…upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. – Matthew 16:18

To what trials, my brethren, has not the Church of God been subjected? What new invention can Satan bring forth? The fire, the rack, imprisonment, banishment, confiscation, slander, all these have been tried, and in them all the Church has been more than conqueror through Him who loved her. False doctrine without, heresy and schism within; hypocrisy, formalism, fanaticism, pretenses of high spirituality, worldliness-these have all done their worst. I marvel at the wondrous ingenuity of the great enemy of the Church, but methinks his devices must nearly have come to an end. Can he invent anything further? We have been astounded in these ages by the prodigy of an infidel bishop; we have been struck dumb with sorrow and amazement at a decree which declares that a Church professing to be a Church of Christ must permit men to be her ministers who deny the inspiration of Holy Scripture. This is a new thing under the sun. Popery and infidelity are to be both legalized and fostered in a Church professing to be Christian and Protestant…Ask me “Where is the Church?” In one unbroken line our apostolic succession runs; not through the Church of Rome; not from the superstitious hands of priest-made popes, or king-created bishops, but through the blood of good men and true, who never forsook the testimony of Jesus; through the loins of true pastors, laborious evangelists, faithful martyrs, and honorable men of God; we trace our pedigree up to the fishermen of Galilee and glory that we perpetuate, by God’s grace, that true and faithful Church of the living God, in whom Christ did abide and will abide until the world’s crash. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0560.cfm