In a shameless knock-off of the Pyromaniacs’ practice of providing a weekly dose of Spurgeon, here we start a new feature: Presbyterian Profundity, featuring quotations from a bunch of old, dead guys who lived, to quote Spinal Tap on Stonehenge, hundreds of years before the beginning of history.

First out of the blocks is B B Warfield, pictured here as a youth, in order to connect with the 15-30 age demographic to which we at ref21 are most attuned and by whom we are most respected and admired. The black coat suggests church planter but lack of faux-hawk perhaps points away from such a conclusion. The original of the picture is owned by the PCA Historical Center, which is, by the way, an excellent source for information and documents not just on the PCA but on American confessional Presbyterianism in general.

Here is what he has to say about worldliness in his essay `New Testament Puritanism’ in Faith and Life:

We see, then, that the Apostle’s urgency here [2 Cor. 6:11 – 7:1] is against not association with the world, but compromise with the worldly. Compromise! In that one word is expressed a very large part of a Christian’s danger in the world. We see it on all sides of us and in every sphere of life. We must be all things to all men, we say, perverting the Apostle’s prescription for a working ministry; for there was one thing he would on no account and in no way have us be, even that we may, as we foolishly fancy, win the more; and that is, evil.

From evil in all its forms and in all its manifestations he would have us absolutely to separate ourselves; the unclean thing is the thing he would in no circumstances have us handle. Associate with the world, yes! There is no man in it so vile that he has not claims upon us for our association and for our aid. But adopt the standards of the world? No! Not in the least particular. Here our motto must be and that unfailingly: No compromise!

The very thing which the Apostle here presses upon our apprehension is the absolute conflict between the standards of the world and the standards of Christians; and the precise thing which he requires of us is that in our association with the world we shall not take on our necks the alien yoke of an unbeliever’s point of view, of an unbeliever’s judgment of things, of an unbeliever’s estimate of the right and wrong, the proper and improper.

In all our association with unbelievers, we, as Christian men, are to furnish the standard; and we are to stand by our Christian standard, in the smallest particular, unswervingly. Any departure from that standard, however small or however desirable it may seem, is treason to our Christianity. We must not, in any case, take the alien yoke of an unbeliever’s scheme of life upon our necks.

Carl R Trueman is Departmental Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. This article is reprinted from the Reformation 21 blog and is used with their permission.