Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Greatest Baptist Preacher of the 19th Century

 On Organizational Compromise

                                                                                                                                                                   Vol. VIII, No. 4, April 1995

Spurgeon saw separation from the [British] Baptist Union as a biblical necessity for himself. “Whether others do so or not, I have felt the power of the text, ‘Come out from among them, and be ye separate,’ and have quitted both Union and Association once for all.... This is forced upon me, not only by my convictions, but also by the experience of the utter uselessness of attempting to deal with the evil except by personally coming out from it." (1) Spurgeon could not understand why men who wanted to remain faithful to the Scriptures would continue to belong to an organization that was so obviously barreling dawn the down-grade (a departure from the inerrancy of Scripture):

Numbers of good brethren in different ways remain in fellowship (Baptist Union) with those who are undermining the gospel; and they talk of their conduct as though it were a loving course which the Lord will approve of in the day of his appearing. We cannot understand them. The bounden duty of a true believer towards men who profess to be Christians, and yet deny the Word of the Lord, and reject the fundamentals of the gospel, is to come out from among them. If it be said that efforts should be made to produce reform, we agree with the remark; but when you know that they will be useless, what is the use? Where the basis of association allows error and almost invites it, and there is an evident determination not to alter that basis, nothing remains to be done inside, which can be of any radical service. The operation of an evangelical party within can only repress. and, perhaps, conceal, the evil for a time; but meanwhile, sin is committed by the compromise itself, and no permanently good result can follow. To stay in a community which fellowships all beliefs in the hope of setting matters right, is as though Abraham had stayed at Ur, or at Haran, in the hope of converting the household out of which he was called

Complicity with error will take from the best of men the power to enter any successful protest against it.... Our present sorrowful protest is not a matter of this man or that, this error or that; but of principle. (2)

Spurgeon was censured by the Baptist Union by a vote of 2,000 to 7, followed by the assembly breaking out in an outburst of tumultuous cheering! From: The Sword and the Trowel (October 1888) as reprinted in The 'Down Grade"Controversy (Pasadena. TX, nd) (1) p,56 ; (2) p 66.