The chief wonder is that he abides perfect. Not one of God's elect has gone back. Not one of the blood-bought hath denied the faith. Not one single soul, whichever was effectually called, can be made to deny Christ, even though his flesh should be pulled from his bones by hot pincers, or his tormented body flung to the jaws of wild beasts. All that the enemy has done has been of no avail against the church. The old rock has been washed and washed and washed again by stormy waves and submerged a thousand times in the floods of tempest. But even her angles and corners abide, unaltered and unalterable. We may say of the Lord's tabernacle, not one of the stakes thereof have been removed. nor one of her cords been broken. The house of the Lord, from foundation to pinnacle, is perfect still. The rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, nay, nor a single stone of it, for it was founded upon ape-rock. There can be no doubt that one prominent reason for Spurgeon's influence was that he possessed abilities which enabled him to break through the long-established conventions of his age, and then the confidence to withstand the storm which his actions aroused. Often, he declared in a sermon on prayer, because I have not chosen to pray in any conventional form, people have said, that man is not reverent. My dear sir, you are not a judge of my reverence. Brethren, I would like to burn the whole stock of old prayers that we have been using this 50 years, that oil that goes from vessel to vessel, that misquoted, mangled text, where two or three are met together, thou wilt be in the midst of them and that to bless them, and all those other quotations which we have been manufacturing and dislocating and copying from man to man. I would, we came to speak to God just out of our own hearts. I can, at the prayer meetings, he says, in another place, readily tell when the brother is praying and when he is only performing or playing at prayer. You know how it is with some prayers. They are like an invoice, as per usual, or a list of goods with ditto, ditto, every here and there. Oh, for a living groan! One sigh of the soul has more power in it than half an hour's recitation of pretty, pious words. Oh, for a sob from the soul, or a tear from the heart!" He was equally as unwavering in replying to the critics of his preaching. I am not very particular about how I preach. I have not courted any man's love. I ask no man to attend my ministry, I preach what I like, when I like, and as I like." There have probably been only two evangelists in English church history with whom Spurgeon can be adequately compared. In several of his natural gifts he resembles Hugh Latimer and George Whitefield, but in one natural gift he went well beyond either of these predecessors. He had a mental power which enabled him to assimilate and adjust and later popularize practically everything he read. His power of reading was perhaps never equaled. He took in the contents almost at a glance and his memory never failed him as to what he read. He made a point of reading half a dozen of the hardest books every week. I several times had an opportunity of testing the thoroughness of his reading, and I never found him at fault. Dr. Wright quoted in Spurgeon's autobiography, pages 4 and 273. At the time of his death, Spurgeon had a library of twelve thousand books, and it is said he could have fetched almost any one of them in the dark. Similarly, we read that Mr. Spurgeon at one time, as he sat on his platform, could name every one of his 5,000 members. Then we must add to this the fact that Spurgeon's upbringing was such that by the time he came to London, he had read an enormous amount for his age. He was steeped in what he called the golden era of English theology, the Puritan period. Spurgeon's opinion of the Puritans, with whom he was first acquainted in his childhood, remained with him all his days. He said in 1872, we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology, we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. The modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fall from the table of the Puritans." Spurgeon had no patience with those who said, "'We will not read anything except the book itself. Neither will we accept any light except that which comes in through a crack in our own roof. We will not see by another man's candle. We would sooner remain in the dark. Brethren, do not let us fall into such folly." And above all, he had been a fluent reader of the Bible since the age of six. What Spurgeon wrote of Bunyan is equally applicable to himself. Read anything of his and you will see that it is almost like reading the Bible itself. He had studied our authorized version, which will never be bettered, as I judge, till Christ shall come. He had read it till his whole being was saturated with Scripture. Prick him anywhere, and you will find that his blood is bibline. The very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God. It would be wrong to ignore Spurgeon's natural gifts and his deep study, But it would be a much greater wrong to imagine that these things explain the character of his early ministry. To imply that they did would be a contradiction of all that he taught. Spurgeon came to London conscious that God had been hiding his faith