What Spurgeon Believed
About Election
and Preaching the Gospel to Every Creature
I do not think I differ from any of my Hyper-Calvinistic
brethren in what I do believe; but I differ from them in what I
do not believe. I do not hold any less than they do, but I hold a
little more, and think, a little more of the truth revealed in
the Scriptures.
Not only are there a few cardinal doctrines, by which we can
steer our ship North, South, East, or West but as we study the
Word, we shall begin to learn something about the North-west and
North-east, and all else that lies between the four cardinal
points.
The system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one
straight line, but two, and no man will ever get a right view of
the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.
For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible, "The Spirit
and the bride say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And
whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
Yet I am taught in another part of the same Word, that "it
is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." I see, in one
place, God in providence presiding over all; and yet I see, and
cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has
left his actions in a great measure, to his own free will.
Now, if I were to decree that man was so free to act that there
was no control of God over his actions, I should be driven very
near to atheism; and if, on the other hand, I should declare that
God so overrules all things that man is not free enough to be
responsible, I should be driven at once into Antinomianism or
fatalism.
That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two
facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be
inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. The fault is in
our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each
other.
If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything
is foreordained, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads
me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each
other.
I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any
earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They
are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human mind
which pursues them farthest will never discover that they
converge; but they do converge, and will meet somewhere in
eternity, close to th spring.
[From chapter 16 of Spurgeon's Autobiography.]