For Spurgeon, the mark of spiritual life was not perfection, but persistent struggle against sin. In this life, the Christian was, fundamentally, a soldier. “To be a Christian is to be a warrior. The good soldier of Jesus Christ must not expect to find ease in this world: it is a battle-field. Neither must he reckon upon the friendship of the world for that would be enmity against God. His occupation is war.”

Amid these many conflicts, two controversies stand out: the Baptismal Regeneration Controversy in 1864 and the Downgrade Controversy in 1887–1888.[1] In the former conflict, Spurgeon battled the growing ritualism which arose from the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. In the latter conflict, Spurgeon confronted the increasing rationalism led by theological liberals within the Baptist Union. Speaking in 1857 in the “The War of Truth,” Spurgeon foreshadowed these two conflicts:
We have more to fear than some of us suppose from Rome; not from Rome openly… but I mean the Romanism that has crept into the Church of England under the name of Puseyism. Everywhere that has increased; they are beginning to light candles on the altar, which is only a prelude to those greater lights with which they would consume our Protestantism. Oh! that there were men who would unmask them! We have much to fear from them; but I would not care one whit for that if it were not for something which is even worse. We have to deal with a spirit, I know not how to denominate it, unless I call it a spirit of moderatism in the pulpits of Protestant churches. Men have begun to rub off the rough edges of truth, to give up the doctrines of Luther and Zwingli, and Calvin, and to endeavor to accommodate them to polished tastes….There is creeping into the pulpits of Baptists and every other denomination, a lethargy and coldness, and with that a sort of nullification of all truth.[2]
Though the battle against ritualism and rationalism would come to a head in those two controversies, Spurgeon’s willingness to confront these errors characterized his ministry from beginning to end. For his willingness to engage in these conflicts, Spurgeon would sacrifice many relationships, endure much heartache, and in the end, it would “cost him his life.”[3]
Driving Spurgeon’s choice to engage in these controversies was his understanding of the warfare of the Christian life. In this age before the return of Christ, the Christian lives in enemy territory. Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the primary images of the Christian found in Scripture was that of a soldier.
The Christian is engaged throughout his whole life as a soldier—he is so called in Scripture—“A good soldier of Jesus Christ”; and if any of you take the trouble to write out the passages of Scripture in which the Christian is described as a soldier, and provision is made for his being armed, and directions given for his warfare, you will be surprised to find there are more of this character than concerning any other metaphor by which the Christian is described in the Word of God.[4]
The militant church, then, was a company of soldiers, banded together for the truth of the gospel. As evil and error abounded in both the Church of England and Dissenting churches, Spurgeon believed it was his duty as a preacher to be “a voice crying in the wilderness,” even if he was the only voice.[5] He did not face these controversies alone, however. He had the support of the church, the army of God. When Spurgeon encountered slander and opposition, his congregation bore them with him. To be a member of the Metropolitan Tabernacle brought with it notoriety among the many who opposed their outspoken pastor, but this only strengthened the bond between the pastor and his people, uniting them in the fight.
The love that exists between a Pastor and his converts is of a very special character, and I am sure that mine was so from the very beginning of my ministry. The bond that united me to the members at New Park Street was probably all the stronger because of the opposition and calumny that, for a time at least, they had to share with me. The attacks of our adversaries only united us more closely to one another; and, with whole-hearted devotion, the people willingly followed wherever I led them. I have never brought any project before them, or asked them to aid me in any holy enterprise, but they have been ready to respond to the call, no matter what amount of self-sacrifice might be required.[6]
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While many Reformed writers, especially recently, make the scriptural case for wine, our question is specifically one of polity: how have Presbyterian Churches used grape juice without running afoul of the Westminster Standards and their respective Books of Church Order? Was the change in American Presbyterian polity merely a matter of disobedience?

In the first 1,800 years of the New Testament church, there was no shortage of debate over the elements of the Lord’s Supper. There have been debates over mixing water with the wine,[1] use of leaven in the bread,[2] and the denial of the cup to the laity.[3]
Yet, through all those debates, the contents of the cup primarily included fermented wine from grapes (even if Eastern and Western Christians were divided on whether that wine needed to be white or red). Wine was considered so essential to the work of Christian missionaries that some scholars attribute the global spread of wine over the past two millennia to the work of Christian missionaries who traveled to new lands with Bibles and grape vines. Missionaries frequently introduced the drinking of wine alongside Christianity in regions previously untouched by the gospel, inaugurating significant cultural change to local societies.[4]
The uninterrupted Christian tradition of wine in communion was challenged in 1869 when Thomas Bramwell Welch—a Methodist supporter of the Temperance movement—applied Louis Pasteur’s process of pasteurization to grape juice to halt fermentation, thereby founding Welch’s Grape Juice.[5]
Before Welch’s process, the only way to acquire unfermented grape juice was by drinking it immediately after squeezing the juice from the grape. This is due to the fact that the natural yeasts that grow on the grape immediately initiate the fermentation process of converting sugar to alcohol. Only this freshly squeezed juice could be considered “grape juice” while fermented juice is referred to as ‘wine’ in Scripture. The Hebrew word for wine comes from a root that means “effervesce” or to bubble, meaning that unfermented wine would be an oxymoron.[6]
Cup or Wine in the Standards?
This leads to a perplexing question in the history of Presbyterian polity. While the words “cup”[7] or “fruit of the vine”[8] are used Scripture, the Westminster Standards interpret that reference to be indicating “wine.”[9] This is not merely in one or two places but in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which includes both the Westminster Standards as adopted by the PCA and the Book of Church Order (BCO) the word “wine” is used in the following places:

The BCO describes the element representing Christ’s blood as wine: “58-5: The table, on which the elements are placed, being decently covered, and furnished with bread and wine, and the communicants orderly and gravely sitting around it (or in their seats before it), the elders in a convenient place together, the minister should then set the elements apart by prayer and thanksgiving. The bread and wine being thus set apart by prayer and thanksgiving…”
The Larger Catechism defines the Lord’s Supper as “bread and wine” in the answers to questions 168, 169,[10] and 170.
The Shorter Catechism defines the Lord’s Supper as “bread and wine” in the answer to question 96.

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For Perkins, the “substance” of these judicial laws that were given to the Jews binds not just “Jews but also Gentiles…” Contrary to the R2K consensus, these judicial laws are universally binding not because their foundational equity is to be equated with, and reduced to, natural law without remainder, but because these judicial laws expand and complete what is contained in natural law!

Recently, I received the following message through my blog from professor R. Scott Clark in response to an article of mine that recently appeared on The Aquila Report. After discussing the matter on the phone with this brother, I’ve decided to address a few things.
Your account of “R2K” seems like a caricature. Who defends the “R2K” view you describe?
Anyone who knows the 16th & 17th centuries knows that general equity = natural law (e.g., Wollebius & Perkins) and that is intended to be applied to civil issues such as kidnapping.
Ecclesiastically it applies to the church but that doesn’t exhaust it’s use.
My response will be limited to the professor’s use of William Perkins along with a corroborating footnote pertaining to Johannes Wollebius.
Here we can find a relevant quote from William Perkins, with an excerpt of that quote immediately below. (Bold and italicized emphases mine throughout article.)
Judicials of common equity are such as are made according to the law or instinct of nature common to all men and these in respect of their substance bind the consciences not only of the Jews but also of the Gentiles for they were not given to the Jews as they were Jews, that is, a people received into the covenant above all other nations, brought from Egypt to the Land of Canaan, of whom the Messiah according to the flesh was to come; but they were given to them as they were mortal men subject to the order and laws of nature as other nations are. Again, judicial laws so far as they have in them the general or common equity of the law of nature are moral and therefore binding in conscience as the moral law.
It’s to misread Perkins to infer that in the civil realm it is just the law of nature that is binding upon all men. Instead, we should take Perkins to mean that it is the law of nature that makes the judicial laws of Israel suitably binding upon all men. To miss that point is to miss Perkins’ point. The law of nature establishes the foundation upon which civil laws can be applied to all nations.
Perkins distinguishes elsewhere particular judicial laws that were peculiar to Israel’s commonwealth that don’t have this same quality of nature, which further punctuates his point. Example: the brother should raise up seed to his brother. (Johannes Wollebius holds a similar view that distinguishes judicial laws that are grounded in natural law from those that are not.*)
The judicial laws in view were not themselves natural laws, for the judicial laws were both made and given to men under Moses “according to” what was already instinctive to them. Moreover, these judicial laws were given to the Jews not by virtue of their unique covenant standing before God but in their common created capacity of being “mortal men subject to the order and laws of nature as other nations.” So, the judicial laws are neither to be seen as fundamentally moral nor particular to a covenant nation but rather as having expansive moral import based upon something even more fundamentally primitive in nature, which makes way for their trans-nation application.
R2K wrongly takes the fundamental moral basis upon which judicial laws can be found universally applicable and turns that natural law foundation into the only feature that carries through to the nations. In doing so, R2K denies Perkins’ position, which couldn’t be clearer. It is the judicial laws themselves that have universal judicial application and not merely the instinctive properties of natural law contained within them: “Again, judicial laws… are moral and therefore binding.” Perkins also informs us of the reason why the judicial laws can be universally and morally binding, which is because “they have in them the general or common equity of the law of nature.”
WCF 19.4:
Apropos, for civil magistrates to govern according to the general equity of Israel’s judicial laws (WCF 19.4) is to govern strictly according to those civil laws that were rooted in the common equity of the moral law and not according to the judicial laws that pertained to the land promise or other non-moral aspects of Israel’s society. Yet R2Kers (like the referenced professor) offer an alternative paradigm of governance, which would limit civil magistrates to govern strictly according to natural law yet not according to Israel’s judicial laws that are rooted in natural law. Aside from departing from the nuance of Perkins and Wollebius on the binding moral relevance of Israel’s civil code, one need only consider the historically global results and degeneracy of such governance in order to appreciate the ineffectiveness of natural law in the civil realm. But that shouldn’t be surprising since natural law was never intended to be a model for wielding the sword! The civil laws were given for a reason, and in the minds of men like Perkins et alia the intrinsically moral civil laws are forever binding upon conscience because of their divinely inspired relation to natural law:
“Judicial laws so far as they have in them the general or common equity of the law of nature are moral and therefore binding in conscience as the moral law.” William Perkins
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