Spurgeon Thursday - Rubbish

"The church of Rome and her teachings are
a vast mountain of rubbish covering the truth."

Continuing from Monday's posting of Mike Gendron's expose of false teaching in the Roman Catholic Church, let's step back in time about 140 years and see what the Prince of Preachers has to say about the Roman Catholic Church. You'll see that C.H.Spurgeon is a bit more direct in his assessment. Although a bit more brash, Spurgeon does base his criticisms in love, love for God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, those poor folk who have based their salvation on false teachings. But love for those false teachings and false teachers is tough love:

GENERAL

I question if hell can find a more fitting instrument within its infernal lake than the Church of Rome is for the cause of mischief. - MTP Vol 11 pg. 510. 

If your heart be not right with God, you shall perish with the sacramental bread in your mouth, and go from the baptismal waters to the fires of hell. Beware of the peace which is drawn from the stagnant pool of superstition. It will carry death into your soul. - MTP Vol 36 pg. 426.

I have seen, to my horror, a picture of God the Father represented as an old man, whereas the Lord has declared that we should make no image of him or represent him in any way. The attempt is blasphemous. (Exodus 20:4) - MTP Vol 55 pg. 526.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter. - MTP Vol 30 pg. 459

I do not think I should care to go on worshipping a Madonna even if she did wink. One cannot make much out of a wink. We want something more than that from the object of our adoration. - MTP Vol 40 pg. 505 .

Galatians 2:20 - The Roman Catholic hangs the cross on his bosom; the true Christian carries the cross in his heart. And a cross inside the heart is one of the sweetest cures for a cross on the back. If you have a cross in your heart - Christ crucified in you - all the cross of this world's troubles will seem to you light enough, and you will easily be able to sustain it. - NPSP Vol 4 pg. 428-429 . 

"Ignorance is the mother of devotion," according to the Church of Rome. "Ignorance is the mother of error," according to the Word of God. What we want our fellowmen to possess is spiritual knowledge. Especially do we desire that they may have knowledge with regard to God's righteousness, for men do not know what that righteousness is which God requires. - MTP Vol 37 pg. 387 

POPE

Of all the dreams that ever deluded men, and probably of all blasphemies that ever were uttered, there has never been one which is more absurd, and which is more fruitful in all manner of mischief, than the idea that the Bishop of Rome can be the head of the church of Jesus Christ. No, these popes die, and how could the church live if its head were dead? The true Head ever lives, and the church ever lives in him. - MTP Vol 14 pg. 621.

Christ did not redeem his church with his blood that the pope might come in and steal away the glory. He never came from heaven to earth, and poured out his very heart that he might purchase his people, that a poor sinner, a mere man, should be set upon high to be admired by all the nations, and to call himself God's representative on earth. Christ has always been the Head of the church. - MTP Vol 60 pg. 592

"But some truths ought to be kept back from the people," you will say, "lest they should make an ill use thereof." That is Popish doctrine. It was upon that very theory that the priests kept back the Bible from the people. They did not give it to them lest they should misuse it. Besides all this, remember that men do read the Scriptures and think about these doctrines and often make mistakes about them. Who then, shall set them right if we who preach the Word hold our tongues about the matter? - MTP Vol 51 pg. 49

Popery is as much the masterpiece of Satan as the gospel is the masterpiece of God. 

MASS

The mass is a mass of abominations, a mass of hell's own concocting, a crying insult against the Lord of glory. It is not to be spoken of in any terms but those of horror and destestation. Whenever I think of another sacrifice for sin being offered, by whomever it my be presented, I can only regard it as an infamous insult to the perfection of the Savior's work. - MTP Vol 12 pg. 561 . 

We do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called CHRISTMAS. First, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it. And second, because we find no scriptural warrant for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior. Consequently, its observance is a superstition. - MTP Vol 17 pg. 697 

BAPTISM

But, brethren, the text says, "baptizing them." They are to be taught, and afterwards they are to be baptized. I know not why it is that we yield to the superstitions of our Christian brethren, so much as to use the word baptize at all. It is not an English, but a Greek word. It has but one meaning, and cannot bear another. Throughout all the classics, without exception, it is not possible to translate it correctly, except with the idea of immersion; and believing this, and knowing this, if the translation is not complete, we will complete it this morning... "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." - MTP Vol 7 pg. 284

JUSTIFICATION and ATONEMENT

Any church which puts in the place of justification by faith in Christ another method of salvation, is a harlot church. - MTP Vol 35 pg. 398 . 

The doctrine of Justification by Faith through the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ is very much to my ministry what bread and salt are to the table. As often as the table is set, there are those necessary things. This is the very salt of the gospel. It is impossible to bring it forward too often. It is the soul-saving doctrine. It is the foundation-doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ. - MTP Vol 61 pg. 565.

May this house be utterly consumed with fire before the day should come when here there should be given an uncertain sound about the ATONEMENT. This is not merely a doctrine of the church. It is the doctrine of the church. Leave this out, and you have no truth, no Saviour, no church. As Luther said of the doctrine of justification by faith, that it was the article of a standing or falling church, so we affirm of the atonement, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ for the sins of men. - MTP Vol 61 pg. 455.

It is not possible that the man who denies the deity of Christ can be a Christian. He deliberately refuses the only way of escape from the escape from the wrath to come. I can understand a man getting to heaven as a Roman Catholic, notwithstanding all his errors, because he believes in the divinity of Christ and relies on the expiatory sacrifice of his death. But I cannot understand, nor do I believe, that any man will ever enter those pearly gates who, in doubting or discrediting the deity of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, renounces the sheet anchor of our most holy faith and dares to face his maker without a counselor, without an advocate, without a plea for mercy! It is time we said so, and spoke out plainly. This is no theme for trifling. - MTP Vol 19 pg. 104

PURGATORY

If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory. - MTP Vol 18 pg. 57.

