SPURGEON & GUINNESS ON ROME

Charles H. Spurgeon, known as “the prince of preachers” was a 19th century English minister who is well known today for his inspirational sermons.  Few, however, are aware of the many things he wrote about the Roman Church.  His views were shared by one of his contemporaries, H. Grattan Guinness.  Both men held nearly identical views on Romanism, as they recognized the rising influence of Papal power.  Its impact on the Church of England was devastating during the Oxford Movement (something that continues to this day) and compelled Spurgeon to write that:

“The gospel of Jesus is assailed by its ancient enemies …”

Given the present conditions of the Church in America, the same could be said in our time.  Here are a few more of the things these men had to say:

“The master-piece of Satan is Popery.  Just as the gospel of the grace of God is the noblest display of the divine attributes, so is the Popish system the most subtle of all the works of Satan …” (Spurgeon, The Sword & the Trowel, August 1866)

“In these times, when liberality is the only popular virtue, and zeal for truth the cardinal sin, it is worth much to let the public know assuredly that Popery is not the angel of light it professes to be.  ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view;’ but, to the right-minded, to see Romanism is to abhor it.  It is a system which is as dangerous to human society, as it is hostile to true religion … the superstition of Rome is the worst of all evils which have befallen our race; may the Lord arise, and sweep it down to the hell from whence it arose.” (Spurgeon, The Sword & the Trowel, January 1873)

“… Popery, like Jezebel, must paint her face and tire her head, for she is haggard and uncomely, therefore she is well pictured in the Revelation as a woman arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, and precious stones and pearls….If the reader would see Rome’s pomp and glory as we have seen it, he will not need to travel, for he will find her photograph in the chapter which prophesied her coming and predicts her doom.  It is the eighteenth in the Revelation of John.  The evil spirit of Popery ascended not from the depths without the foresight of prophecy …” (Spurgeon, The Sword & the Trowel, July 1865)

“The Reformers embodied their interpretations of prophecy in their confessions of faith, and Calvin in his ‘Institutes.’  All the reformers were unanimous in the matter; even the mild and cautious Melanchton was as assured of the antipapal meaning of these prophecies as was Luther himself.  And their interpretation of these prophecies determined their reforming action.  It led them to protest against Rome with extraordinary strength and undaunted courage.   It nerved them to resist the claims of that apostate Church to the uttermost.  It made them martyrs; it sustained them at the stake.” (Guinness, “Romanism & the Reformation,” pp. 250-251)

***CJP Note: Both Spurgeon and Guinness confronted the Evangelicals of their day, who were slowly being given back over to Romanist doctrines and practices.  This is something we find happening more and more in American churches.  Consider what they said just over a hundred years ago:

“Evangelical Churchmen, lovers of the Lord Jesus, how long will you remain in alliance with the defilements of High Churchism?  You are mainly responsible for all the Popery of your Church, for you are its salt and its stay.  Your brethren in Christ cannot but wonder how it is that you can remain where you are.  You know better.  You are children of light, and yet you aid and abet a system by which darkness is scattered all over the land.  Beware, lest you be found in union with Antichrist, when the Lord cometh in his glory.  Come out for Christ’s sake.  Be ye separate, touch not the unclean thing!” (Spurgeon, The Sword & the Trowel, August 1865)

“You, a Protestant … after all that has been written on the subject, and all the blaze of light which history and experience have poured … look to it that you be not found fighting against the truth, warring against the word of God, resisting the testimony of the prophetic Spirit, hindering the work of the Reformation, promoting the progress of the apostasy, opposing Christ, and helping antichrist. 
“Even the Romanists themselves shame you in their clear-sighted comprehension of the issues of this question. Cardinal Manning says: ‘The Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the Kingdom of the Son of God.’ Cardinal Newman says: ‘A sacerdotal order is historically the essence of the Church of Rome; if not divinely appointed, it is doctrinally the essence of antichrist.’ In both these statements the issue is clear, and it is the same. Rome herself admits, openly admits, that if she is not the very kingdom of Christ, she is that of antichrist. Rome declares she is one or the other. She herself propounds and urges this solemn alternative. You shrink from it, do you? I accept it. Conscience constrains me. History compels me. The past, the awful past rises before me. I see THE GREAT APOSTASY, I see the desolation of Christendom, I see the smoking ruins, I see the reign of monsters; I see those vicegods, that Gregory VII, that Innocent III, that Boniface VIII, that Alexander VI, that Gregory XIII, that Pius IX; I see their long succession, I see their abominable lives; I see them worshipped by blinded generations, bestowing hollow benedictions, bartering lying indulgences, creating a paganized Christianity; I see their liveried slaves, their shaven priests, their celibate confessors; I see the infamous confessional, the ruined women, the murdered innocents; I hear the lying absolutions, the dying groans; I hear the cries of the victims; I hear the anathemas, the curses, the thunders of the interdicts; I see the racks, the dungeons, the stakes; I see that inhuman Inquisition, those fires of Smithfield, those butcheries of St. Bartholomew, that Spanish Armada, those unspeakable dragonnades, that endless train of wars, that dreadful multitude of massacres. I see it all, and in the name of the ruin it has wrought in the Church and in the world, in the name of the truth it has denied, the temple it has defiled, the God it has blasphemed, the souls it has destroyed; in the name of the millions it has deluded, the millions it has slaughtered, the millions it has damned; with holy confessors, with noble reformers, with innumerable martyrs, with the saints of ages, I denounce it as the masterpiece of Satan as the body and soul and essence of antichrist.”  (Guinness, “Romanism & the Reformation,” pp. 258-260)


Comments

[catholicresistence]

Ancient enemes are all the condemned heresies that came alive again in the "reformation", including Gnoctism, Doceism,etc. For learning, try to go to Spirit of Chartres Committe site and get the CD's on the "plot" series with Gerry Matatics, in particular the first few centuries and the "reformation", we see arise of this and the influence of the occult big time in "reformation" founding, especially judizing, the real "ancient enemies" of the Gospel.....