Chapter  VII

Pastor and Theologian

      “If a man aspires to the office of an overseer,” wrote the apostle Pau1 to Timothy, “he desires a noble task.”  Since Owen was a pastor for most, if not all, of the years from the Restoration to his death, he did indeed have a noble task as his primary calling.  To be a pastor of a gathered church, or, as it was often called, a conventicle, in the reign of Charles II involved a rather different attitude towards the State and the law than it did, for example, in the reign of William and Mary or than it does today.  From 1662 to 1689 Nonconformists lived under the dark cloud of repressive legislation and of this the pastor and his flock had to take careful notice.  Owen and most of the ejected ministers who became nonconformists seem to have regarded both the Five Mile Act and Conventicle Act as legislation they should not necessarily obey.  They had no feelings of guilt when prosecuted under these laws.¹  Their disobedience brought suffering and financial loss but it meant they were obeying Christ which to them was far better.  Nevertheless, as we have seen, their disobedience was accompanied by a reasonable attempt to persuade both King and Parliament that persecution of Protestant Dissenters was not in either the national or Protestant interest.  In this chapter we shall be particularly concerned with Owen’s work as a pastor, Congregational leader and theologian.  This will involve, first of all, an attempt to establish the identity of the churches to which he regularly preached and the type of people who belonged to them.  Secondly, we shall note what kind of sermons he preached to his hearers.  Then thirdly, since Owen was a staunch advocate of fellowship amongst churches, we shall look at his relationship with other men of the Congregational way.  Finally, we shall examine the great devotional and theological books that came from his pen in the last twenty years of his life, when, relieved of direct academic and political responsibility, his mind was relatively free to study those things he loved most of all.

¹Cf. Clagg, Puritanism in the Period of Great Persecution, 1660–1688, pp. 31ff.

      In рrevious chapters we have made reference to the Congregational church which Owen gathered at Coggeshall in 1646, to the problem of his church affiliation from 1651 to 1658, to the church to which he preached in Wallingford House in 1659, and to the conventicles at Stadhampton and in the City of London in which he ministered after 1660.  It may well be that the small church of which he was pastor in 1673 and which joined that same year with the larger church whose pastor, Joseph Caryl, had recently died, was the continuation of the church which had met until 1660 in Wallingford House, and then afterwards in various places in and around the home of Mrs Holmes near Moorgate.  Though, as we shall see, certain members of the church in Wallingford House were also members of the church which took part in the union in 1673, this in itself is not conclusive evidence of the direct continuity of the church founded in 1659 into the 1670s.  Since no church book or other similar evidence has been forthcoming to throw light on this matter, one cannot speak with any certainty about this continuity.

      From a list preserved in the Congregational Library, London,¹ we know that Owen’s small pre-1673 church had fewer than forty members, though we may presume that more than this number would have attended to hear his sermons.  To the contemporary onlooker it must have seemed that this church was as much a society of old friends and former associates of Oliver Cromwell as a gathered church.  Indeed, it could have appeared to some that it was a group of discontented former army officers and their friends enjoying the comforts offered by the ministrations of a former chaplain of Oliver.  Such a view, whilst containing more than a grain of truth, is far from being the whole truth, as will be seen in the examination of the membership and its relationship to Owen.  First of all there were at least five former soldiers, their wives, relatives and servants connected with the church.  They were Charles Fleetwood, John Desborough, James Berry, Jeffrey Ellaston and Griffith Lloyd.

        ¹This List containing the names of members of Owen’s church, Caryl’s church, and an admitted to the united church is described and printed in part by T. G. Crippen, “Dr Watts’s Church Book,” Transactions of the Cong. Hist. Soc., I, April, 1901, pp. 26ff.

      Charles Fleetwood, the former general who now lived at Stoke Newington with his third wife, the former Lady Hartopp, was among twenty named in the Act of Indemnity (1660) as incapacitated for ever from holding public appointment.¹  Despite this incapacitation he seems to have lived peacefully in the Fleetwood House, as it was called.  Perhaps he fulfilled some of his political ambitions through advising his son-in-law, Sir John Hartopp, who was a member of the three Exclusion Parliaments.  John Desborough, with whom Owen cooperated in the moves to persuade Oliver not to become King of England, was likewise legally incapacitated from public office.  Suspected of plotting, he was imprisoned.  Escaping, he fled to Holland but returned to England in 1666 only to be cast into Dover Castle and then the Tower of London before being released.  He finally settled down at Hackney, a village not too far from Stoke Newington, and within easy reach of Moorgate.  Like Desborough, James Berry, who had been Cornwell’s Major-General in charge of Wales and the border counties, was also arrested after the Restoration.  He spent time in the Tower of London as well as in the castle at Scarborough, where one of his fellow prisoners was George Fox, the Quaker.  Eventually he was set free in 1672 and then, through the help of Fleetwood, he found a house in Stoke Newington.  So the three men, all of whom had been members of the church in Wallingfold House, were able to meet frequently and discuss both former and current times.²  The two other former soldiers were Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Ellaston and Captain Griffith Lloyd.  Ellaston became a Major in 1658 and a year later the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Foot Regiment.  In his will Owen left him £10.  Lloyd, who died in 1682, was made a captain in the New Model Army in 1647 and in 1659 he had the honour of negotiating for Fleetwood and Lambert with Monck.  Both Ellaston and Lloyd probably had been members of the church in Wallingford House.³

        ¹The Bill of Indemnity received the royal assent on 29 August 1660.  It bestowed a general pardon for all treasons, felonies and many other offences committed since 1 January 1637.  Thirty men were excluded by name from the benefits of the Bill and some of these were executed.

