NONCONFORMITY – Charles Spurgeon

NONCONFORMITY

SIR JOHN BURGOYNE’S INTRODUCTION
SIR JOHN BURGOYNE, on taking the Chair, said—Ladies and gentlemen. It is extremely gratifying to be aware that every preceding meeting, whether spiritual or in the shape of bazaar or lecture, that has been held for the promotion of this great undertaking, has, by the exertions and energies, and able management of Mr. Spurgeon and his supporters, met with complete success. I would willingly hope that this, which I understand is to be the last meeting, may not be an exception. First, it is now my duty to introduce to you Mr. Vincent, a gentleman whose acknowledged talent and power of employing it will be sure to give you a most instructive and interesting lecture. For my own part, in performing this task, I feel that I am acting the part of the bell at the railway station, that is about to announce the approaching departure of a train. The train in this case will be a train of reasoning that will lead you along the path to knowledge. As Mr. Vincent will have to deal with matters of social and political, as well as spiritual import, let us hope that no collision of opinions may interrupt our progress in the right path! Mr. Vincent will now have the honor of addressing you.

MR. VINCENT’S ADDRESS
Mr. VINCENT. I confess that I am moved by an unusual emotion as I stand in the presence of this vast assembly; for the occasion is one that awakens our piety and our gratitude, as we contrast the present with the past, and remember through what a cloud of martyrs and confessors we have marched to the full enjoyment of that spiritual, social, and civil freedom which makes us, under God, the foremost people of the earth. But tonight we have no time for apology or compliment. We are Nonconformists. We belong to that illustrious band whose history in storm and in sunshine is the history of evangelical piety, of earnest and continuous conflicts with error and oppression. Ours is a history of many martyrdoms, of not a few reverses, but of constant triumphs and great and growing victories. And it is fitting that in the standard of our Nonconformist principles, we strive by God’s grace and help, to raise each other to more earnest labor in the work of evangelizing the people, and of training the population of this country in a deep and undying faith in those great principles of spiritual freedom, of social progress, and political liberty, in the defense of which our forefathers suffered, that they might win for us the glorious privileges we now enjoy.

And first let me say that Nonconformity need not be presented to the churches in a sectarian aspect, or in a sectarian spirit; for if we find ourselves back upon the earliest illustrations of its life, and its power, do we not find it with more or less distinctness affirming the spiritual character of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Do we not find it contending that the Church of Christ is a spiritual organization to be sustained by divine grace and power? Do we not find its instrumentalities to be persuasion, preaching, faith, prayer—those great instrumentalities appointed by God for the work of this world’s evangelization?

So in the very outset I candidly declare that though I belong to the Nonconformist body, I do not come here in any spirit of antagonism to the religious life and energy of the Church of England. All who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity, all who believe in the free circulation of the Scriptures, all who understand that the kingdom that is not of this world should neither be petted, patronized, or upheld by the civil power—all who know that the Church of Christ should be an evangelizing institution, freed from the trammels of unjust laws, and sanctifying by her presence the great cause of freedom, are Nonconformists—to whatever sect they may belong!

Now, of course, it is difficult in a single address to show the identification of Nonconformity with the growth and safety of our religious privileges—its identification also with the progress of freedom, the security of our constitutional throne, and the real liberties of the people of England. Very difficult, indeed, for me to enter into anything like a detailed description of the causes that first produced this peculiar manifestation of religious, and ecclesiastical activity in these nations. Suffice, then, to say that while it may be contended that long before the arrival of the great Augustine and his splendid band of monks, Christianity had been preached in this country, and innumerable churches had been founded, churches that with more or less fidelity proclaimed the unsearchable riches of Christ—yet tonight I desire to say that partly through the influence of heathenisms, partly through the influence of that stupendous ecclesiastical polity that grew up in the city of Rome, the English churches by degrees became corrupt. The English churches by degrees became enslaved by priestcraft or by superstition!

And though, perhaps, some churchman might dispute with me the first position that I take, I desire respectfully to maintain that those early Christians, after the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in these islands, who contended against the superstitions of Rome, who contended against the ecclesiastical despotism of the Romish See, from men like Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, down to immortal Wickliffe, who has been termed, not inaptly, the “morning star of the Reformation”—these men were all Nonconformists because they refused to obey the arbitrary power of man, and defended against tyranny the everlasting truths of God.