from his people. His knowledge of the Bible and of church history convinced him that, compared with what the church had a warrant to expect, the Spirit of God was in great measure withdrawn. And if God continued to withhold His face, He declared to His people, nothing could be done to extend His kingdom. It is not your knowledge, nor your talent, nor your zeal, He would say, that can perform God's work. Yet, brethren, this can be done. We will cry to the Lord until He reveals His face again. All we want is the Spirit of God. Dear Christian friends, go home and pray for it. Give yourselves no rest till God reveals Himself. Do not tarry where you are. Do not be content to go on in your everlasting jog-trot as you have done. Do not be content with the mere round-up formalities. Awake, O Zion! Awake! Awake! Awake! The reason why the site of the chapel, built in 1833, is sometimes called New Park Street, and more often in contemporary references, Park Street, is not clear. Newspapers quoted on pages 35 and 36 above speak of Park Street Chapel. Apparently both names were in use. On a map in the records of Southwark Borough Council, it is noted that the word New was officially abolished in 18. Before many months had passed, it was manifest that the congregation at New Park Street was awakening, and as travail and prayer became the characteristic of the church, one common burden spread from pastor to people. The Lord send a blessing. He must send it. Our hearts will break if he does not. What a change took place in the prayer meetings. Now instead of the old dull prayers, every man seemed like a crusader besieging the new Jerusalem. Each one appeared determined to storm the celestial city by the might of intercession. And soon the blessing came upon us in such abundance that we had not room to receive it. To the end of his life, Spurgeon pointed back to the revival at New Park Street. as one sure evidence that God answers prayer. And he would often remind his congregation of those early days. What prayer meetings we have had. Shall we ever forget Park Street? Those prayer meetings when I felt compelled to let you go without a word from my lips because the Spirit of God was so awfully present that we felt bowed to the dust. And what listening there was at Park Street, where we scarcely had air enough to breathe. The Holy Spirit came down like showers, which saturate the soil till the clods are ready for the breaking. And then it was not long before we heard on the right and on the left the cry, what must we do to be saved? Some of the most solemn warnings Spurgeon ever gave his congregation were of the danger of their ceasing to be dependent upon God in prayer. May God help me if you cease to pray for me. Let me know the day and I must cease to preach. Let me know when you intend to cease your prayers and I will cry, Oh my God, give me this day my tomb and let me slumber in the dust. These words were not the eloquence of a preacher, rather they expressed the deepest feelings of his heart. On one of his visits to the continent, Spurgeon met an American minister who said, I have long wished to see you, Mr. Spurgeon, and to put one or two simple questions to you. In our country, there are many opinions as to the secret of your great influence. Would you be so good as to give me your own point of view? After a moment's pause, Spurgeon said, My people pray for me." He believed that without the Spirit of God, nothing could be done. When his congregation should cease to feel their utter, entire, absolute dependence upon the presence of God, then he was sure they would ere long become a scorn and a hissing or else a mere log upon the water. Throughout Spurgeon's ministry, this concern remained uppermost in his heart. If there were only one prayer which I might pray before I died, it should be this. Lord, send thy Church men filled with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Give to any denomination such men, and its progress must be mighty. Keep back such men, than them college gentlemen of great refinement and profound learning, but of little fire and grace, dumb dogs, which cannot bark, and, straightway, that denomination must decline. The true explanation of Spurgeon's ministry, then, is to be found in the person and power of the Holy Spirit. He was himself deeply conscious of this. It was not man's admiration he wanted, but he was jealous that they should stand in awe of God. God has come unto us, not to exalt us, but to exalt himself. Moreover, he saw nothing singular in his confidence in the Holy Spirit, for he regarded this as the mark of every true messenger of God. A preacher, he says, ought to know that he really possesses the Spirit of God, and that when he speaks there is an influence upon him, that enables him to speak as God would have him. Otherwise, out of the pulpit he should go directly. He has no right to be there. He has not been called to preach God's truth. See also his searching but too infrequently read address on the Holy Spirit in connection with our ministry, in which he shows that the lack of distinctly recognizing the power of the Holy Ghost lies at the root of many useless ministries. Lectures to My Students, Second Series, pages 1 through 22. The presence of the Holy Spirit was manifested in Spurgeon's