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Prefatory note: Here Spurgeon cites an article he had written some four years previously, to defend himself against charges that his opposition to the Church of England represented a change of direction for his ministry. Spurgeon's contempt for the State Church is clearly evident.
 EVERAL of the writers who have endeavoured to reply to our
strictures upon the enormities of the Church of England, have, in
tones of mimic sorrow worthy of the first tragedians, lamented our
sad fall from our former liberal and catholic spirit. If their
griefs were not something worse than hypocritical, we would let
them open the safety-valves of their hearts, and weep over us till
their paroxysm of brotherly lamentation had subsided: but they
know right well, and the world knows too, that love for themselves
and chagrin at the exposure of their falsehoods have far more to
do with their pretended regrets than any love for us. We know the
difference between real tears of sorrow and the drops which
glisten in the eyes of crocodiles. Nothing would give the most of
our opponents greater joy than to hear that we had been left of
God to disgrace our profession: whenever they can find some little
blunder they magnify it and report it far and wide; and falsehoods
they manufacture against us by the gross; and yet all the while
they wet their cheeks with artificial tears and drivel out regrets
as if we were the dearest darling of their love. For their sakes,
that they may have a good excuse for changing their tune, and
attacking us from another quarter, we reproduce certain of our
utterances in the "Baptist Magazine" for the year 1861, which may
possibly convince them that their tears will be better spent upon
themselves than upon us; for we are not so changeable and fickle
as they dream.
We commend our words of four years
ago to certain honourable men among our opponents who have through
ignorance brought the same accusation against us, and we hope that
they will not again call us a "masked battery." If we had
changed, we do not see that it would be to our disgrace to have
grown wiser or bolder. A man may do at one period of his life what
he did not feel called upon to do at another, and yet he may not
be guilty of vacillation. There is a time for gathering stones and
a time for casting them abroad, a time for war and a time for
peace. We preach the gospel as much and as earnestly as ever, and
if we give more frequent warnings against the equivocations of
religious teachers, it is only because we feel more deeply than
ever the need of truth in the life, as well as on
the lip, of the minister.
It has been affirmed, without the
slightest foundation, that Churchmen assisted very materially in
building the Tabernacle, and that we have in a manner broken faith
with them. Church people may have given as others did to our
public collections, but these must have been few and far between;
and, although one or two conforming friends subscribed distinct
sums, the amount was inconsiderable, and was given unconditionally
and without pressure. Certain laymen who attend episcopalian
places of worship have been, and are still, our warm friends, and
rejoice greatly that we have stirred the waters of Baptismal
Regeneration; but we never made, nor were expected to make, any
compact with them as to what we should preach or not preach. No
sane person ever subscribed a farthing to our cause under the idea
that we were to be bought or bribed. We never asked help on such
a condition, and should have scorned to take it. This is only one
among many calumnies, and we rejoice that we can so easily refute
it. Had any Christians, belonging to any community, offered us
assistance in our work, we should gladly have received it, and
should never have dreamed that they meant thereby to fetter our
future course, or to taunt us with accepting their proffered
kindness. To all who helped us we are deeply grateful, whether
Dissenters, or Church people; but our gratitude to men shall not
make us unfaithful to God. We have laboured for chapels, schools,
societies, and charities belonging to all denominations, and still
delight to do so, as we have it in our power; it was therefore no
humiliation to us to accept any man's help; but, since the little
received from Anglicans is making so loud a cry, it is a matter of
congratulation to us that there is quite as little wool as in the
case recorded in the fable. May the Lord whom we serve convince
all true believers connected with the State Church of their
inconsistency in remaining in it. May the godly clergy receive the
gift of an awakened conscience, and then they will not be wrathful
with those who rebuke them for their great sins, in remaining in
the fellowship of a semi-popish Church, but will join with us in
seeking to obey the commands of Jesus, as he has himself delivered
them.
The passages quoted are from our
article on the "Nonconformists' Burial Bill," June, 1861. They
show clearly that we have long felt what we have of late
expressed, and that our heaviness of soul, when at last we were
constrained to speak out, was no result of hasty passion or
caprice. Our love to the good men in the Church is not less now
than it was then, but we cannot longer spare them, for their
equivocation, not to say falsehood, is ruining souls, and turning
this nation to Popery and infidelity.
The political leaders of the Established Church
have evidently lost their reason. Proven by the public census
to be but a minority of the nation, the Episcopalian sect can
only retain its favoured position by the affection or the
forbearance of the majority. Affection has become almost
impossible. The notorious heresies within her bosom are going
very far towards the ejection of the Episcopalian body from
the list of Churches of Christ; and were it not for the noble
few who maintain inviolate the holy faith of the Reformers,
this fearful consummation would long ago have been reached.
Towards the Evangelicals of the Establishment we cherish the
most loving feelings; we blush for their inconsistency in
remaining in communion with Papists and Infidels (these are
plain names for Puseyites and Essayists), but we heartily
rejoice in their vigorous protests and earnest testimonies
against the errors of their denomination. In our very hearts
we feel the sincerest affection for our brethren in Christ,
who are the salt of Episcopacy and the lights of their dark
Church. It is for their sake that many of us have handled too
gently a sinful and corrupt corporation. We have feared to
offend against the congregation of God's people, and
therefore we have kept back our hand from the axe, which we
fear it was our duty to have laid to the root of the tree.
The earnest ministry and eminent piety of many of our
Episcopalian brethren have been a wall of fire around their
camp; and many a Dissenting Christian has concealed his
detestation of abuses lest he should provoke his brother to
anger, or grieve one of the Lord's anointed. Let not the
wantonly perverse and cruel Church-fanatic long expect to
find water in this well; the day is near when our affection
for the good shall prove itself, not by a womanly sparing
of the evil, but by a manly declaration of war against error,
its adherents, and all who give it fellowship.
