By the Late Rev. WILLIAM PARKS, B.A., Incumbent of Openshaw, Manchester.
IT requires no ingenious or elaborate proof to convince anyone that Calvinism is everywhere spoken against. Our everyday observation assures us of the fact. The pulpit, the press, and the platform unite in denouncing Calvinism. All denominations of professing Christians (though in other respects as wide as the poles asunder) unite in this—namely, denunciation of Calvinism. It seems not to be fit to name to ears polite. The middle and upper classes will have none of it. The lower classes curse it, or ridicule it as an absurdity! This is a fact—an indisputable fact! No matter what piece of letter-press you take up—whether it be a newspaper or a sermon, a tract or a story-book, an Established Church publication or a Free Dissenting production—Calvinism is sure to be sneered at. No matter whom you meet, whether a religious or irreligious person, a moral or immoral man, a clergyman or a clerk, an artisan or an ambassador, a scholar or a schoolmaster, a marquis or a manufacturer, a peer or a peasant, a statesman or a shopkeeper, a bishop or a bookseller, Calvinism is under a ban. No matter where you go, whether to the next town or to the Antipodes, or how you travel, whether by rail or steamboat, by coach or waggon—on foot or on horsebank—you are certain to hear Calvinism called hard names.
Yes, I defy contradiction. Whether men are high church or low church or broad church or no church, whether English, Irish or Scotch, whether they are Protestants or Papists—Unitarians or Swedenborgians—Methodists or Mormons—Ranters or Quakers—Evangelicals or Tractarians—Bishops or Deacons—Rectors or Vicars—Incumbents or Curates, all, with one voice and one mouth, condemn Calvinism. Now, this is a notorious fact! Whether it can be accounted for or not, it is a great fact.
There is a most remarkable conspiracy against this form of doctrine; and it strikes me very forcibly that I might aptly quote part of the 83rd Psalm, as graphically allusive to our united opponents. There we read of all sorts of sects and parties, though disunited on many points, making common cause against the Church of God. How wonderful if it should turn out that the Psalmist had an eye upon the persecution of God’s truth by loud-sounding professors of religion, in company with infidels of the present day! To me it is a wonderful thought impressing fact. I am often asking myself, why are not other religious systems as generally disliked as this? How comes it that what is plainly error and imposture is not universally execrated? But that it is not so is a suggestive fact. If I had no other proof of the probable truth of Calvinism, I should be inclined to think favourably of it from the unanimous derision and hatred it provokes. I should reason thus:—The Scriptures tell us that the followers of Christ shall be hated of all men. They who hold Calvinistic views are hated of all. Therefore they must be Christ’s followers. This reasoning I conceive to be sound, especially when we include in the minor premiss that Calvinists are moral practicists. But what is the reason that Calvinism is everywhere spoken against? Is it because of its utter folly or want of Scriptural proof? No. It can be more readily proved by Scripture than the doctrine of the Trinity. It is far less repugnant to reason than that wonderful blessed mystery. Many great and gifted men have believed and defended it—Augustine, Zanchius, Cocceius, the learned Witsius, the deep-thinking Archbishop Usher, the intrepid Knox, Toplady, Scott, Gill, Romaine, Hawker, Owen, Newton, Hervey, and a whole host of stars of minor magnitude. Many bishops of our own Church—many, very many ministers of dissenting congregations—the giants amongst the Puritans have held the doctrines of Calvinism.
Surely it cannot be because of its absurdity or want of Scriptural warrant that it is everywhere spoken against? No. Is it because of its dangerous tendency? Because it is likely to tempt men to lead reckless lives? No. It is no more dangerous than its very opposite—than the doctrine of making one’s peace with God. I will take upon me to assert, that a belief in the power of free will to turn at any time to repentance and faith, has deceived and deluded thousands upon thousands, for every single one whom Calvinism has induced to lead a reckless life.