ministry in two prominent respects. Firstly, in the spirit of his preaching. Like the Apostle Paul, he preached in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 1 Corinthians 2, 3. We tremble, he says, lest we should misbelieve and tremble more if you are as I am, lest we should mistake and misinterpret the word. I believe Martin Luther would have faced the infernal fiend himself without a fear, and yet we have his own confession that his knees often knocked together when he stood up to preach. He trembled lest he should not be faithful to God's word, To preach the whole truth is an awful charge. You and I, who are ambassadors for God, must not trifle, but we must tremble at God's word. When the Holy Spirit takes up a man, He gives him something of that same care for the souls of men and women that was seen in the earthly ministry of Christ. Jesus never preached a careless sermon, said Spurgeon, and he sought to be conformed to his Lord. Following this supreme example, he was sometimes led into heights of joy in preaching on John 17, 24. He exclaimed, I had a thought, but I cannot express it. Easily could I step into heaven. So I feel at this moment. But he was also taken into those Gethsemane-like depths of agony, where one is conscious of the terrible reality of the judgment of God against human sin. Our heart is ready to break, he said, when we think how the multitude reject the gospel. And it was in that spirit that he always sought to speak. I can say at this moment, he exclaimed in the course of a sermon, I do feel a longing for the conversion of my hearers, such as I cannot describe. I would count it a high privilege if I might sleep in death this morning, if that death could redeem your souls from hell. In later years, Spurgeon gratefully feared the consequences of a growing disbelief in the reality of hell. In 1865, he said, there is a deep-seated unbelief among Christians just now about the eternity of future punishment. It is not outspoken in many cases, but it is whispered, and it frequently assumes the shape of a spirit of benevolent desire that the doctrine may be disproved. I fear that at the bottom of all this there is a rebellion against the dread sovereignty of God. There is a suspicion that sin is not, after all, so bad a thing as we have dreamed. There is an apology or a lurking wish to apologize for sinners who are looked upon rather as objects of pity than as objects of indignation and really deserving the condoned punishment which they have willfully brought upon themselves. I am afraid it is the old nature in us putting on the specious garb of charity which thus leads us to discredit a fact which is as certain as the happiness of believers. Some cannot bear the thought, but to me it seems inevitable that sin must be punished. If sin becomes a trifle, virtue will be a toy. The pulpit to Spurgeon was the most solemn spot in the world, and nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion that he made it a place of entertainment. Rather, from his early days, his work in the service of the Lord was marked by its seriousness. When he became a Sunday school teacher in the year of his conversion, 1850, he had noted in his diary, after a teacher's business meeting, Too much joking and levity to agree with my notion of what a Sunday school teacher should be. Three years after Spurgeon's death, Robertson Nicol, an acute judge of preachers, wrote while on a visit to New York, Evangelism of the humorous type may attract multitudes, but it lays the soul in ashes and destroys the very germs of religion. Mr. Spurgeon is thought by those who do not know his sermons to have been a humorous preacher. As a matter of fact, there was no preacher whose tone was more uniformly earnest, reverent, and solemn. Yet the old travesty persists in those who are ignorant of the real Spurgeon. For example, Kenneth Slack, who speaks of him as a great entertainer, using every artifice of wit, humor, ingenuity, and dramatic daring, The British Churches Today, 1961, page 73. Spurgeon would have agreed with Charles Simon, who, referring to preachers of a jocular manner, comments, St. Paul said of sinners, of whom I tell you, weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. whose end is destruction, who mind earthly things. Philippians 3, 18. But such preachers tell you these things laughing instead of weeping. They seem to want the awe and reverence with which we all, especially ministers, should approach God and God's word. The Christian should shudder at the idea of levity in such things. On this subject, compare an all-round ministry. Page 335. I am not, of course, denying that true humor is a wholesome and refreshing gift. The above comments concern only the inappropriateness of its exercise when a man in public worship is speaking in the name of God. For charming examples of Spurgeon's humor, as well as other valuable material, see Personal Reminiscences of C. H. Spurgeon, W. Williams, 1895, and Autobiography III, 339, and 61. Spurgeon sought to treat his congregation as William Grimshaw had treated his many hearers at Hayworth in the 18th century awakening. On one occasion when Whitfield was preaching for Grimshaw, the latter interrupted him with the words, Brother Whitfield, don't flatter them. I fear that half of them are