Spurgeon and the Down-Grade ControversybyJohn F. MacArthur, Jr.Excerpted from Ashamed of the Gospel copyright 1992 by John F. MacArthur, Jr. (Wheaton: Crossway). All rights reserved. Used by permission.[At the end of the Puritan age] by some means or other, first the ministers, then the Churches, got on "the down grade," and in some cases, the descent was rapid, and in all, very disastrous. In proportion as the ministers seceded from the old Puritan godliness of life, and the old Calvinistic form of doctrine, they commonly became less earnest and less simple in their preaching, more speculative and less spiritual in...