        ²For the careers of Fleetwood and Desborough see Maurice Ashley, Cromwell’s Generals, 1954, and for Berry, Sir James Berry and S. G. Lee, A Cromwellian Major-General, Oxford, 1938.

        ³For reference to Ellaston and Lloyd see C. Firth and G. Davies, The Regimental History of Cromwell’s Army, Oxford, 1940, pp. 93–9 and 485–7.  See Correspondence, p. 185 for Owen’s bequest to Ellaston.

      Other members included Mrs Bridget Bendish, the daughter of Henry Ireton and thus grandaughter of Oliver.  Born in 1649 she lived with her step-father, Charles Fleetwood, at Stoke Newington until her marriage in 1669 to Thomas Bendish of Yarmouth, the son of the Ambassador to Turkey of the same name.  It was said that her features closely resembled those of her grandfather.  Then there were Mr and Mrs Thomas D’Oyley, relatives of the D’Oyleys of Stadhampton; Mrs Polhill, wife of Edward Polhill of Burwash, Sussex; William Steele, a serjeant-at-law and former Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1656 to 1659; Dr William Staines, a physician; Sir John and Lady Elizabeth Hartopp and Smith Fleetwood, son of Charles.¹  Another interesting member who eventually left in 1677 to become a pastor himself was Samuel Lee, the former Dean of Wadham College, Oxford.  He had a very strong belief in the doctrine of the restoration of the Jewish nation to Palestine and published a widely read book, Israel Redux (1677), which was several times reprinted.  Naturally there would have been an element of nostalgia amongst many of the members as they looked back to former times when they were in positions of authority.  But that the church was basically a spiritual institution, gathered to the glory of God, is seen in the letters which Owen wrote to some of them.²  After the death in July 1673 of Mrs Griffith Lloyd, Owen wrote a moving letter to her sister Mrs Polhill, who was probably at her Burwash home.  “It adds to my trouble,” he told her, “that I cannot possibly come down to you this week. ... Christ is your Pilot; and however the vessel is tossed whilst He seems to sleep, He will arise and rebuke these winds and waves in His own time. ... Sorrow not too much for the dead; she is entered into her rest and is taken away from the evil to come.”  Writing to Lady Hartopp in 1674 after the death of her baby, Anne, he advised her to remember God’s faithfulness to His elect: “your dear infant is in the eternal enjoyment of the fruits of all our prayers; for the covenant of God is ordered in all things and sure.  We shall go to her; she shall not return to us.”  Owen had in mind the statement of the Apostle Peter in Acts 2:42, “The promise (of salvation) is unto you and your children.”  Also in 1674 he shared with Charles Fleetwood his feelings about his recurring illness and of the future of the churches, asking, him “to contend (with God) yet more earnestly ... after spiritual revivals.”  “Christ is our best friend,” he told Sir John Hartoрp as he lay ill, “and ere long will be our only friend.  I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with Him.”

        ¹For Edward Polhill see D.N.B. as also for William Steele.  When the latter died in 1680 Owen had the following to say about him: “As far as I know by thirty years’ acquaintance and friendship, and half that time in church fellowship, it may be the age wherein he lived did not produce many more wise, more holy more useful than he in his station, if any.”  Works, IX, p. 341.  Incidentally, this suggests that in 1665 Owen’s church, which eventually joined with Caryl’s, was in existence.

        ²Correspondence, No’s 83–87 and 93, pp. 157ff.

      If the charge could be levelled against Owen’s church that it was a society of discontented republicans then it could also be levelled, but with even less justice, against the church of which Joseph Caryl was pastor until 1673.  Caryl had been a member of the Westminster Assembly of divines and a prominent Independent during the Interregnum.  After 1662 he became a leading Nonconformist.  In 1663 he was reported as meeting frequently with a congregation in Soper Lane and of preaching in his own house.  In 1672 he was licensed as a Congregational pastor to preach in Leadenhall Street with William Beerman, the ejected chaplain of St Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark, as his assistant.¹  The church to which they preached had about one hundred and thirty-six members.  It is impossible to identify most of these people now, but amongst those who may be identified were Benjamin and Mary Shute, the parents of the first Viscount Barrington; Lady Vere Wilkinson, wife of the former Canon of Christ Church, Henry Wilkinson; Mrs Sarah Abney, who owned the house at Theobalds where Owen stayed, and Mrs Frances Thompson, daughter of the Earl of Anglesey and wife of John Thompson, who was сreated Baron Haversham in December 1673.²  The membership of Caryl’s church gives the impression of being rather more broadly based than was Owen’s.  Be that as it may, following the death of Caryl the church realised that there was no better man available to be its guide than John Owen.

