12 PROOFS THAT CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON WAS A FIRM BELIEVER IN UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

1) SPURGEON AFFIRMED HIS BELIEF IN THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVINISM IN GENERAL:

And I have my own private opinion that there is no such a thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless you preach what now-a-days is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas, and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering, love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for his elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having believed. Such a gospel I abhor. The gospel of the Bible is not such a gospel as that. We preach Christ and him crucified in a different fashion, and to all gainsayers we reply, "We have not so learned Christ." (Sermon number 98 New Park Street Pulpit 1:100)

As for our faith as a church you have heard that already. We believe in what are called the five great points commonly known as Calvinistic; but we do not regard those five points as being barbed shafts which we are to push into the bowels of Christendom. We look upon them as being five great lamps which help to irradiate the cross, or rather five bright emanations springing from the glorious covenant of our Triune God, and illustrating the great doctrine of Jesus crucified. Against all comers, especially against all lovers of Arminianism, we defend and maintain pure gospel truth. (Ceremony at laying of the stone of the New Tabernacle: Sermon numbers: 268-270) Found in New Park St Pulpit 5:603

I cannot stop to tell you of all the sheaves in the doctrine field. Some say there are only five; I believe the five great doctrines of Calvinism are, in some degree, a summary of the rest; they are distinctive points wherein we differ from those who "have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." But there are many more doctrines beside these five; and all are alike precious, and all are alike valuable to the true believer’s soul, for he can feed upon them to his heart's content. (Sermon number 2585 Metropolitan Tabernacle 44:529)Since then, you have learned other doctrines, possibly the five points of Calvinism, or the fifty points of any other system; but you never learned them from merely reading them in the Scriptures, you never really knew them till the pen of God began to move up and down upon your inward nature, and your heart received the impression the Lord intended to convey to it. (Sermon number 2280 Metropolitan Tabernacle 38:679)

We have certainly not thrown away the Five Points, but we may have gained other five… (Sword & Trowel Feb 1874 p.36)

2) SPURGEON URGED OTHERS TO HOLD TO THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVINISM:

Brethren, hold the five points of the Calvinistic doctrine, but mind you do not hold them as babbling questions. What you have received of God do not learn in order to fight with it, and to make contention and strife, and to divide the church of God, and rail against the people of the Most high, as some do. (Sermon number 3394 - Metropolitan Pulpit 60:121)

3) SPURGEON AFFIRMED HIS BELIEF IN THE DOCTRINE OF UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION PARTICULARLY:

I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering, love of Jehovah… (Defence of Calvinism)

But is it not all idle talk, even to controvert for a single moment, with the absurd idea that man can fetter his Maker. Shall the purpose of the Eternal be left contingent on the will of man? (6:244)

This election of God is sovereign. He chooseth as he will. Who shall call him to account? "Can I not do as I will with my own?" is his answer to every caviller. "Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" is the solemn utterance that silences every one who would impugn the justice of the Most High. He has a right, seeing we are all criminals, to punish whom he will. As king of the universe he doubtless acts with discretion, but still according to his sovereignty. Wisely not wantonly he rules, but ever according to the counsel of his own will. Election, then, is sovereign. (51:63)

It is no novelty, then, that I am-preaching; no new doctrine. I love to proclaim these strong old doctrines, which are called by nickname Calvinism, but which are surely and verily the revealed truth of God as it is in Christ Jesus. By this truth I make a pilgrimage into the past, and as I go, I see father after father, confessor after confessor, martyr after martyr, standing up to shake hands with me. Were I a Pelagian, or a believer in the doctrine of free-will, I should have to walk for centuries all alone. Here and there a heretic of no very honorable character might rise up and call me brother. But taking these things to be the standard of my faith, I see the land of the ancients peopled with my brethren-I behold multitudes who confess the same as I do, and acknowledge that this is the religion of God’s own church. (Sermon on Election 1:551)

ACCESS SPURGEON'S WHOLE SERMON ENTITLED: JACOB AND ESAU
ACCESS SPURGEON'S WHOLE SERMON ENTITLED: ELECTION

4) SPURGEON REJECTED THE DOCTRINE OF CONDITIONAL ELECTION:I come to the hardest part of my task this morning --- Election in its justice. Now, I shall defend this great fact, that God has chosen men to himself, and I shall regard it from rather a different point of view from that which is usually taken. My defence is just this. You tell me, if God has chosen some men to eternal life, that he has been unjust. I ask you to prove it. The burden of the proof lies with you. For I would have you remember that none merited this at all. Is there one man in the whole world who would have the impertinence to say that he merits anything of his Maker? If so, be it known unto you that he shall have all he merits; and his reward will be the flames of hell for ever, for that is the utmost that any man ever merited of God. God is in debt to no man, and at the last great day every man shall have as much love as much pity, and as much goodness, as he deserves.(Sermon on Election 6:244)