It is also obvious that a patient reading of the earlier conflicts of those who are denominated Protestants, commencing if you will with John Wickliffe, and remembering the teachings of that spiritually-enlightened priest—remembering that he rose at a time when the Holy Scriptures were not in general circulation, when they had not been translated into the common vulgar tongue—he contended that the Scriptures were the only perfect rule of faith and conduct! He contended that a church consists mainly of faithful men; remembering that he protested against some of the sacraments of the Romish Church, that he protested against the corruptions of the Romish clergy—the pride, the pomp, the wealth of the hierarchy; remembering that he aided in the sending forth of that body of evangelizing priests who, like the Puritans of a later age, went from city to city, and from town to town to proclaim that religion is and always must be a personal matter between a man and his Maker—preaching the necessity for a divine regeneration in the soul, and then, with an independence and courage worthy of the highest praise, translated the New Testament from the original monkish Latin into the common English tongue!

Wickliffe thus, by the grace of God, laid the foundation for the power to read, and the power to think, and the power to preach—he must be regarded not only as the morning star of the Reformation, but as the father of true Nonconformity in its battle for civil and religious freedom!

History teaches us that the Christian people, enkindled into life and zeal by the teachings of Wickliffe and his followers, constituted themselves under various shades of difference as the evangelizing and religious portions of the population of this country. History tells us that they were dealt with, first by the priesthood, and then by the civil power as heretics, as seditious and traitorous people, dissatisfied with the Church, dissatisfied with the government of their country; and though, of course it is not to be denied that some of them held strong views in favor of Episcopacy, that some of them still clung to dogmas that modern Protestants believe to be heretical and dangerous; though many of them had but imperfect views of what Christianity really is, yet they one and all endured a common scorn, or suffered a common martyrdom, not in defense of Episcopal supremacy, not in defense of ecclesiastical injustice, but in defense of that great right that you and I enjoy this night—the right of worshipping God freely, according to our own conscience, a right which these dear and holy men and women purchased for us at the expense of their property, their liberty, and their lives.

We come, then, by a steady and irresistible progress, to the time when the Papal Church in this country was shaken in its hold upon piety and learning; we come to a time when statesmen adopted the policy that we now find popular upon the continent of Europe. Statesmen felt that the claims of the Papal chair, exercised as those claims were in a most intolerant way over weak princes, weak magistrates, and weak parliaments—statesmen discovered that the security of the kingdom, the independence of the crown, and the supremacy of the civil laws were incompatible with the exercise in these islands of a foreign ecclesiastical government; so that there arose in England a two-fold power—first, a spiritual protest against the religious corruptions of Rome, and secondly, a political protest, such a protest as you find now entered by the Empire of France; for you may take my word for it, that France, in the presence of the present corruptions in Italy, is precisely in the same condition that England was in the reign of Henry VIII, and we are close upon a combat that will put down forever the temporal power of the Pope in France and Italy.

Now we come, then, to the reign of Henry the Eighth, when, after many serious martyrdoms, there arose a stronger repugnance to the priesthood, and a greater restiveness under ecclesiastical restraint, despite the power of the court, and the power, moreover, of the priesthood itself. This restiveness rendered a great change in our ecclesiastical institutions an absolute necessity.

I am not about to sketch the life of Henry the Eighth, except to say that it is very remarkable that it was precisely at that period when Martin Luther—everlasting honor to the glorious monk!—had blown the trumpet of his great revolt in the German States. It is very remarkable that Henry VIII, of all princes, should have stepped into the intellectual arena to engage Luther, to dispute with him on the dogmas of the Papacy, to write that famous treatise, The Defense of the Seven Sacraments, in which he attempted to prove that Martin Luther was wrong, and that the Papacy was absolutely right! It is very remarkable, I say, that this prince, partly through personal intrigue, partly through the political complications of the time, partly through the criminality of his own passions, should have been an agent in the destruction of the external power of that Papal polity.