When the thief died on the cross, he had but just believed, and had never done a single good work. But where did he go? He ought to have gone to purgatory by rights if ever anybody did. But instead of that the Saviour said to him, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). Why? Because the ground of the man's admission into Paradise was perfect. - MTP Vol 12 pg. 562.

How can God's people go to purgatory? For if they go there at all, they go there for sins which God does not remember, and so he cannot give a reason for sending them there. Does God forgive and forget and yet punish? When you die you shall either go to heaven or to hell, and that immediately. Your state in either case will be fixed eternally without the possibility of change. This doctrine is the cornerstone of PROTESTANTISM. - MTP Vol 28 pg. 585.

What can there be about hell fire to change a man's heart? Surely the more the lost will suffer, the more they will hate God. When God sent plagues on the earth, men blasphemed his name (Revelation 16:8-9). Men do so now. Are they likely to turn at his rebuke then? Satan has been punished for these six thousand years - do you see any signs of repentance about him? Besides, if the gospel of Christ cannot save you, what can? If the wooings of Christ's wounds cannot make you love Christ, do you think the flames of hell will? - MTP Vol 12 pg. 177.

I heard of one, who said to the preacher, after he had been preaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment, "Sir, I believe that I shall go to hell for a season, and afterward get round to heaven." "Man," said the preacher, "even if what you say be true, when there is a straightforward road to heaven, what a fool you must be to want to go round by way of hell!" - MTP Vol 45 pg. 551

Roman Catholicism

A Roman emperor professed to be converted, using a deep policy to settle himself upon the throne; then Christianity became the State-patronized religion; it seemed that the world was Christianized, whereas, indeed, the church was heathenized. Hence sprang the monster of State-church, a conjunction ill-assorted, and fraught with untold ills. This incongruous thing is half human, half divine: as a theory it fascinates, as a fact it betrays; it promises to advance the truth, and is itself a negation of it. 

Under its influences a system of religion was fashioned, which beyond all false religions, and beyond even Atheism itself, is the greatest hindrance to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Under its influence dark ages lowered over the world; men were not permitted to think; a Bible could scarcely be found, and a preacher of the gospel, if found, was put to death. That was the result of human power coming in with the sword in one hand and the gospel in the other, and developing its pride of ecclesiastical power into a triple crown, and Inquisition, and an infallible Pope. This parasite, this canker, this incubus of the church will be removed by the grace of God, and by his providence in due season. The kings of the earth who have loved this unchaste system will grow weary of it and destroy it. Read Revelation 17:16, and see how terrible her end will be. The death of the system will come from those who gave it life: the powers of earth created thy system, and they will in due time destroy it. - from Christ's Universal Kingdom, and How It Cometh MTP Vol 26, Year 1880, pgs. 261-262

Certain people are always talking about the "EARLY CHURCH," [a British term for pre-Anglican Catholicism] and very queer notions they seem to have of the aforesaid early church. Their early church was very different from anything we meet with in the Acts of the Apostles, for it was very particular in its architecture, millinery, and music. This "early church" could not worship at all unless it had a visible altar, with reredos and frontal, at which gentlemen in gorgeous attire of blue and scarlet and fine linen made postures many, and bowings not a few. 

The "early church," it seems, believed in baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, priestcraft, and sacramental efficacy. Well, that may be or may not be, but there was an earlier church which had no such notions, and it is for us to get right away from all such early churches to the earlier church or the earliest church, and there, I warrant you, you shall find no priestcraft, nor nonsense of sacramental efficacy; but simplicity, and truth, and the power of the Holy Ghost.

The early church so much admired by Anglicans was a degenerate vine, a field of wheat and tares, a mass leavened with antichristian error, in a word a baptised heathenism. After its own fashion, it set up again the many deities of the heathen, only calling them saints instead of gods, putting the Virgin into the place of Venus, and setting up Peter or Paul in the niches formerly occupied by Saturn or Mars. Our present "revived early church" is only Paganism with a border of crosses. We are resolved to return to the primitive church of which we read, "then they that gladly received the word were baptized, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine." - from Additions to the Church MTP Vol 20, Year 1874, pg. 207, Acts 2:47 

Essence of lies, and quintessence of blasphemy, as the religion of Rome IS... it nevertheless fascinates a certain order of Protestants, of whom we fear it may be truly said that 'they have received a strong delusion to believe a lie, that they may be damned.' Seeing that it is so, it becomes all who would preserve their fellow-immortals from destruction to be plain and earnest in their warnings. Not in a party-spirit, but for truth's sake, our Protestantism must protest perpetually. 

Dignitaries of the papal confederacy are just now very prominent in benevolent movements, and we may be sure that they have ends to serve other than those which strike the public eye. A priest lives only for his church; he may profess to have other objects, but this is a mere blind. Our ancient enemies have small belief in our common sense if they imagine that we shall ever be able to trust them, after having so often beheld the depths of Jesuitical cunning and duplicity. The sooner we let certain Archbishops and Cardinals know that we are aware of their designs, and will in nothing co-operate with them, the better for us and our country. 

Of course, we shall be howled at as bigots, but we can afford to smile at that cry, when it comes from the church which invented the Inquisition. 'No peace with Rome' is the motto of reason as well as of religion. - The Sword and the Trowel January 1873