1887 C. H. SPURGEON. Spurgeon and Brown Withdraw from the Baptist Union - Downgrade Controversy!

This is a very historically important letter from C. H. Spurgeon to Archibald G. Brown [1844-1922]. Brown was baptised by Spurgeon in 1861 and became a student at the Pastor's College in 1862. For many years he then pastored the East London Tabernacle, Spurgeon's most successful church plant. On Spurgeon's death, he gave the eulogy. 

This letter was written by Spurgeon to Brown immediately after submitting his letter withdrawing from the Baptist Union over the Downgrade Controversy. It is H-O-T! It was in effect his stand against modernism, liberalism, and compromise of Scripture and the Atonement.

The Downgrade Controversy among the Baptists flared in 1887 with Spurgeon's first "Down-grade" article, published in The Sword & the Trowel. In the ensuing "Downgrade Controversy," the Metropolitan Tabernacle disaffiliated from the Baptist Union, making Spurgeon's congregation as the world's largest independnet church. Spurgeon framed the controversy in this way:

Believers in Christ's atonement are now in declared union with those who make light of it; believers in Holy Scripture are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration; those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable, who deny the personality of the Holy Ghost, who call justification by faith immoral, and hold that there is another probation after death... It is our solemn conviction that there should be no pretence of fellowship. Fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin.

The Controversy took its name from Spurgeon's use of the term "Downgrade" to describe certain other Baptists' outlook toward the Bible (i.e., they had "downgraded" the Bible and the principle of sola scriptura). Spurgeon alleged that an incremental creeping of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, Darwin's theory of evolution, and other concepts were weakening the Baptist Union. Spurgeon emphatically decried the doctrine that resulted:

Assuredly the New Theology can do no good towards God or man; it, has no adaptation for it. If it were preached for a thousand years by all the most earnest men of the school, it would never renew a soul, nor overcome pride in a single human heart.

Very important!

"Westwood
Beulah Hill
Upper Norwood

1887 Nov 1

Dear Mr. Brown,

Mr. Booth recd a formal notice from me on Friday [of withdrawal from the Baptist Union]. Let him have yours too! For otherwise they will not know of your going with me. We are to sink or swim together. Blessed be God for so dear a comrade.

Did you see Clifford's [John] Appeal in Pall mall on Saturday? Deceivableness of unrighteousness!"

The fire is catching in Scotland. God will I trust work by this discussion.

The Lord bless you.

Yours Heartily
C. H. Spurgeon"

Some wear and tear; reinforced at folds. Complete.