going to hell with their eyes open. Every minister can understand what John Wesley meant when he said, Were I to preach one whole year in one place, I should preach both myself and most of my congregation to sleep. There were times when Spurgeon wished that the burden of preaching year after year to thousands might be lightened. There are times without number in which I have wished that I could become the pastor of some little country church with two or three hundred hearers over whose souls I could watch with incessant care. But he knew it was not to be, and he prayed that God would seal his mouth in eternal silence rather than let him grow careless or contented while souls were being damned. It were better for me that I had never been born than that I preach to these people carelessly or keep back any part of my master's truth. Better to have been a devil than a preacher playing fast and loose with God's word. and by such means working the ruin of the souls of men. It will be the height of my ambition to be clear of the blood of all men. If, like George Fox, I can say in dying, I am clear, I am clear, that were almost all the heaven I could wish for. To describe the spirit in which Spurgeon preached is not, however, to state the ultimate evidence for our belief that the Holy Spirit was abundantly present in his ministry. The content of his message was more important to him than the manner of his preaching, and it is this second point which we must now consider. The quotations given above are not only incomplete, but on their own they could even be misleading. A solemn sense of responsibility was not the impelling motive of his preaching, He was constrained by something higher than the call of duty. Yet, if I might make some reserve, and duty did not call, I love my God with zeal so great that I would give Him all. These words take us to the heart of Spurgeon's preaching. He loved to proclaim the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He was the glorious, all-absorbing topic of Spurgeon's ministry, and that name turned his pulpit labors into a bath in the waters of paradise. The story of how an unnoticed workman was awakened through a text which Spurgeon announced in the deserted Crystal Palace when he was testing the acoustics in preparation for a service is well known, but the verse which Spurgeon gave out is no incidental part of the picture. When, as he thought, he had no congregation and no hearers, the words which came most simply and naturally to his lips were, Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. Is it then surprising that glancing over the titles of his sermons in 1856 and 1857, we find this constantly recurring name, Christ. about his father's business, Christ, the power and wisdom of God, Christ lifted up, the condescension of Christ, Christ our Passover, Christ exalted, the exaltation of Christ, Christ in the covenant. Let us glance for a moment at one such sermon entitled The Eternal Name and preached early in 1855 when he was 20 years old. In the course of this sermon, he detects what would become of the world if the name of Jesus could be removed from it, and unable to restrain his own feelings, he exclaimed, I would have no wish to be here without my Lord, and if the gospel is not true, I should bless God to annihilate me this instant, for I would not care to live if ye could destroy the name of Jesus Christ. Many years later, Mrs. Spurgeon had not forgotten this same sermon, and she describes its close when Spurgeon's voice was almost breaking in physical exhaustion in the following words. I remember, with strange vividness at this long distance of time, the Sunday evening when he preached from the text, His Name Shall Endure Forever. It was a subject in which he reveled. It was his chief delight to exalt his glorious Savior, and he seemed in that discourse to be pouring out his very soul and life in homage and adoration before his gracious King. But I really thought he would have died there in face of all those people. At the end of the sermon, he made a mighty effort to recover his voice, but utterance well nigh failed, and only in broken accents Could the pathetic pre-oration be heard? Let my name perish, but let Christ's name last forever. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, crown Him Lord of all. You will not hear me say anything else. These are my last words in Exeter Hall for this time. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, crown Him Lord of all. And then he fell back, almost fainting, in the chair behind him. Is there any stronger evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a man's ministry than this? If there is, perhaps it is that awareness, unknown to all save the preacher, of Christ's own presence with him as he speaks. Scarcely is it possible for a man, this side of the grave, to the nearer heaven than when enjoying this, writes Spurgeon, and there were times when he could testify, I have discerned the special presence of my Lord with me by a consciousness as sure as that by which I know that I live. Jesus has been as real to me at my side in this pulpit as though I had beheld him with my eyes. We cannot leave the subject of the theme of Spurgeon's ministry without giving one example of how he preached Christ to every class of