"But," say others, "God elected them on the foresight of their faith." Now, God gives faith, therefore he could not have elected them on account of faith, which he foresaw. There shall be twenty beggars in the street, and I determine to give one of them a shilling; but will any one say that I determined to give that one a shilling, that I elected him to have the shilling, because I foresaw that he would have it? That would be talking nonsense. In like manner to say that God elected men because he foresaw they would have faith, which is salvation in the germ, would be too absurd for us to listen to for a moment. Faith is the gift of God. Every virtue comes from him. Therefore it cannot have caused him to elect men, because it is his gift. (1:557)

5) SPURGEON IDENTIFIED HIMSELF WHOLEHEARTEDLY WITH CALVIN AND THE CALVINISTS WHO BELIEVED IN UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION:

Again, I must say, I am not defending certain brethren who have exaggerated Calvinism. I speak of Calvinism proper, not that which has run to seed, and outgrown its beauty and verdure. I speak of it 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. Nor do I, in thus speaking, even vindicate Calvinism as if I cared for the name, but I mean that glorious system which teaches that salvation is of grace from first to last.(Sermon number 385 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 7:554)

Did you say that such-and- such a thing is believed by you because you found it in Calvin's Institutes? I am a Calvinist, and a lover of that grand man's memory and doctrine; but I believe nothing merely because Calvin taught it, but because I have found his teaching in the Word of God. (Sermon number 2584 Metropolitan Tabernacle 44:517)

Do you know that John Calvin wrote his famous "Institutes" --- a most wonderful production for thought if not for accuracy --- before he was twenty-seven years of age? (Unusual Occasions p95)

The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again. --- C. H. S. (Defence of Calvinism)

I stood last Wednesday in a sort of dream as I gazed upon my much-beloved grandfather's place of sepulcher. I was encouraged by seeing the record of his fifty-four years of service in the midst of one church and people, and I rejoiced that, could he rise from the dead, he would find his grandson preaching that selfsame old-fashioned and much-despised Calvinistic doctrine of the grace of God which was his joy in life and his comfort in death. (Sermon number 1972 Metropolitan Pulpit 33:500)

Though we have not been called to maintain those truths as you have been, by trials peculiar to your church polity, we have had to maintain the same distinctly Calvinistic truth by struggles which have rooted and grounded us in it. We are glad when we see our brethren more numerous than ourselves across the Border giving forth a louder sound --- not, I hope, a clearer sound --- than we do on the grand doctrines of salvation by sovereign grace. May you prosper in your upholding of the old banner for many, many years to come; and may God be with you and bless you. (Speeches at Home and Abroad p95)

6) SPURGEON WAS THE PASTOR OF A CALVINISTIC CHURCH FOR 38 YEARS:This was the church of Benjamin Keach and John Gill…both Calvinists. Spurgeon could claim concerning his church:

Now I am astonished to find those persons that thus come before me so well instructed in the doctrines of grace and so sound in all the truths of the covenant, insomuch that I may think it my boast and glory, in the name of Jesus, that I know not that we have any members, whom we have received into the church, who do not give their full assent and consent unto all the doctrines of the Christian religion, commonly called Calvinistic doctrines. Those which men are wont to laugh at as being high doctrinal points, are those which they most readily receive, believe, and rejoice in. (Sermon number 178 New Park Street Pulpit 4:182)

God forbid that we should have our Sunday-schools the hot-beds of Arminianism, while our churches are gardens of Calvinism. (Sermon number 1115 Metropolitan Tabernacle 19:398)

Spurgeon rightly denounced those who being Arminian would pastor a Calvinistic church (and vice versa)

By what tortuous processes of reasoning could it be made to appear consistent with uprightness for an Arminian to accept emoluments upon the condition of teaching Calvinistic doctrines, or how could a Calvinist be justified should he enter into covenant to teach the opposite tenets? Would it be any decrease of the inconsistency of either official if he should, after gaining his position and securing its salary, become a stickler for ministerial liberty and insist upon delivering himself of his own real opinions which he dared not have avowed at his instalment, and which, ex officio, he ought to denounce? A church, having a written creed, virtually asks the candidate for her pulpit, "Do you hold fast our form of sound words, and, will you endeavour to maintain it?" On the response to that enquiry, other things being settled, the appointment depends. The candidate's "yea," is accepted in confidence as being sincere, and he is inducted; but if it be a lie, or if at any time it cease to be altogether true, it is only by a sophistry unworthy of an ingenuous mind, that a man can justify' himself in retaining his place; he is bound in honour to relinquish it forthwith.(Sword and Trowel February 1870 2:397)

Continued Here