As to forbearance,
this, from the force of Christian charity, will endure many
and serious trials; while the natural conservatism of the
English people will aid their patience, until long-suffering
expires under repeated injuries. This is not the age in which
godly men fight for the wording of a sentence, or dispute
concerning mere forms of ecclesiastical government. We are
disposed to be lenient to all; and the prestige of the
dominant church ensures especial immunity for its mistakes.
Among those who mourn over the solemn iniquities of the
Establishment, there are a large number who would not see her
despoiled. "She is our sister," say they, "let us not see her
shame; we, too, have our own failings, let us not be too
severe." The day of judgment shall declare how often the
Dissenters of England have silently endured supercilious
behaviour in a clergyman when we would have resented it in
another; how frequently we have winced at priestly assumption
and sacerdotal impudence, because we would not seem to be
uncharitable; and how constantly we have borne, in humble
patience, the oppression of parish popes and priest-loving
squires, rather than disturb the quiet of Christian
spirits.
What other Protestant
Church has been so lordly among the poor, so exclusive in her
educational charities, so systematic in her denial of all
ministry beside her own, so stubborn in the fast closing of
her pulpits to all other believers? It is a miracle, indeed,
that the grace of God has enabled her sister Churches to
acknowledge her as one of the family, despite her domineering
character. This high and haughty carriage is not to be
excused, and it is not blindness to the sin, but love to the
cause of Christ, which has constrained other Protestants to
tolerate the impertinent wickedness.
To Churchmen who are not
so obtusely exclusive as to have become irrationally bigoted,
we would say in honest remonstrance, What right has
your sect to be patronised by the State in preference to all
others? Do you not perceive that the power which has made you
the State-Church can unmake you, and withdraw its golden
sanctions? Your Church was originally fashioned by despotic
will, and elected to supremacy by an arbitrary power; but
there are no despots now to whom you can look, no
irresponsible conclaves on whom you can rely. The people of
England are free to cast you off to-morrow if they see fit.
Shake off the delusion that you are never to be moved.
Monarchical institutions are endeared to Englishmen by the
wise concessions which the throne has so cheerfully made; do
you not perceive that your strength also must be
sought, not in a haughty rejection of all our demands, but
in generous conciliations which shall ensure our esteem? When
the throne presumed upon a fancied right divine, it reeled
beneath the weight of its own folly, but since it has
conceded the claims of justice, it has become firm as the
ancient mountains, and like some mighty vessel it rides the
waves in peace, having grappled for its anchorage the
heart-love of every Briton. Will you follow another course,
because you imagine you are strong enough to play the despot?
In the name of reason and religion, be not so foolish. For
your own sakes be wise in time, and bethink you of the maxim
of him whom you profess to serve, and do unto others as ye
would that they should do to you. Treat your brethren as you
would wish them to deal with you, if they were supreme in the
State, and you were unfavoured and unendowed. Remember that
your position requires the free Churches to exercise
great forbearance towards you; do not increase the tax upon
their patience by supercilious behaviour. They consider that
your alliance with the State is a spiritual fornication,
wholly unworthy of the honourable virgins who wait in the
Lord's palace. They lament your unchastity to the only Head
of the Church, but they would not cast you out of the family;
they weep over your sin, and hope that you may yet repent and
forsake it. It ill becomes you to boast over your poorer
sisters because you are richly adorned with the jewels and
rings which your earthly alliance has procured you,
ornaments, let us remind you, which your sisters would scorn
to wear, if offered them to-morrow, for they regard them as
loathsome badges of degradation, and shameful tokens of
apostacy from the simplicity of Christ. Do not let that
unhallowed union, which is both your weakness and your shame,
excite you to a proud and boastful spirit. Walk humbly with
your God, and kindly towards your neighbour. Or, mark the
word (for it is a true and kind heart which writes it, not
in bitterness and wrath, but in full and fervent charity),
if you will, as a Church, lord it over us, and make our yoke
heavy, your end is near to come, and your judgment will not
tarry. Justice may in her magnanimity endure much insult, but
repeated wrongs shall awake the lion spirit, and woe unto the
oppressor in that, day. We have been silent, and are willing
to be silent still, but do not provoke the whole body of
Dissenters to rise upon you; do not compel the spiritual
Nonconformist to become political; do not extort our cries;
do not wring lamentation from our patient hearts, or you
shall know that we can cry aloud, and spare not. You shall
rue the day in which oppression unloosed our tongues. We will
expose your abuses to the very children in the street; we
will teach the peasant at the plough to loathe the
inconsistencies of your prayer-book, and the pauper on the
road shall know the history of your ferocious persecutions
in days of yore. We will collect statistics of your
ministers, and let our citizens know how many or how few are
Evangelicals; we will demand scriptural proof for
Confirmation and for Priestly Absolution; and we will never
again permit the nation to subside into the apathy so
favourable to proud pretensions. We court not the struggle,
but we are ready for it if you are ambitious for the combat.
We know your unhealed and unmollified wounds, and our blows
will tell upon your putrefying sores. Our armoury is filled
with arrows feathered with your follies and barbed with your
backslidings. Provoke not the fray. Let other counsels sway
you; be content sorrowfully to reform within your own
borders, and cheerfully to make concessions wherever a
Christian spirit would suggest them; so shall a true
evangelical alliance cover the land, and, unmolested, your
Church may increase in influence, and advance in purity, to
the heart's joy of those who are now compelled by stern duty
solemnly to upbraid you.
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