hearer and Christ as the only need of every heart. Remember, sinner, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee, it is Christ. It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee, it is Christ. It is not even faith in Christ, though, that is the instrument, it is Christ's blood and merit. Therefore, look not to thy hope, but to Christ, the source of thy hope. Look not to thy faith, but to Christ, the author and finisher of thy faith. And if thou doest that, ten thousand devils cannot throw thee down. There is one thing which we all of us too much becloud in our preaching, though I believe we do it very unintentionally, namely, the great truth That it is not a prayer, it is not faith, it not our doings, it is not our feelings, upon which we must rest, but upon Christ and on Christ alone. We are asked to think that we are not in a right state, that we do not feel enough, instead of remembering that our business is not with self, but with Christ. Let me beseech thee, Look only to Christ. Never expect deliverance from self, from ministers, or from any means of any kind apart from Christ. Keep thine eyes simply on Him. Let His death, His agonies, His groans, His sufferings, His merits, His glories, His intercession be fresh upon thy mind. When thou wakest in the morning, look for Him. When thou liest down at night, look. for him. Such was the spirit and message of C. H. Spurgeon at the age of twenty-two. And as we leave this side of his ministry, who is there that does not feel we need to know again today the meaning of being constrained by the love of Christ? An oft-repeated verse expressed Spurgeon's prayer. Let us make the words our own. A very wretch, Lord, I should prove, had I no love for Thee. Rather than not my Saviour love, O may I cease to be! Mr. Spurgeon is a Calvinist, which few of the dissenting ministers in London now are. He preaches salvation not of man's free will, but of the Lord's good will, which few in London it is to be feared now do. John Anderson of Helensburg, The Early Years, page 339. I do not hesitate to say that next to the doctrine of the crucifixion and the resurrection of our blessed Lord, no doctrine had such prominence in the early Christian Church as the doctrine of the election of grace. C. H. Spurgeon's Sermons, page 6 and 302. The doctrine of grace has been put by in the lumber chamber. It is acknowledged to be true, for it is confessed in most creeds. It is in the Church of England articles. It is in the confessions of all sorts of Protestant Christians, except those who are avowedly Arminian. But how little is it ever preached. It is put among the relics of the past. It is considered to be a respectable sort of retired officer who is not expected to see any more active service. C. H. Spurgeon's Sermons, pages 12 and 429. Chapter 2. The Lost Controversy. In the previous chapter, we sought to recover the image of Spurgeon as he was in the days of his New Park Street ministry. The picture which emerged was not that of a jovial pulpit phenomenon upon whom men lavished their praise, but rather of a youth whose arrival amidst the soothing and sleepy religious life of London was about as unwelcomed as the Russian cannons which were then thundering in the far-off Crimea. The facts come as somewhat of a jolt to us, for we have more or less become accustomed to look upon Spurgeon as a benign grandfather of modern evangelicalism. When the revival of 1855 and onwards shook Southwark out of its spiritual slumber, the name of the pastor of New Park Street was a symbol of reproach, and blows were rained on him from every direction. The name has since been turned into a symbol of evangelical respectability, and we tend to comfort ourselves amidst the prevailing defection from evangelical principles with the thought that the religious world has still some remembrance of a man holding our position whose influence not so many years ago encircled the globe. Yet when we recall the real character of his ministry, our comfort may evaporate, for we are faced with the question, not how much do we admire Spurgeon, but what would a man like this think of the church today? We have already spoken of the general characteristics of his early life, and they need to be borne in mind as we turn to more detailed aspects of the doctrine he preached. It would be an injustice to the man in any way to separate the truth which he held from the spirit in which he lived. His doctrinal convictions were not formulated in the cool detachment of intellectual study. Rather, they were burned into him by the Holy Spirit. He radiated by his love for his Redeemer and kept afresh in his ministry by communion with God. Spurgeon had little sympathy for men who held an orthodox system which was devoid of the living unction of the spirit. One of the first attacks which was made on Spurgeon's ministry after his settlement in London came from a section of the Baptist community which could at that time be described as hyper-Calvinist. The label is not one that Spurgeon liked to use, for he regarded the introduction of the great reformer's name as a misnomer. Calvinists, such men may call themselves, but unlike the reformer whose name they adopt, They bring a system of divinity to the Bible to interpret it instead of making every system be its