I’ve just listened again today, during a long run on my day off after a fantastic CMF National Students' conference, to John Piper’s
biography on Charles Simeon, ‘Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering’ .
If you have not yet
discovered Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be
downloaded free of charge from the Desiring
God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and
runs.
The following, extracted and adapted from Piper, is I hope a useful taster.
Charles Simeon (1759
– 1836) was an English evangelical clergyman who lived through
the American Revolution, the French Revolution and not quite into the decade of
the telegraph and the railroad.
Jonathan Edwards, the major figure of the Great Awakening in
the US, died the year before Simeon was born but the Wesleys and Whitefield
were still alive, and so the Methodist awakening was in full swing.
In his 54 years at Trinity Church, Cambrdige, Simeon became
a powerful force for evangelicalism in the Church of England. His position at
the university, with his constant influence on students preparing for the
ministry, made him a great recruiter of young evangelicals for pulpits around
the land. But not only around the land. He became the trusted advisor of the
East India Company, and recommended most of the men who went out as chaplains,
which is the way Anglicans could be missionaries to the East in those days.
Simeon had a great heart for missions. He was the spiritual
father of the great Henry Martyn. He was the key spiritual influence in the
founding of the Church Missionary Society, and was zealous in his labours for
the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Society for Promoting
Christianity among the Jews. In fact, on his death bed he was dictating a
message to be given to the Society about his deep humiliation that the church
has not done more to gather in the Jewish people.
Probably most of all, Simeon exerted his influence through
sustained Biblical preaching year after year. This was the central labour of his
life. He lived to place into the hands of King William the Fourth in 1833 the
completed 21 volumes of his collected sermons.
In this sermon Piper
reports on a debate between Simeon and John Wesley on the subject of Calvinism.
Simeon did not want
to be labelled a Calvinist or an Arminian. He wanted to be biblical through and
through and give every text its due proportion, whether it sounded Arminian as
it stands or Calvinistic. But he was known justifiably as an evangelical
Calvinist and was uninhibited in his affirmation of what we would call ‘the
doctrines of grace’.
However he had
little sympathy for uncharitable Calvinists and did not let his passion for
truth divide from others, believing that ‘kindness and concession are far
better than vehement argumentation and uncharitable discussion’ (Horae
Homileticae, Vol. 15, p. 357).
An example of how he
lived out this counsel is seen in the way he conversed with the elderly John
Wesley. He tells the story himself:
Sir, I understand that you are called an
Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose
we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your
permission I will ask you a few questions. Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a
depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to
God, if God had not first put it into your heart?
Yes, I do indeed.
And do you utterly despair of recommending
yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through
the blood and righteousness of Christ?
Yes, solely through Christ.
But, Sir, supposing you were at first saved
by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own
works?
No, I must be saved by Christ from first to
last.
Allowing, then, that you were first turned by
the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own
power?
No.
What then, are you to be upheld every hour
and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother's arms?
Yes, altogether.
And is all your hope in the grace and mercy
of God to preserve you unto His heavenly kingdom?
Yes, I have no hope but in Him.
Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my
dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my
justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I
hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out
terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially
unite in those things wherein we agree. (Moule, 79f)
