not a few readers who solemnly assure us that Spurgeon would not approve of the Po-Motivators, we wanted to let him speak for himself.

E fear that our two pictures of last month greatly shocked a few of our good readers whose souls are tender of the Establishment; but we do not in any degree apologize to them because the shock, like that of a cold bath early in the morning, will do them good, and strengthen their constitutions.

We can assure them that they cannot be one-half so much shocked by our ridicule of error as we are by the error itself.

We do not make the evil, we only expose it; and if we use words and symbols which strike and stick, and even offend, we believe that they are necessary, and ought to be used far more frequently.

We are not going to handle the abominations of the present Anglican establishment with kid gloves; and if we judge sarcasm and ridicule to be deserved, we shall give the Lord's enemies their full quota of scorn.

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From the combox below: David Rudd: "He wasn't speaking about unbelievers who were offended... is that correct?" Your question is loaded. It presupposes something Spurgeon himself certainly wouldn't have regarded as a given. He was no more willing than we are (and by "we," I mean "we Pyros and most of the fundies and conservative evangelicals who post positive comments here") to assume that just because people call themselves Christians and follow all the current religious fads, they are genuine believers. Spurgeon especially would not have made that assumption about professing believers who constantly hung around in circles where false doctrine was a staple and sound doctrine was constantly under attack. In this instance, the central issue under debate was baptismal regeneration—and the related question of whether baptism or faith is the instrument of justification. Which side of that line you stand on determines how and to whom you will preach the gospel. Spurgeon was not happy with the fuzziness evangelical Anglicans were tolerating (and in some cases fostering) in order to avoid strife within the established church. He could see that the clarity of the gospel had been lost. Worse, even among "evangelical" Anglicans, any real commitment to a sound understanding of the gospel was quickly eroding. That was the second half of the nineteenth century, and a steady trickle of Anglicans influenced by Newman and Pusey had been converting to Roman Catholicism for twenty years or longer (including Newman himself, who ultimately became a cardinal in the church of Rome). As Spurgeon watched that happen and observed that evangelicals within the church of England were becoming progressively more timid about confronting Anglo-Catholicism, he began to speak out against Romish tendencies with great vigor, focusing mainly on baptismal regeneration. But (as you see from the satirical tracts he published) he was equally forceful in his opposition to the wearing of ornate vestments, the rising tide of sacramentalism, and other manifestations of what he perceived (rightly, I think) as a decadent and hypocritical priesthood in the church of England. His primary concern, of course, was the gospel. At first, I don't think it occurred to him that any authentic believer could legitimately be offended that someone was trying to defend the gospel. But both public opinion and the preponderance of "evangelicals" within the established church excoriated him for his "tone," his outspokenness, the inflexibility of his opinion, his unwillingness to compromise, and his supposed meddling in Anglican affairs. His use of satire was the final straw. His critics seized on that as "proof" that he was out of control, and they hammered him relentlessly. He stood his ground. So who were the offended parties? Since the controversy was featured even in the secular newspapers of that time, Spurgeon's harshest critics included people who were open about their unbelief, people who were manifestly unbiblical in their religious opinions, people who professed to be Christians did not even pretend to be evangelical in their opinions, and people who claimed to be devoted to evangelical truth. Were any of them authentic believers? Some of them probably were. But I don't think Spurgeon himself was deeply troubled by that question. He wasn't interested in mollycoddling the sensitivities of "Christians" who got upset about someone defending the gospel. He was concerned instead with the questions of whether the issues at stake were really that important or not, whether his own motives were pure, and whether he was in the right. The more he studied the issue and prayed about it, the more determined he became. On the tactical question of whether Spurgeon's satire was effective or not, I think history fully vindicates him. The "evangelicals" within the Anglican church who most vigorously opposed Spurgeon became steadily less evangelical, and their strategy of peace and accommodation did nothing whatsoever to quell the influence of Anglo-Catholicism or strengthen the evangelical contingent in the established church. Spurgeon, on the other hand, was a major influence in the strengthening of Victorian evangelicalism, and it seems clear that in the long run his critiques severely weakened the influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the Victorian age. Of course, his influence continues today. And we're doing our best to remind people that Spurgeon was never one of the gelatinous, compromising types who were a dime a dozen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and he wasn't too "nice" to use sanctified mockery against the religious fads and secular fashions of his day. His magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, represents the model we would most like to emulate here at TeamPyro. Thanks for asking. Oh, yes. Spurgeon's critics also lampooned him. Constantly.

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