¹For both Caryl’s and Beerman’s movements after 1662 see C.R.

²For John Shute Barrington and John Thompson see D.N.B.

      The union of the two churches took place on the 5th June 1673 in the Meeting House in Leadenhall Street.  For his text Owen took Colossians 3:14, “And above all things put on charity, which is the bond of perfection.”¹  His theme was mutual love amongst the members, especially at this time when persecution was likely to return since the seal had been broken off the Declaration of Indulgence a few weeks earlier.  “Let none,” he proclaimed, “pretend that they love the brethren in general, and love the people of God and love the saints, while their love is not fervently exercised towards those who are in the same church-society with them.”  Since the new church contained rich people as well as their servants and others of little material wealth, he closed his sermon with a few words of advice to those who enjoyed the benefits of this world’s goods.

I would speak to them who have the advantage of riches, wealth, honour, reputation m the world; which encompass them with so many circumstances that they know not how to break through them to that familiarity of love with the meanest member of the church which is required of them.  Brethren, know the gospel leaves all your providential advantages entirely to you; whatever you have by birth, education, inheritance, estate, titles, places, it leaves the entire enjoyment of them.  But in things which purely concern your communion together, the gospel lays all level: there is neither rich nor poor, free nor bond in Christ, but the new creature ... And let me beg of you that are rich to remember this common Lord and Master; and let not your outward advantages, therefore, keep you at a distance from the meanest, the poorest saint that belongs unto the congregation.

Obviously believing that the class structure of society was within God’s permissible will for mankind, Owen was true to his gospel in emphasising that the church should be the place where there is true equality in Christ.  Unfortunately we have no information as to how the church exercised the virtue of charity either towards poor members or towards suffering, penniless Nonconformists in country areas.  That the church did help is suggested by the contents of the will of William Beerman who left £200 for the relief of ministers and their widows.²

        ¹The sermon is in Works, IX, pp. 256ff.

        ²The reference to the will is in C.R. s.v. Beerman.  In the united church Beerman does not seem to have held office and therefore done no regular preaching.

      Between 1673 and 1683 one hundred and eleven people from all walks of life were received into the membership of the new church.  Amongst those who can be identified with certainty were a daughter of Dr Owen named Mrs Kennington who died in April 1682 and a son of Charles Fleetwood by his second wife, Cromwell Fleetwood.  Two of the wealthier new members were the Countess of Anglesey (Mrs Arthur Annesley) and Sir Thomas Overbury.  Though her daughter, Frances Thompson, had been a member for over seven years, the Countess did not feel able to join for one reason or another until October 1680.  Before that time, the Countess had often entertained both the first and second Mrs Owen with their husband.  Indeed, so great was the attachment of the Countess to Owen, her spiritual director, that she requested permission from Mrs Dorothy Owen to be buried near him in Bunhill Fields.  And in January 1684, a few months after his decease, she was arrested for attending the conventicle in Leadenhall Street to hear Owen’s successor, David Clarkson, preach.¹  Sir Thomas Overbury, nephew of the poet of the same name, was knighted by Charles II in June 1660.²  He settled at Bourton-on-the-Hill in 1663.  Soon afterwards he became convinced of the justice of the Protestant Nonconformist position and on at least one occasion he had Owen as a guest.  However, being often in London, he joined the Leadenhall Street church in 1675.  A few years later he sold his property at Bourton and moved to a new house at Quinton in Northamptonshire.  But before he left Gloucestershire he was involved in a sharp controversy with a neighbour and former opponent of his pastor, George Vernon, the rector of Bourton-on-the-Water.  The issue was whether human rulers had the right to impose forms of religious worship upon their people and persecute those who for conscience-sake refused to obey.  Overbury answered in the negative, Vernon in the affirmative.

¹Asty, p. xxix and Lacey, op. cit., p. 460.

²For Overbury and his uncle see D.N.B.

      To help with the preaching and pastoral responsibilities in the enlarged church, three ministers were chosen to share the burden of the work with Owen during the last ten years of his life.  The first was Isaac Loeffs who was ordained or set apart as teacher of the church on December 26 1673.  A graduate of Cambridge and former Fellow of Peterhouse, he had been rector of Shenley in Hertfordshire and had attended the Savoy Assembly in 1658.  After his ejection in 1662 he remained is Hertfordshire and preached at such places as Shenley, St Albans, Elstree, Codicote and Ridge.  He probably remained as teacher of the London church for nine years, preaching regularly both on the Lord’s Day and at mid-week services.  In 1682 David Clarkson succeeded him.¹  Like Loeffs, Clarkson was a Cambridge graduate.  He was ejected from the curacy of Mortlake, near London, but was licensed to preach near his former parish church in 1672.  Richard Baxter considered him to be “a divine of extraordinary worth.”  Owen must have had a similar estimation of him and found in him a great source of help is the last year of his life.  It would have been a comfort for the dying pastor to know that in Clarkson the church had a teacher who was eminently suited to take over the leadership when he died.

¹Both Loeffs and Clarkson are in C.R.

