I behold multitudes who
confess the same as I do
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. I also give you an
extract from the old Baptist Confession. We are Baptists in
this congregation - the greater part of us at any rate, and we
like to see what our own forefathers wrote. Some two hundred
years ago the Baptists assembled together, and published
their articles of faith, to put an end to certain reports
against their orthodoxy which had gone forth to the world. I
turn to this old book, which I have just published the
Baptist Confession of Faith, and I find the following as the 3rd Article: “By
the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some
men and angels are predestinated, or foreordained to eternal
life through Jesus Christ to the praise of his glorious
grace; others being left to act in their sin to their just
condemnation, to the praise of his glorious justice. These
angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained, are
particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so
certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or
diminished. Those of mankind that are predestinated to life,
God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according
to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel
and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ unto
everlasting glory out of his mere free grace and love,
without any other thing in the creature as condition or
cause moving him “hereunto.”
As for these human authorities, I care not one rush for all
three of them. I care not what they say, pro or con, as to
this doctrine. I have only used them
as a kind of confirmation to your faith, to show you that
whilst I may be railed upon as a heretic and as a
hyper-Calvinist, after all I am backed up by antiquity. All
the past stands by me. I do not care for the present.
Give me the past and I will hope for the future. Let the
present rise up in my teeth, I will not care.
What though a host of the churches of
London may have forsaken the great cardinal doctrines of
God, it matters not. If a handful of us stand alone in an
unflinching maintenance of the sovereignty of our God, if
we are beset by enemies, ay, and even by our own brethren,
who ought to be our friends and helpers, it matters not, if
we can but count upon the past; the noble army of martyrs,
the glorious host of confessors are our friends; the
witnesses of truth stand by us. With these for us, we
will not say that we stand alone, but we may exclaim, “Lo,
God hath reserved unto himself seven thousand that have not
bowed the knee unto Baal.” But the best of all is, God is
with us.
- C. H. Spurgeon, Election
