35. Charles H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner (Pasadena, Tex.: Pilgrim, 1978), 32 – 33.
Appendix 2
concerning all things, to be right, none of his commandments grievous; but from a principle of love to him, keep and observe them.34
Surely the best-known of all preachers of the 1800s was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. In a book on personal evangelism, he wrote:
Another proof of the conquest of a soul for Christ will be found in a real change of life. If the man does not live diff erently from what he did before, both at home and abroad, his repentance needs to be repented of, and his conversion is a fi ction. Not only action and language, but spirit and temper must be changed. . . . Abiding under the power of any known sin is a mark of our being the servants of sin, for "his servants ye are to whom ye obey." Idle are the boasts of a man who harbors within himself the love of any transgression. He may feel what he likes, and believe what he likes, he is still in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity while a single sin rules his heart and life. True regeneration implants a hatred of all evil; and where one sin is delighted in, the evidence is fatal to a sound hope. . . .
There must be a harmony between the life and the profession. A Chris tian professes to renounce sin; and if he does not do so, his very name is an imposture.35
In his autobiography, Spurgeon recalled his battle against antinomianism:
In my fi rst pastorate, I had oft en to battle with Antinomians — that is, people who held that, because they believed themselves to be elect, they might live as they liked. I hope that heresy has to a great extent died out, but it was sadly prevalent in my early ministerial days. I knew one man, who stood on the table of a public-house, and held a glass of gin in his hand, declaring all the while that he was one of the chosen people of God. Th ey kicked him out of the public-house, and when I heard of it, I felt that it served him right. Even those ungodly men said that they did not want any such "elect" people there. Th ere is no one who can live in sin — drinking, swearing, lying, and so on — who can truly declare that he is one of the Lord's chosen people . . . . From my very soul, I detest everything that in the least savours of the Antinomianism which leads people to prate about being secure in Christ while they are living in sin. We cannot be saved by or for our good works, neither can we be saved without good works. Christ never will save any of His people in their sins; He saves His people from their sins. If a man is not desiring to live a holy life in the sight of God,
34. Ibid., 555. 35. Charles H. Spurgeon, Th e Soul Winner (Pasadena, Tex.: Pilgrim, 1978), 32 – 33.