      The most controversial of Owen’s ministerial colleagues was Robert Ferguson who was appointed as Owen’s personal assistant in November 1674.¹  Educated in Scotland, Ferguson moved to England and became vicar of Godmersham in Kent.  After his ejection he was imprisoned for four months in 1663 for illegal activities as a Nonconformist.  But it was his book on the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, Justification only upon a Satisfaction (1668), which brought him to the attention of Owen and which led on to his work with him.  During 1675 in the first year of his assistantship Ferguson joined with Edward Polhill and others to defend Owen from the attack by William Sherlock, a London Anglican rector, on his views concerning the believer’s communion with God.  It was not these two books, however, which brought Ferguson a national reputation.  The latter came out of his involvement in the politics of the period.  He enthusiastically joined with the Earl of Shaftesbury in efforts to ensure the Protestant succession to the throne.  In 1680 he published his first political pamphlet A Letter to a Person of Honour concerning the “Black Box.”  The box, if there was one, was supposed to contain proof that Charles II was legally married to Lucy Walters, the mother of the Duke of Monmouth.  Ferguson believed that the story about the box was false and that it had been invented to divert attention from the treasonable activity of the Duke of York.  So he sought to turn popular prejudice against the Duke.  The King replied to the demands in this and other pamphlets by disavowing any true marriage to Lucy Walters.  This action induced Ferguson to produce another pamphlet which promised that evidence of the marriage would be forthcoming soon.  Further pamphlets flowed from his pen as controversy raged around the Exclusion Bill.  When, a little later, the Tory reaction had set in against the Whigs and Shaftesbury’s life was in danger Ferguson sought to show that there never had been a Protestant Plot and that the very idea of one was the invention of the Papists.  In 1683 he was involved in the Rye House Plot and after its failure he found it expedient to make his escape with Shaftesbury and return to Holland where he had sought refuge in 1682.  But this was not the end of his activities.  For twenty more years he was involved in efforts of various kinds either to prevent James succeeding to the throne, or, strangely, at a later date, to support the Jacobites!  Since it is not known when Ferguson ceased to be a member of the Leadenhall Street church (although it was probably not until 1682), it is difficult to assess to what extent, if any, Owen supported his more extreme political activities.  There must have been something particularly attractive about Ferguson, apart from his obvious Calvinistic orthodoxy, to have caused Owen to like him and stand by him.  When he fled to Holland in 1682, Owen wrote to him there and in his will he left his former assistant the sum of five pounds (the same amount which he left to Loeffs and Clarkson).²  Perhaps Owen, irenical in nature, was glad to have by his side a man who was so militantly anti-Catholic.  Maybe he had a psychological need to be complemented by an aggressive personality.

        ¹For Ferguson see both C.R., and D.N.B., and James Ferguson, Robert Ferguson the Plotter, Edinburgh, 1887.  For Ferguson and Monmouth see W. R. Emerson, Monmouth’s Rebellion, New Haven, 1951, pp. 10ff.

        ²For Owen’s will see Correspondence, pp. 181ff.  Our knowledge of Owen’s letters to Ferguson comes from letters written by Ferguson to his wife.  In these he mentioned receiving letters from Owen.  Cf. C.S.P.D. (1682), pp. 554, 575 etc. and J. Ferguson, op. cit., pp. 93ff.

      Whatever were the reasons that bound Ferguson to Owen, the latter’s concern for the spiritual welfare of the church and the church-officers, of whom Ferguson was one, is seen in the moving letter he wrote to his church from Wooburn, where he was the guest of Lord Wharton.  The date of the letter is not known but its contents reflect a period of impending persecution, probably 1681 or 1682.¹  “Although I am absent from you in body,” he wrote, “I am in mind, affection and spirit present with you, and in your assemblies; for I hope you will be found my crown and rejoicing in the day of the Lord.”  He prayed that any shame and financial loss they might undergo for the sake of Christ they would regard as a great honour.  He hoped that any season of difficulty would be a means of causing the increase of mutual love amongst the church members.  And in particular he counselled:

I could wish that because you have no ruling elders, and your teachers cannot walk about publicly with safety, that you would appoint some among yourselves, who may continually as their occasions will admit, go up and down from house to house and apply themselves peculiarly to the weak, the tempted, the fearful, those who are ready to despond, or to halt, and to encourage them in the Lord.  Choose out those unto this end who are endued with a spirit of courage and fortitude; and let them know that they are happy whom Christ will honour with His blessed work.

Finally, he requested that they see whatever happened to them as from the Lord and to be used for the blessing of their souls.

¹Correspondence, No. 94, p. 110.

      Only a small proportion of the many sermons that Owen preached to the Congregational church in Leadenhall Street between 1673 and 1683 were ever printed.¹  From these it is clear that he regarded his principal task as a preacher to be that of carefully expounding and explaining the nature of the biblical view of the Christian life and witness, exhorting his hearers zealously to obey and seek after God and to cultivate the grace of God in their hearts.  He placed great stress not only upon sound doctrine but also upon the actual experience of God in Christian worship and in the soul of the believer.  The extant sermons cover such topics as the excellency of Christ, personal holiness, the nature of the church, cases of conscience, reaction to persecution and the proper approach to the Lord’s Supper.  As we shat be briefly examining both his views on Christ, the church and personal holiness later in this chapter it will perhaps be in order here to notice what approach to the Lord’s Super he advocated and just how he, as a leading Nonconformist, counseled his hearers to face difficulties and opposition.