Though I am far from being an admirer of that bluff and burly king, I nevertheless regard the heavy blow dealt at that time by the short, sharp, cutting Act of Parliament which declared that henceforth the Pope of Rome should exercise no legal jurisdiction within this kingdom of England—I regard that glorious blow at Papal supremacy as the great important step towards civil and religious freedom—for all history declares that Popery will slay liberty, if liberty does not destroy Popery!

But now we notice one of those painful facts that occur constantly in the history of the Church of Christ. The revolution was accomplished, but the external revolution affected only the external government of the Church, and the external laws of the kingdom. The spiritual portion of the people looked on with joy as they saw the papal power driven back, but they soon found that under the new institution, there still existed the old leaven—for it is one thing to change the laws of a country, and another thing to change the character of the people! And the great work always is to change the people first, if you can, for there can be no permanent change in legislation unless it springs from the moral and intellectual growth of the people themselves.

Attempts were made, therefore, to enforce in the new institution conformity to moderate Protestant, and moderate Catholic opinions. You had, as it were, a compromise—and I am not about to condemn the statesmen who made this compromise—I have no doubt they acted as discreetly as they could, for the times were critical, the people were ignorant, and superstitious and the change depended more upon the court, the statesmen, and the parliament, than upon the great body of the English population!

Still, the fact is none the less a fact, that the great church that arose containing much piety, much worth, much learning—contained within its own bosom discordant elements, partly Papal, partly Protestant—and was exposed to attacks from two extremes! The Catholics assailed it on the one side, the ultra-Protestants murmured on the other, and the great institution osculated according to the predominance of certain sentiments in the court, and the legislature osculated now towards Papacy, and now towards Protestantism, but ever and anon resorting to unjust, oppressive and persecuting acts—sometimes against the Catholics, and sometimes against those who were afterwards termed Puritans, until there dawned upon the minds of a few Christian people that oppression, whether under the name of Protestantism, or under the name of Popery, must be opposed by earnest Christian men, if they would found churches as they ought to be founded—freed from the oppressive domination of states, and purged from the corruption of pomp and of wealth.

To me it is evident that the men and the women who suffered on the Protestant side, though they were attached to Episcopacy when they died at the stake, thought less of Episcopacy than they did of the gospel! They did not die for Prelacy—Prelacy has never had a martyr yet—never! They never died for Prelacy, and it is untrue to say that they died for Prelacy—they died for the gospel of Jesus, and when tied to the stake, and tempted by the fiends who bound them with the offer of life, and honor and glory if they would recant—they kissed the stake with fervor, and exclaimed in the presence of excited crowds, “None but Christ; none, none, but Christ!”

And it is obvious that though some might have preferred Episcopacy to Presbyterianism, or to Independency, yet they constitute a portion of that army of noble, devoted and pious men and women who laid the foundation for our Nonconformity in all its piety and its power!

Now, the Reformation, obstructed for a time, breaks out with renewed brilliance in the brief reign of Edward VI. You find then what Protestantism had been doing. Men complain occasionally when town missions are in operation, or when foreign missions are working, that no fruits from their labors immediately appear. God works in His own way. Man sows the seed, and exerts himself under the divine guidance to the utmost of his strength and his power; and in God’s own time, the fruits of this holy seed appear. The destruction of the Papal influence, the breakup of monastic institutions, those great nests of vice and idleness, the bringing into the market the lands of the old religious houses, the replenishing of the fortunes of many of the aristocracy—those fortunes that had been dissipated by the wars of the Roses; the change in the notions of men who were not absolutely Christian—for you can never measure all that the Church of Christ does, if you limit your view to the direct religious action of the churches.

There is an influence of a moral kind, there is an influence of a social kind, there is an influence of a political kind that extends beyond the area of the churches as they exist; and, in the reigns of Edward the Sixth, which may be denominated the reign of intelligence, brief though that reign was, you not only saw the Protestant party more powerful though it disfigured itself by one or two cruel and oppressive acts, but you saw England burst out into a love of learning; men and women began to leave property to found schools—schools in which the children of the middle classes could receive an education that would put them upon a par with the children of the gentry! This was the era of the free grammar schools.

Charles Spurgeon