Well, welcome back to episode part two of our conversation with Dr. Steve Lawson on

Charles Haddon's Virgin.

And we're here at Ligonier's National Conference, and so you might hear some background noise

as folks are milling around us, but we're here to talk about Spurgeon.

You introduced the idea that God did bring some trials, and there was some suffering in

the life of Spurgeon and how God used that.

Would you mind just taking us into that a little bit further?

Well, Spurgeon was a big target.

He stood very tall, and he preached in the largest Protestant house of worship in the

world.

And so he had many, many supporters, but he also had many detractors.

And so there were those who sought to bring him down from other theological persuasions.

In fact, he even took on the Church of England.

He took on the Anglican Church of England, and the most distributed sermon he ever preached

was a powerful sermon out of Mark 16 against baptismal regeneration.

And that was the title of the sermon, baptismal regeneration, and those around him urged

him not to go after the national church state, but Spurgeon could not be held back.

And so he decried that there would be any regenerating power in the font or in a

baptistry, and preached really salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and

Christ alone.

And it created an enormous controversy there in England.

He was shot at from the Catholics as he was very clearly Protestant and came from

...