¹What were printed are in Works, VIII and IX.

      At least eleven sermons of contemporary interest were preached during 1680 and 1681 when, despite the sitting of Whig Parliaments, there was still a grave fear that Charles II might die and be succeeded by James, Duke of York, who was expected to encourage popery.  All eleven sermons recommend the saints to trust in God and to have faith in His grace and providence, but, two in particular, one preached in May 1680 and the other in December 1681, may be used to illustrate Owen’s interpretation of how the believer should respond to the contemporary threat of Roman Catholicism.¹  Beginning from the proposition that “the just shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4), Owen raised the question on the 7th May 1680 as to how one lived by faith in the prospect of the danger of the return of popery to England.  He regarded this as an important question, for, as he said: “I verily believe that those who have the conduct of the papal, antichristian affairs throughout the world are endeavouring to bring Popery in upon us.”  His answer was in the form of the enunciation of various themes and propositions for the comfort and strengthening of faith in his hearers.  The first was “that there is a fixed, determinate time in the counsel of God when Antichrist and Babylon, and idolatry and superstition, together with the profaneness of life they have brought in, shall be destroyed.”  The future destruction of Roman Catholicism was assured in divine prophecy.  Following from this, his second theme was that “it is no less glorious to suffer under the beast and the false prophet than it was to suffer under the dragon.”  The early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire and for this they had been universally praised.  Likewise those who suffered under Roman Catholicism would be as widely acclaimed.  Recalling the example of the martyrs of the sixteenth century, he counselled that “if a time of going unto Smithfield should come again – if God shall call us to that fiery trial or any other whatever it be – remember that to suffer against Antichrist is as great and glorious as to suffer against Paganism.”  Yet, come what may, the Protestant cause would “be as truly, certainly, and infallibly victorious, as that Christ sits at the right hand of God.”  He closed by issuing a warning, based upon his experiences over the years, especially perhaps in the 1650s.  “Take heed of computations.  How wofully and wretchedly we have been mistaken by this!  We know the time is determined – its beginning and ending is known to God; and we must live by faith till the accomplishment.”

¹Works, IX, pp. 505ff. and pp. 3ff.

      The sermon preached on the 22nd December 1681 was on the occasion of a day of prayer and fasting, and it found Owen in a most serious and solemn mood.  He was convinced that England was filled with open sin and rebellion against God.  “Oh, poor England,” he exclaimed, “among all thy lovers thou hast not one to plead for thee this day!  From the height of profaneness and atheism, through the filthiness of sensuality and uncleanness, down to the lowest oppression and cheating, the land is filled with all sorts of sin.”  He went on to maintain that God had given repeated warnings to the land since 1662.  There was the “desolating Plague” of 1665, the “raging Fire” of 1666, the “bloody war” with the Dutch, and the “prodigious appearances in the heaven.”¹  Not paying heed to these divine warnings, the King and his government had continued to compromise the Protestant faith in their dealings with France and the Papacy.  Happily, however, England was not utterly forsaken by God even though judgement was near.  The disclosure of the Plot, the determination to punish those implicated in it and the fact that the nation was still one and not torn by war were all sure signs of divine blessing.  But the question was: what could be done to avert God’s future judgement?  There must be, he answered, national repentance and universal reformation.  Means must quickly be provided for the free propagation of the Word of God throughout the land and magistrates must work from better principles.  In other words, the restrictions on, and persecution of, Protestants must cease in order that the gospel could be freely heard in the whole land and the people could be given the opportunity to repent.  When Owen died two years later he still expected judgement from God to descend upon England and the churches to pass through a time of severe trial.  Had he lived, as did Richard Baxter, to see the arrival of William of Orange and experience the freedom after the passing of the Toleration Act of 1689, perhaps he would have felt that God’s immediate threat of judgement had been lifted.

            ¹Owen probably refers to Halley’s Comet of 1680.  See J. M. Robinson, The Great Comet of 1680, Northfield, Minnesota, 1916.

      Of Owen’s sacramental discourses it may be said with truth that they have not become obsolete with the passing of time.  They contain no contemporary references; rather they reveal a profound understanding of what may be termed the Calvinistic view of the Lord’s Supper.  The meal for him was a thanksgiving, a memorial and a communion.  In it he thanked God for the benefits of redemption, remembered the body and blood of Christ whereby that redemption was won, and communed in his soul through the Holy Spirit with the risen Lord.  “Christ is present in this ordinance,” he stated, “in an especial manner in three ways: by representation, by exhibition and by obsignation.”¹  By representation Owen meant that Christ presented Himself at the Supper through the symbols of bread and wine as the food for the believers’ souls and as the One who suffered for their sins.  By exhibition, he understood that Christ manifested Himself through the elements revealing “His flesh as meat indeed and his blood as drink indeed” (John 6:56).  Finally, by obsignation he meant that the Lord’s Supper was the form of a seal from God, a confirmation of the new testament, the new relationship between the believer and his Saviour.  Though he believed that the Lord’s Supper should be commemorated every Lord’s Day, his own church probably held the service less frequently than this in the difficult years between 1662 and 1683.  As to the other ordinance, baptism, no records of child baptisms have been preserved but we must presume that he performed this rite on some occasions since Lady Hartopp, at least, had several children during the years of his pastorate.

