Spurgeon at the School of Puritan Evangelism
The lash of the Law drives men to the cross.
Richard Sibbes [1577-1635], in pondering why so many men relapse after a ‘conversion,’ said that the reason why men walk away from the faith was "because men never smarted for sinne at the first, they were not long enough under the lash of the Law."[1] Easy-believe-ism would find little welcome among the Puritans. The modern practice of calling on men to believe in Christ as the first step in becoming a Christian is different from the Puritan model. The Puritans first called on men to repent.
Joel Beeke in Puritan Reformed Spirituality wrote that they “preached about the legal obligations and liabilities under which sinners toil, before showing them the way of deliverance through faith in Christ's blood.”[2] The reason they did this was that they believed that the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration was necessary before there was faith. In contrast, modern evangelism “holds that we believe in order to be born again, that faith precedes and effects regeneration.”[3] The procedure of the Puritans was first “to enlighten the unregenerate man about the nature of sin, then to lead him to a conviction of his own guilt before God”, wrote Owen Watkins in The Puritan Experience.[4] Only after a man was gasping for relief would it be appropriate to reveal the way of reconciliation with God. Joseph Alleine’s Alarm demonstrates the Puritan model of declaring “the entire economy of redemption” while at the same time “calling sinners to a life of faith and commitment, and warning that the gospel will condemn forever those who persist in unbelief.”[5]
The modern practice of calling on men to believe in Christ as the first step in becoming a Christian is different from the Puritan model. The Puritans first called on men to repent.
Joseph Alleine offered the relief of God’s forgiveness in Christ’s finished work only after 133 pages of the lash of the Law in his 148-page book. It is little wonder why Spurgeon called Alleine a better preacher of the Law than of the gospel. Alleine presents five motivations for a person to seize the opportunity for conversion:
1. The God that made you most gracious invites you.
2. The doors of heaven are thrown open to you.
3. God will give you unspeakable privileges in this life.
4. The terms of mercy are brought as low as possible to you.
5. God offers all needed grace to enable you.[6]
Alleine’s book was not only directly influential in the life of Spurgeon, but it was also monumental for influencing the entire culture of Puritan evangelism, which in turn also indirectly trickled down to Spurgeon. Joel Beeke called Alarm to the Unconverted a pioneer work in evangelistic literature.[7] Although Joseph died at thirty-four, he had a following that promoted his materials, and they enshrined him as the ideal pastor-martyr. Richard Baxter in his Reformed Pastor, first published in 1656, "found in Joseph the kind of saintly pastor he longed for and sought himself to exemplify."[8] Baxter said that Alleine’s joyous, rapturous piety was "wonderful help to the converting of the world."[9] The group of men that followed the writings of Alleine began to speak in terms of ‘awakening sinners,’ and of the need to call sleepy souls to conversion. Richard Alleine, Joseph's father-in-law, asserted that "God hath sent forth his Ministers to Alarm this sinful world."[10] The book even changed the course of evangelistic language. After the dissemination of Alarm, ministers in the Puritan world began to utilize language about being saved, being born again, accepting Christ, giving one's heart to Christ, closing with Christ, receiving Christ, and winning souls.[11]
Sovereignty and Responsibility
Spurgeon followed the Puritan tradition because he put no wedge between the two complementary truths of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. He believed that regeneration preceded faith, and the program by which the Spirit regenerates begins instrumentally with the Law. “For Spurgeon there was no way at all in which the necessity of the supernatural intervention of God lessens the urgency of human instrumentality.”[12] A key feature of man’s responsibility has been neglected by the modern, Reformed community, however, and Spurgeon is the man one ought to study in order to help recover this lost implication.
Spurgeon believed that man’s responsibility did not reside merely in the unconverted sinner but also in the preacher. It is man’s responsibility to persuade the unconverted to be reconciled to God. Although Spurgeon acknowledged that it is “not our way of putting the Gospel, nor our method of illustrating it, which wins souls,” but only the power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel that saves men, he did not fall into determinism.[13] It is by “your solicitude, your earnestness, your anxiety, your travailing in birth for them” that God uses to bless men’s spiritual arousing.[14] John Murray in Redemption – Accomplished and Applied said that
The fact that regeneration is the prerequisite of faith in no way relieves us of the responsibility to believe nor does it eliminate the priceless privilege that is ours as Christ and his claims are pressed…in full and free overtures of his grace.[15]
God’s sovereignty does not eliminate the unregenerate’s responsibility to repent nor does it eliminate a believer’s responsibility to press upon his or her hearers the need for them to repent. One way that Spurgeon made sure that he discharged his responsibility before sinners was that every sermon he preached contained enough gospel truth and application to effect the conversion of sinners, even when he was mainly directing his remarks to believers.[16] He was aware that at all his services “large numbers of unbelievers were regularly present and for this reason he made known the way of salvation in almost every sermon.”[17]
For example, in his January 21, 1855, sermon entitled “The Personality of the Holy Ghost,” Spurgeon dealt with a topic that might mire many preachers’ outline into mere polemical discourse. There were certain preachers in London who denied the personhood of the Spirit, and Spurgeon was felt compelled to address the heresy publicly, but he also did not let the occasion pass without an opportunity to directly appeal for sinners to repent. He argued in four parts: I. The Personality of the Holy Spirit, II. The United Agency of the Three Persons in the Work of our Salvation, III. The Indwelling of the Holy Ghost in Believers, and IV. Why the World Rejects the Holy Ghost.
