17. Just one word with my friends who do not agree with me in doctrine. I am sure, my dear friends, that I wish not to anathematize any of those whose creed is the reverse of mine; only they must allow me to differ from them and to speak freely; and if they do not allow me they know very well that I shall. But I have this much to say to those dear friends who cannot bear the thought of an everlasting covenant. Now, you cannot alter it, can you? If you do not like it, there it is. “God has made with me an everlasting covenant.” And you must confess, when you read the Bible, that there are some very knotty passages for you. You might, perhaps, remove them out of your Bible; but then you cannot erase them out of divine verities. You know it is true, that God is immutable, do you not? He never changes — you must know that, for the Bible says so. It declares that when he has begun a good work, he will carry it through. Stop wasting time reading frothy commentators; take the Bible as it stands, and if you do not see everlasting love there, there is some fault in your eyes, and it is a case rather for the Ophthalmic hospital, than for me. If you cannot see everlasting, eternal security, blood bought righteousness, there, I utterly despair of your conversion to the truth, while you read it with your present prejudices. It has been my privilege to give more prominence in the religious world to those old doctrines of the gospel. I have delighted in the musty old folios which many of my brethren have kept bound in sheepskins and goatskins, on their library shelves. As for new books, I leave them to others. Oh! if we might only go back to those days when the best of men were our pastors — the days of the Puritans. Oh! for a puritanical gospel again; then we would not have the sleepy hearers, the empty chapels, the drowsy preachers, the velvet mouthed men who cannot speak the truth; but we would have “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and goodwill towards men.” Do go home and search. I have told you what I believe to be true; if it is not true, detect the error by reading your Bibles for yourselves, and searching out the matter. As for you, you ungodly, who so far have had neither portion nor lot in this matter, remember that God’s Word speaks to you as well as to the Christian, and says, “Turn you, turn you; why will you die, oh house of Israel?” graciously promising that whoever comes to Christ he will in nowise cast out. It is a free gospel, free as the air, and he who has only life to breathe it may breathe it; so that every poor soul here who is made alive, and has a sense of his guilt, may come to Christ.
Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream.
All the evidence you require is to feel your need of Christ; and remember, if you only once come, if you do only believe, you will be safe through all eternity; and amidst the wreck of matter, the crash of worlds, the conflagration of the universe, and the destruction of all terrestrial things, your soul must still be eternally secure in the covenant of God’s free grace. God enable you now to become his adopted children by faith in Jesus.
{a} Cassock: A long close fitting frock or tunic worn by Anglican clergymen. OED.
{b} Francis Quarles (1592-September 8, 1644), English poet. See Explorer “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Quarles”
The Carnal Mind Enmity Against God
No. 20-1:149. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, April 22, 1855, By C. H. Spurgeon, At Exeter Hall, Strand.
The carnal mind is enmity against God. {Romans 8:7}
1. This is a very solemn indictment which the Apostle Paul here levels against the carnal mind. He declares it to be enmity against God. When we consider what man once was, only second to the angels, the companion of God, who walked with him in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day; when we think of him as being made in the very image of his Creator, pure, spotless, and unblemished, we can only feel bitterly grieved to find such an accusation as this preferred against us as a race. We may well hang our harps upon the willows while we listen to the voice of Jehovah, solemnly speaking to his rebellious creature. “How are you fallen from heaven, you son of the morning!” “You seal up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You have been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering — the workmanship of your timbrels and of your pipes was prepared in you in the day that you were created. You are the anointed cherub that covers; and I have set you so: you were upon the holy mountain of God; you have walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you, and you have sinned; therefore I will cast you as profane out of the mountain of God: and will destroy you, oh covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.”
2. There is much to sadden us in a view of the ruins of our race. As the Carthaginian who might tread the desolate site of his much loved city, would shed many tears when he saw it laid in heaps by the Romans; or as the Jew, wandering through the deserted streets of Jerusalem, would lament that the ploughshare had marred the beauty and the glory of that city which was the joy of the whole earth; so ought we to mourn for ourselves and our race, when we behold the ruins of that goodly structure which God had piled, that creature, matchless in symmetry, second only to angelic intellect, that mighty being, man, — when we behold how he is “fallen, fallen, fallen, from his high estate,” and lies in a mass of destruction. A few years ago a star was seen blazing out with considerable brilliance, but soon disappeared; it has since been affirmed that it was a world on fire, thousands of millions of miles from us, and yet the rays of the conflagration reached us; the noiseless messenger of light gave to the distant dwellers on this globe the alarm of “A world on fire!” But what is the conflagration of a distant planet, what is the destruction of the mere material of the most ponderous orb, compared with this fall of humanity, this wreck of all that is holy and sacred in ourselves? To us, indeed, the things are scarcely comparable, since we are deeply interested in one, though not in the other. The fall of Adam was OUR fall; we fell in and with him; we were equal sufferers; it is the ruin of our own house that we lament, it is the destruction of our own city that we bemoan, when we stand and see written in lines too plain for us to mistake their meaning, “The carnal mind” — that very exact same mind which was once holiness, and has now become carnal — “is enmity against God.” May God help me this morning, solemnly to prefer this indictment against you all! Oh! that the Holy Spirit may so convince us of sin, that we may unanimously plead “guilty” before God.
3. There is no difficulty in understanding my text: it needs scarcely any explanation. We all know that the word “carnal” here signifies fleshly. The old translators rendered the passage thus: “The mind of the flesh is enmity against God,” — that is to say, the natural mind, that soul which we inherit from our fathers, that which was born within us when our bodies were fashioned by God. The fleshly mind, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts and the passions of the soul; it is this which has gone astray from God and become enmity against him.
4. But before we enter upon a discussion of the doctrine of the text, observe how strongly the Apostle expresses it. “The carnal mind,” he says, “is ENMITY against God.” He uses a noun, and not an adjective. He does not say it is opposed to God merely, but it is the positive enmity. It is not black, but blackness; it is not at enmity, but enmity itself; it is not corrupt, but corruption; it is not rebellious, it is rebellion; it is not wicked, it is wickedness itself. The heart, though it is deceitful, is positively deceit; it is evil in the concrete, sin in the essence; it is the distillation, the quintessence of all things that are vile; it is not envious against God, it is envy; it is not at enmity, it is actual enmity.
5. Nor need we say a word to explain that it is “enmity against God.” It does not charge manhood with an aversion merely to the dominion, laws, or doctrines of Jehovah; but it strikes a deeper and surer blow. It does not strike man upon the head; but it penetrates into his heart, it lays the axe at the root of the tree, and pronounces him “enmity against God,” against the person of the Godhead, against the Deity, against the mighty Maker of this world; not at enmity against his Bible or against his Gospel, though that were true, but against God himself, against his essence, his existence, and his person. Let us, then, weigh the words of the text, for they are solemn words. They are well put together by that master of eloquence, Paul, and they were, moreover, dictated by the Holy Spirit, who tells man how to speak aright. May he help