PROVAN, BARROW, CALVIN, LUTHER, various WESTMINSTER DIVINES, and a host of others, exhibiting the unanimous PROTESTANT OPPOSITION to CONTRACEPTION prior to the 20th century - WITH MUCH FREE INFORMATION [MP3s and ETEXT] on BIRTH CONTROL and RELATED TOPICS
FREE MP3 AUDIO BOOK on BIRTH CONTROL The Bible and Birth Control (1 of 5) by Charles Provan Five FREE MP3 audio files (totaling five hours of free MP3 audio) on the classic Christian (Protestant) view of Birth Control. These free MP3 audio files include two DEBATE sections with opposing modern views and a huge selection of quotes from a wide range of well-known classic Protestant authors and preachers, exhibiting the historic Protestant opposition to contraception, plus much more! Instant free MP3 downloads begin at:http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?sermonid=121303195832
THUS SAITH THE LORD
"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate" (KJV, Ps. 127:3-5).
JOHN CALVIN on BIRTH CONTROL These comments by John Calvin where edited out of Calvin's Commentaries by later editors, and are translated here into English from the original Latin.
+ John Calvin in his Commentary on Genesis 38:8-10 states:
"Besides, he [Onan] not only defrauded his brother of the right due him, but also preferred his semen to putrify the ground, rather than beget a son in his brother's name.
Verse 10: The Jews quite immodestly gabble concerning this thing. It will suffice for me briefly to have touched upon this as much as modesty in speaking permits. The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall to the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born--the hoped for offspring.
This impiety is especially condemned, now by the Spirit through Moses' mouth, that Onan, as it were, by a violent abortion, no less cruelly than filthily cast upon the ground the offspring of his brother, torn from the maternal womb. Besides, in this way he tried, as far as he was able, to wipe out a part of the human race. If any woman ejects a foetus from her womb by drugs, it is reckoned a crime incapable of expiation and deservedly Onan incurred upon himself the same kind of punishment, infecting the earth with his semen, in order that Tamar might not conceive a future human being as an inhabitant of the earth."
- Excerpted from The Bible and Birth Control by Charles Provan (pp. 67-68), these comments by John Calvin where edited out of Calvin's Commentaries by later editors, and are translated here into English from the original Latin. In addition to many arguments against the ungodly practice of birth control, this book also contains about 35 pages of historic testimony on this point by Martin Luther, A.W. Pink, the Synod of Dordt, the Westminster Annotations, Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, Cotton Mather, Trapp, Usher, Gill, Candlish and many more! A number of these books are available on the Puritan Hard Drive. And don't miss the "The Culture of Death Versus the Lord of Life" quote after resource #4 below.
BOOKs/CDs on BIRTH CONTROL & the FAMILY
- NEW LOW PRICE (70% off!): Now Inexpensive Enough to Pass Out to Your Friends!
+++ Resource 1. PROVAN, CHARLES D.
The Bible and Birth Control
Martin Luther once proclaimed that
"the purpose of marriage is not pleasure and ease but the procreation and education of children and the support of a family.... People who do not like children are swine, dunces, and blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women, because they despise the blessing of God, the Creator and Author of marriage" (Christian History, Issue 39, p. 24).
Luther also said that birth control was the equivalent of sodomy (probably because of the likeness between homosexual wickedness and impotent sex).
John Calvin declared that birth control was the murder of future persons and the Synod of Dort issued a Bible commentary which stated that contraception was the same as abortion.
If you are shocked, by the strong statements from these Godly men, that really is not too surprising, because Protestant opposition to birth control has largely been forgotten in our decadent 21th century.
If you want to know about Biblical principles which oppose contraception, or wish to know what the Reformers and their heirs thought about this important subject, we certainly hope that you will get this book!
"...we have found not one orthodox theologian to defend Birth Control before the 1900's NOT ONE! On the other hand, we have found that many highly regarded Protestant theologians were enthusiastically opposed to it, all the way back to the very beginning of the Reformation ...those in favor of Birth Control will find no one in the orthodox Protestant camp for the first four centuries to ally themselves with. (Provan, p. 63)
Westminster Annotations (1657); Calvinist
Commentary on Gen. 38.9 (by John Ley of the Westminster Assembly) - "...in that there is a seminal vital virtue, which perishes if the seed be spilled; and by doing this to hinder the begetting of a living child, is the first degree of murder that can be committed, and the next unto it is the marring of conception, when it is made, and causing of abortion: now such acts are noted in the scripture as horrible crimes, because, otherwise many might commit them, and not know the evil of them: it is conceived, that his brother Er before, was his brother in evil thus far, that both of them satisfied their sensuality against the order of nature, and therefore the Lord cut them off both alike with sudden vengeance; which may be for terror to those Popish Onanites who condemn marriage, and live in sodomitical impurity, and to those who, in marriage, care not for the increase of children, (which is the principle use of the conjugal estate) but for the satisfying of their concupiscence."