Calvinism

“I have my own private opinion,” he says, “that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless you preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. I have my own ideas and those I always state boldly. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism. Calvinism is the Gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the Gospel if we do not preach justification by faith without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor, I think, can we preach the Gospel, unless we base it upon the peculiar redemption which Christ made for His elect and chosen people; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation, after having believed. Such a gospel I abhor. The Gospel of the Bible is not such a gospel as that. We preach Christ and Him crucified in a different fashion, and to all gainsayers we reply, ‘We have not so learned Christ?’”—Spurgeon in a sermon entitled Christ Crucified.