I have known a few people who regard C. H. Spurgeon as the authoritative commentator on Holy Writ; and I have heard this passage cited in sermons and seen it on blogs. What amuses me is how few of those who retail this third-rate balderdash have apparently bothered to think about the one verifiable Bible-based criticism buried in the cant and rant:

When a fellow comes forward in all sorts of curious garments and says he is a priest, the poorest child of God may say, “Stand away and don’t interfere with my office—I am a priest—I know not what you may be. You surely must be a priest of Baal, for the only mention of the word vestments in Scripture is in connection with the temple of Baal.” The priesthood belongs to all the saints! They sometimes call you laity, but the Holy Spirit says of all the saints, “You are God’s cleros”—you are God’s clergy. Every child of God is a clergyman or a clergywoman. There are no priestly distinctions known in Scripture. Away with them! Away with them forever! The Prayer Book says, “Then shall the priest say.” What a pity that word was ever left there. The very word, “priest,” has such a smell of the sulfur of Rome about it, that so long as it remains, the Church of England will give forth an ill savor.

“the only mention of the word vestments in Scripture is in connection with the temple of Baal” — well, OK, let’s give due credit where credit is due. For some reason (I’m sure we can inquire about the politics of it when we reconvene the board of translators who served the successor to Elizabeth, Mary, Edward VI, and Henry VIII), the King James Version does in fact render the word “vestment” in Jehu’s flamboyant day of visitation in 2 Kings while rendering “holy garments” in God’s verbatim instructions to Moses to make vestments for the Israelite priesthood. Now, perhaps Mr. Spurgeon would like us to abandon the term “vestment” and speak instead of “holy garments” or “sacred garments”? Would that abate the fury of his rebellion?

Probably not. See also the “apparel” or “vestments” in Ezra, and of course a parallel passage in Sirach that would have been in Spurgeon’s copy of the King James Version, had he been preaching this before 1885, when publishers decided to remove them and reinforce the “Protestant” brand in Bible sales:

Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880’s! The original 1611 King James contained the Apocrypha, and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha with heavy fines and a year in jail. Only for the last 120 years has the Protestant Church rejected these books, and removed them from their Bibles.

And this is why we say that without something more than sola Scriptura, you always end up with less than Scriptura. Do we say that? Well, if we don’t–we should.

via The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit ( http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols19-21/chs1225.pdf )