It was in parts three and four that Spurgeon pressed his audience. If his listeners had no idea of the things he was speaking, then “you are not a child of God, nor an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” Spurgeon continued:
But the last reason why worldly men laugh at the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is, because they do not know it. If they know it by heartfelt experience and if they recognized its agency in the soul; if they had ever been touched by it; if they had been made to tremble under a sense of sin; if they had had their hearts melted, they would never have doubted the existence of the Holy Ghost…
Then, to the ungodly, I have this one closing word to say. Ever be careful how you speak of the Holy Ghost. I do not know what the unpardonable sin is, and I do not think any man understands it; but it is something like this: "He that speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him." I do not know what that means; but tread carefully! There is danger; there is a pit which our ignorance is covered by sand; tread carefully! you may be in it before the next hour. If there is any strife in your heart to-day, perhaps you will go to the ale-house and forget it. Perhaps there is some voice speaking in your soul, and you will put it away. I do not tell you will be resisting the Holy Ghost, and committing the unpardonable sin; but it is somewhere there. Be very careful. O, there is no crime on earth so black as the crime against the Holy Spirit! Ye may blaspheme the Father, and ye shall be damned for it, unless ye repent; ye may blaspheme the Son, and hell shall be your portion, unless ye are forgiven; but blaspheme the Holy Ghost, and thus saith the Lord: "There is no forgiveness, either in this world nor in the world which is to come." I cannot tell you what it is; I do no profess to understand it; but there it is. It is the danger signal; stop! man, stop! If thou has despised the Holy Spirit— if thou hast laughed at his revelations, and scorned what Christians call his influence, I beseech thee, stop! This morning seriously deliberate. Perhaps some of you have actually committed the unpardonable sin; stop! Let fear stop you; sit down. Do not drive on so rashly as you have done, Jehu! O slacken your reins! Thou who are such a profligate in sin—thou who hast uttered such hard words against the Trinity, stop! Ah! it makes us all stop. It makes us all draw up, and say, "Have I not perhaps so done?" Let us think of this; and let us not at any time stifle either with the words or the acts of God the Holy Ghost.
Joseph Alleine modeled the Puritan evangelism that Charles Spurgeon emulated. Both were “infinitely and insatiably greedy for the conversion of souls,” as Spurgeon said once to his students concerning the author of Alarm.[18] Both men used every tool in their verbal arsenal to assault the comfortable consciences of the unconverted.
In closing, we should consider whether we recognize our same responsibility. God’s sovereignty is not a crutch to avoid responsibility. We still have a responsibility for others’ salvation by pressing the claims of Christ and pleading for them to be saved. “So then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as God is pleading through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Pray that God would use your words as the means to woo men’s hearts.
In our next article, we will examine Spurgeon and the Art of Wooing Souls.
Read More:
Part 1: The Book that Spurgeon Hated, yet Loved
Part 2: Spurgeon’s Conversion, With the Help of the Puritans
Part 4: Spurgeon: The Art of Wooing Souls
ENDNOTES
[1] Watkins, Owen. The Puritan Experience. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, 8.
[2] Beeke, Joel. Puritan Reformed Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2004, 153.
[3] Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality
[4] Watkins, The Puritan Experience, 7.
[5] Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 145.
[6] Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted, 133-139.
[7] Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 145.
[8] Wallace, Dewey. Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714. Oxford: University Press, 2011, 149.
[9] Wallace, Shapers
[10] Wallace, Shapers, 156.
[11] Wallace, Shapers, 166.
[12] Murray, The Old Evangelicalism, 62.
[13] Spurgeon, Charles. The Soul Winner. New York: Fleming, 1895, chapter 8.
[14] Murray, The Old Evangelicalism, 63; quoting Spurgeon, Lectures, 2nd series, 189.
[15] Murray, John. Redemption – Accomplished and Applied. London: Banner of Truth, 1955, 113. Emphasis added.
[16] Cook, Paul E. G. "Spurgeon's Gospel Preaching." Fulfilling the Great Commission. 54-68. Westminster Conference. London: Westminster, 1992, 55.
[17] Cook, Fulfilling
[18] Spurgeon, Charles. Lectures to my Students. London: Passmore, 1883, chapter 2.