¹Works, IX, p. 573.

      Having looked at Owen’s work in the church in Leadenhall Street, we must now turn to his larger rôle within Congregationalism.  Several years ago Geoffrey F. Nuttall expressed the view that “after the Restoration his position as a Congregational leader and thus a link between the now scattered and persecuted churches, became, if it were possible, yet more striking” than his leadership in the 1650s.¹  George Vernon, who, as we have seen, had no particular love for Owen, unwittingly supplied confirmation of this when he informed his readers in 1670 that the Congregational churches maintained contact and passed news by means of lines of communication established originally at the Savoy Assembly in 1658.  News of what happened in London and Westminster was conveyed to Owen and his “under-officers” (Goodwin, Nye, Griffith etc.) and by them and their contacts to all parts of the country.²  To Vernon, Owen was “the Prince, the Oracle, the Metropolitan of independency.”  Further evidence for Owen’s leadership is seen in his dealings with the King and government on behalf of the churches and at this we looked in the last chapter.  Now we must notice the advice he gave in person or by letter to men who either came to see him or sought his help in writing.

¹Nuttall, Visible Saints, p. 39.

²Vernon, Letter to a Friend, p. 34.

      Between 1675 and 1679, for example, he corresponded with and met Robert Asty, once a member of the Congregational church at Coggeshall.¹  The young man’s first problem was whether or not he should accept the call of the Norwich church to be its teacher.  Following the decease of Thomas Allen, the former pastor and (before 1662) rector of St George, Tombland, the Norwich church decided to call both a pastor and a teacher.  This was a common practice even though the rôles of the two were far from clearly defined in Congregational thinking.  Even Owen admitted to Asty that he knew “no difference between a pastor and a teacher but what follows (from) their different gifts.”  Owen’s advice to Asty was that he should accept the call.  “I do not see how you can waive or decline the call of the church,” he wrote, “either in conscience or reputation.”  Before accepting it, however, Asty ought to sit down and consider what it would cost him in view of the demands of the ministry and the difficulties faced by Dissenters.  Asty finally decided to accept the call of the church as. also did John Cromwell, the ejected minister of Clayworth, Nottíngha1ńshire, who became the pastor.²  Unfortunately, the two men did not always see eye to eye and both sought the wisdom of Owen on how to heal their relationship.  We only have his reply to Asty to whom his advice was to beware of “earnestness of spirit and aggravation of things in our own concerns” and to suffer injustice quietly.  What impact Owen’s letters had on Asty and Cromwell we do not know; what is certain is that Cromwell suffered much: he “was pursued with indictments at Sessions and Assizes and then with citations out of the Ecclesiastical Courts.”  So apart from the internal problems of his church he, and no doubt Asty as well, faced much persecution.

            ¹For the letters see Correspondence, No’s 88–90, pp. 161–3.  Owen to Asty.

        ²For the details of the Norwich church see J. Browne, History of Congregationalism in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1877, pp. 252ff.  For Cromwell see C.R.  It was John Asty, son of Robert, who wrote the Memoir of Owen in 1721.

      Other people whom Owen helped were Thomas Jollie and John Bunyan.  After Jollie had come from the north to visit Owen in London he wrote: “I may not deny that special guidance and assistance which I had both privately and publicly (whilst in London).  I must own the grace of God in Dr Owen especially and in others also.”¹  This visit was in 1675; five years later Owen discussed with Jollie the plans for unity of Congregationalists and Presbyterians and, as we noticed in the last chapter, he was wholly in favour of the scheme.  During 1675–6 Owen was also able to be of some help to the pastor of the Bedford Congregational church, the famous John Bunyan.  The former tinker was often in prison because of his nonconformist principles and practice and to assist in the task of getting him released someone wrote to Owen for his help.  Owen contacted his former tutor, Thomas Barlow, now the Bishop of Lincoln, but Barlow could not effect the release.  So in this undertaking Owen’s help proved of no avail.  When, however, Bunyan was released in 1676, he brought out of prison a manuscript, the worth and importance of which he could hardly have comprehended.  He took it to London in order to find a publisher and printer and took the opportunity of calling upon Owen.  After long conversation (the text of which every historian of Nonconformity would dearly love to be able to read!) Owen recommended Bunyan to take the manuscript to his own publisher, Nathaniel Ponder.  A few years later when The Pilgrim’s Progress was beginning to be acknowledged as a literary and spiritual masterpiece, London printers jokingly referred to Ponder as “Bunyan Ponder”: such was the success of the book.  But not only did Owen admire the writing of Bunyan; he also admired his ability as a preacher.  When asked by the King, whom, as we have seen, he met occasionally, why he listened to an uneducated tinker, Owen is said to have replied, “Could I possess the tinker’s abilities for preaching, please your majesty, I would gladly relinquish all my learning.”²

            ¹The Note Book of the Rev. Thomas Jolly, ed. Henry Fishwick, Manchester, 1895, pp. 24–5, 136 and 49.

