>Continuing from my post “Calvin disagrees with James White on John 3:16.” Seth McBee over at Contend Earnestly has written an excellent post: Spurgeon .V. James White over the desire of God for the non-elect and the Free and genuine offer of the Gospel.
Here are a couple of quotes:
“Here is Spurgeon explaining some of Gill, whom Spurgeon and Murray both declare to be a Hyper-Calvinist (Gill is someone who White leans on and defends)
Very seldom does he allow himself to be run away with by imagination, except now and then when he tries to open up a parable, and finds a meaning in every circumstance and minute detail; or when he falls upon a text which is not congenial with his creed, and hacks and hews terribly to bring the word of God into a more systematic shape
Charles Spurgeon; Commenting and Commentaries, P. 9
…speaking on 1 Timothy 2:3,4 Spurgeon makes this comment:
What then? Shall we try to put another meaning into the text than that which is fairly bears? I trow not. You must, most of you, be acquainted with the general method in which our older Calvinistic friends (he is speaking of James Wells, Gill and other hyper-Calvinists) deal with this text. ‘All men,’ say they, – ‘that is, some men’: as if the Holy Ghost could not have said ‘some men’ if he had meant some men. ‘All men,’ they say; ‘that is, some sorts of men’: as if the Lord could not have said ‘All sorts of men’ if he had meant that. The Holy Ghost by the apostle has written ‘all men,’ and unquestionably he means all men. I know how to get rid of the force of the ‘alls’ according to that critical method which some time ago was very current, but I do not see how it can be applied here with due regard to truth…I never thought it to be any very great crime to be so inconsistent with myself, for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it is a great crime to seem to be inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression. So runs the text, and so we must read it, ‘God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’
Read the full article Here.
See also: Hyper Calvinism, Limited Atonement & the Free Offer of the Gospel