merits what they may yield and give place to the pure and unadulterated Word of God. In the January 1855 issue of the Earthen Vessel, an anonymous writer of this school cast doubt on Spurgeon's whole position and call to the ministry. Spurgeon's untraditional phraseology, the crowds which followed him, his general invitations and exhortations to all hearers to repent and believe the gospel, and the broadness of his theology, were all grounds for suspicion. He was neither narrow enough nor discriminating enough for his critic, who complained, Spurgeon preaches all doctrine and no doctrine. all experience and therefore no experience. For a reason which will later be apparent, the youthful preacher was not concerned to meet this attack. Nevertheless, he did sometimes pause in the course of a sermon to deal with the views of the hyper-Calvinists. Sometimes his reflections are semi-humorous as the following. But when he is reading the Bible one day, he finds a text that looks rather wide and general. And he says, this cannot mean what it says. I must trim it down and make it fit into Dr. Gill's commentary. More often he deals much more sharply with the principles which lead to this kind of practice. For hyper-Calvinism not only causes personal lopsidedness, but what is more serious, it prevents a full preaching of the gospel. They have been obliged to cover up such a passage as this because they could not understand it. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, but ye would not. They durst not preach upon such a text as this. As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but had rather that he should turn unto me and live. They are ashamed to say to men, Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die? They dare not come out and preach as Peter did. Repent ye, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. I do not believe, he declares in the course of a sermon on the Good Samaritan, in the way in which some people pretend to preach the gospel. They have no gospel for sinners, as sinners, but only for those who are above the dead level of sinnership and are technically styled, sensible sinners. We must break the quotation for a moment to clarify his terminology. Hyper-Calvinism, in its attempt to square all gospel truth with God's purpose to save the elect, denies there is a universal command to repent and believe, and asserts that we have only warrant to invite to Christ those who are conscious of a sense of sin and need. In other words, it is those who have been spiritually quickened to seek a savior and not those who are in the depth of unbelief and indifference to whom the exhortations of the gospel must be addressed. In this way, a scheme was devised for restricting the gospel to those who, there is reason to suppose, are elect. Like the priest in this parable, Spurgeon continues, They see the poor sinner, and they say, he is not conscious of his need. We cannot invite him to Christ. He is dead, they say. It is of no use preaching to dead souls. So they pass by on the other side, keeping close to the elect and quickened, but having nothing whatever to say to the dead, lest they should make out Christ to be too gracious, and his mercy to be too free. I have known ministers say, well, you know, we ought to describe the sinner's state and warn him, but we must not invite him to Christ. Yes, gentlemen, you must pass by on the other side after having looked at him, for on your own confession you have no good news for the poor wretch. I bless my Lord and Master. He has given me a gospel which I can take to dead sinners, a gospel which is available for the vilest of the vile. Spurgeon was urgent upon this issue because he saw that if the sinner's warrant for receiving the gospel lies in any internal qualifications or feelings, then the unconverted as such have no immediate duty to believe on Christ, and they may conclude that because they do not feel any penitence or need, the command to believe on the Son of God is not addressed to them. On the other hand, if the warrant rests not in anything in the sinner, but solely on the command and invitations of God, then we have a message for every creature under heaven. This virgin did not believe that the fact of election should be concealed from the unconverted, but he held that hyper-Calvinism, by directing men's attention away from the centrality of personal faith in Christ, had distorted. You have seen those mirrors, he says, referring to fairgrounds. You walk up to them and you see your head ten times as large as your body. or you walk away and put yourself in another position, and then your feet are monstrous and the rest of your body is small. This is an ingenious toy, but I am sorry to say that many go to work with God's truth upon the model of this toy. They magnify one capital truth till it becomes monstrous. They minify and speak little of another truth till it becomes altogether forgotten. Pages 8 and 182. For a short summary of Spurgeon's views on preaching to sinners, see his book of addresses entitled, Only a Prayer Meeting, pages 301 through 305. Had distorted the New Testament emphasis and bolstered up complacency in unbelievers. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since He condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.