        ²Asty, p. xxx, and J. Ivimey, Life of Mr John Bunyan, 180o9, p. 294.

      From time to time the Congregational ministers in and around London seem to have met in order to enjoy Christian fellowship, agree on advice to be sent to their brethren in country areas, and raise financial help for those in distress.  Included in this group of ministers were such veteran Congregationalists as Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Joseph Caryl, William Greenhill, and Thomas Brooks, with such younger men as John Collins, John Loder and George Griffith.  Though Nye, Caryl and Greenhill all died between 1671 and 1673, Goodwin, who preached to the church in Fetter Lane, and Brooks, who preached to the church in Lime Street, continued to serve the cause of Nonconformity until 1680.  Collins, a gifted speaker and constant correspondent with New England, served his church in Paved Alley until 1687 when he died of dropsy.  Loder died at the age of forty-seven in 1673, but Griffith, who lived to see the Toleration Act of 1689, continued to serve Congregationalists until the dawn of the eighteenth century.

      At a meeting in March 1669 they felt constrained to write a letter to the Governor of Massachusetts, whom some of them knew personally, to request the cessation of the persecution of Baptists in the colony.¹  In Old England, Nonconformists of all types were fighting a single battle for freedom to worship God according to their consciences, and their cause was not helped by news from New England (of which opponents of Nonconformity made much use) that Baptists were not given basic freedoms by the Congregational ministers and magistrates.  Unfortunately their letter had little or no immediate effect since the Congregational brethren in Massachusetts believed that in giving Baptists freedom they would be opening up the flood gates to all kinds of sectarianism.  A second letter sent by the group in 1669 likewise had no immediate effect.²  This was sent not to New England but to the independent Church at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where there was a schism which led ultimately to the formation of a separate Baptist church.  But before this happened the London ministers counselled that those who were not part of the schismatic group should pray for their brethren and win them back into a unified church through love and tenderness.

¹Correspondence, No. 74, pp. 145–6, London ministers to the Governor of Massachusetts.

²Correspondence, No. 75, pp. 146–8: London ministers to the church at Hitchin.

      From Massachusetts in 1671 came a letter signed by nine ministers and seven magistrates and addressed to Owen and his colleagues.¹  It requested help for Harvard College.  There was need, the London men were told, to rebuild the College, find a new President and persuade English students to pursue studies in the College.  In reply, the ministers stated that they would very much like to help but, due to the effects of the Clarendon Code, they were “entangled in many straits.”²  The “daily relief” of many Nonconformists in “many counties” was dependent on the generosity of the people of London.  Thus there was little hope of doing much for New England.  However, they promised to do all they could.  One practical thing they were able to do was to recommend Leonard Hoar to them as President of Harvard.³

        ¹Correspondence, No. 77, pp. 149–51: Magistrates and Ministers of Massachusetts to London ministers.

        ²Correspondence, No. 78, pp. 151–3: London ministers to Magistrates and Ministers of Massachusetts.

        ³For Hoar see C.R.  He was President from 1672 to 1675.

      Owen took a leading part in the discussions which lay behind these letters and his signature appeared on all of them.  He also took part, whenever possible, in services of ordination.  Though the calling and actual ordination of a pastor or teacher was the prerogative of the local church, he was sometimes asked to be a guest preacher.  On the 14th December 1671, for example, he travelled to Stepney, east of London, to share in the ordination service for Matthew Mead.¹  Others taking part were Caryl, Griffith and Collins.  In that same year a young Congregationalist named Thomas Hardcastle went from London to Bristol with a view to becoming pastor of the church worshipping at Broadmead, and he took with him a letter of commendation ‘signed with ten ministers’ hands ... whereof Dr Owen was one.”  Hardcastle looked upon Owen as one of the two “most loving friends” that he had in London.²

        ¹A. T. Jones, Notes on the Early Days of Stepney Meeting, 1887, p. 50.  In Works, IX, there are several sermons preached at unspecified ordination services.

        ²The Records of a Church of Christ meeting at Bιoadmead, Bristol, 1640–1687, ed. E. B. Underhill, II, pp. 148 and 382.

      Whilst taking a lively interest in the state of the Congregational churches, Owen also wrote several books which rank amongst the classic statements of Congregational church polity.  Reference has already been made to the catechism, A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God.  Apart from this there were three other major works: A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church-Peace and Unity (1672), An Inquiry into the Original, Nature ... and Communion of Evangelical Churches (1681) and the posthumously published True Nature of a Gospel Church (1689).¹  Of these the latter has been regarded as a “text-book” for the doctrine of Congregational church government and organisation.²  The doctrine expounded in them is essentially the same as that in the Declaration of ... Order (1658) which we noticed in chapter five; but there is one major difference.  The Declaration allowed a man to be a parish incumbent and also hold office within a gathered church; but after 1662 this was not possible any longer and so the church which was in the mind of Owen in these books was only the gathered church, and the minister was only the man who held office in such a church.