Is it because of its awful nature? Because it shocks men to think that each individual is elected or reprobated without appeal? It is no more awful than the reflection that every individual is to pass eternity in hell, if he does not come up to a certain standard, that standard being erected by an all-holy God, and poor, wretched, fallen man, left to himself, whether he will or will not take advantage of the Holy Spirit. What can a fallen being like man do? Nothing, but sin! So if left to himself—if left to his own freewill to choose between good and evil—assuredly he will take to that which suits his views, his tastes, and conceptions; and will associate himself with the evil, and subsequently be lost for ever!
What can be the reason why Calvinism is everywhere spoken against? I can answer the question in five words. Because of its humbling tendency. It casts man down; and man will not be cast down. It makes man nothing; and man will be something. It rules and governs man according to the dictates of sovereign power; and man will not submit to such treatment.
Here is the secret. The enmity of the natural heart is at the bottom of all the countless reasons and objections against Calvinism. It is this awful rebellion against God, this blasphemous pride that incites us to be “as gods,” which we all inherit from our first parents, that is hidden beneath the most plausible, and apparently charitable, reasons for speaking against the truth as it is in Jesus. Hence it is that it is counted dangerous by one, inexpedient by another, awful by a third, unjust by a fourth, tyrannical by a fifth, cold, bloody and cruel by a sixth, and so on.
Man will not submit to the God of the Scriptures; he wants a God, a Bible, and a Christ of his own invention. Man will give everybody a chance, though there is no such thing as chance. Man will have all to be saved, though God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. Man will convert the whole ungodly world, though such an idea never entered the Deity’s mind. In short, man will not harbour Calvinism, because he has shrewdness enough to see that if it be the truth, the great mass of religionists are going to perdition, and sooner than acknowledge this awful and humbling fact, he will mangle and mutilate, yea, burn and ignore the Scriptures. Believe me, no man would object to Calvinism, if he knew he himself was an elect vessel of mercy.
But dearly beloved in the Lord—fellow-pilgrims—fellow-sufferers—you who believe that the Lord has an elect people, and who know and feel that if God has thought proper to reveal Himself to you, it is all of grace, mercy, pity, unmerited love—you who are unconscious of deserving anything but wrath—you whose belief is everywhere spoken against, listen and reflect. It is hard for flesh and blood to bear up against the taunts and jeers of the profane and ungodly—and hardest of all, to be set aside by high-sounding professors as eccentric, rash, or enthusiastic. You are men and women of like passions with your adversaries, and you often feel your proud nature writhing beneath unmerited insult—perhaps feeling inclined to retort upon your maligners as Job, and say, “They have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock;” but let me remind you, that all these persecutions were foretold.
Your Lord and Master told you plainly when He took you into His service, that you were to expect hatred, persecution, and misrepresentation. “These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me; but I have told you them, that when the time shall come, ye may remember” (John xvi, 3-4). Such were His words and warnings. If they call the Master “Beelzebub,” the servants cannot expect more honourable titles. If the Prince of glory were scoffed and jeered at—if they said He had a devil and was mad—is it very strange that you and your creed are everywhere spoken against? Surely not. Oh, remember this, and take courage, and thank God for such privileged association, such speaking evidences of your being of the “little flock,” for such manifest marks of the true Church. Look around you, and behold the whole world lying in wickedness, ministers and people setting up a Dragon, an image of their own invention, and calling upon their fellow-sinners to fall down and worship. See there it stands, with eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot bear—an accursed impostor—Free-Will-To-Do-Good! “Bow down to worship it all nations and languages,” cry the miserable heralds! “Come, and lay hold,” exhort the benighted servants of Satan, the wretched fanatics who dance and rave before their idol, and cut themselves with the lancets of natural excitement till tears are actually shed and groans sent forth—the plunging efforts of artificial life. Would you be as these? Surely not. Sovereign august! Who calls whom He will, and gives power when He calls to submit, to worship and adore. Your cry is: “We will never bow the knee to the Baal of man’s opinion; we will not know a wicked person; we will not worship any but the God of the Scriptures; and, however skilfully our opponents may forge God’s image and superscription, we can at all times test the production to which it is attached by asking, “Is it everywhere spoken against?” If not, then we come to the conclusion, it must be a lie, a delusion, and a snare.