¹These four treatises are in Works, XV and XVI.

²Cf. for example the reprint in 1947 edited by John Huxtable.

      Dr Nuttall has expounded in his book, Visible Saints, the Congregational way in terms of the principles of separation, fellowship, freedom and holiness.  That is, the separation of the true church from worldliness and the State, the mutual edification of the members in the love of Christ by the Word of God, the voluntary nature of membership, and the pursuit of individual sanctification towards a conformity to the mind of Christ.  All these themes are to be found in Owen’s writings.  His doctrine of the church was based on the New Testament alone.  He defined the church as “a society of persons called out of the world, or their natural worldly state, by the administration of the Word and Spirit, unto the obedience of the faith, or the knowledge and worship of God in Christ, joined together in a holy band, or by special agreement, for the exercise of the communion of the saints, in the due observation of all the ordinances of the gospel.”  A group of Christian people became a gospel church “upon their own voluntary consent and engagement to walk together in the due subjection of their souls and consciences unto Christ’s authority, as their King, Priest and Prophet.”¹

¹Works, XV, pp. 479 and 486.

      If this was the divine pattern which Congregational people must follow, what, many of them asked, should be their attitude towards the services and people of the State Church?  First of all, Owen replied, members of a semi-reformed National Church were to be treated with respect and love for they might belong “to the church catholic mystical,” that universal company of the regenerate who made up the Body of Christ.  Certainly there were true Christians in the Church of England.

We believe that among the visible professors in this nation, there is as great a number of sincere believers as in any nation under heaven; so that in it are treasured up a considerable portion of the invisible mystical church of Christ.  We believe that the generality of the inhabitants of this nation are by their profession constituted an eminent part of the kingdom of Christ in this world.¹

¹Works, XVI, p. 253.

      To admit there were Christians in the parish churches was one thing; to worship in these “public places” was another.  Though a few nonconformist ministers did attend the parish services, the majority resolutely refused to do this.  To attend was to deprive the gathered churches of “the principal plea for the justification of their separation from the Church of England”¹ in its contemporary state.  In this matter Owen would not compromise; to have gone to take part in a liturgy would have been to do no less than flout the authority of Christ and His Word.

¹Works, XVI, p. 253.

      Apart from producing many pamphlets and books defending Nonconformity or expounding the Congregational way, he also wrote in the last twenty years of his life a series of works which rank amongst the greatest theological books of seventeenth-century European Protestantism.  They may be divided for convenience into three basic types – doctrinal divinity, practical divinity and Biblical commentaries – although in making this division it must be remembered that those books which are basically doctrinal have practical application, that the practical divinity is based on Biblical exegesis, and that the commentaries contain both doctrine and practice.  It is these books, much prized in Britain, Holland and North America, and reprinted many times, that have given Owen a lasting reputation in evangelical Protestantism.

      Central to the appreciation and understanding of these books is Owen’s conception of authority in religion.  G. R. Cragg writes that “for any thoughtful person in the seventeenth century the problem of authority was urgent.  It was involved, directly or indirectly, in every controversy of the age.”¹  Owen had no doubts.  For him Holy Scripture, God’s written Word, was the sole authority for Christian faith, hope and conduct.  Creeds, confessions of faith and systems of doctrine were useful as summaries of the common faith as well as aids to the memorizing and understanding of the faith, but they could never take the place of the Bible.  Theirs was only a human authority, whereas the concepts and words of the Bible were divinely inspired because the human authors had been as “pens” in the hands of the Holy Spirit.  Thus, being a spiritual book, its divine truth and authority was self-evidencing to those who were regenerate and spiritually-minded.  Rational arguments for the veracity of Scripture (e.g. that the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the N.T.) were helpful, but secondary, for in and of themselves they could never convince anyone of the truth of Scripture.  Without the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the hearer or reader the Bible was as a dead letter.  He who inspired the authors must likewise inspire the readers.

¹G. R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1966, p. 71.

      Further, Owen maintained, the Bible is God’s Word in another important sense.  The sum, substance and centre of the Old and New Testaments is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Eternal Word (John 1:1).  This was a conviction to which he adhered more strongly as he grew the older.  “So much as we know of Christ, his sufferings and glory,” he wrote in 1683, “so much do we understand the Scriptures.”  This, however, is not to say that in his early polemical writings against Arminianism he proposed that the substance of the Christian religion was intellectual assent to propositional, orthodox divinity.  He had, as we shall see, too high a doctrine of the Holy Spirit to fall into this error which has unfortunately sometimes engulfed those who over-emphasise orthodoxy.¹  What is true is that in both his early and later works he makes free use of the conceptual apparatus of academic, reformed divinity (e.g. federal theology).  The difference between his early writing (e.g. A Display of Arminianism) and later writing (e.g. A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit) is that the former is primarily polemical whilst the latter aims to be expository and devotional as well.

            ¹Cf. G. W. Bromiley, “The Church Doctrine of Inspiration,” in Revelation and the Bible, ed. C. F. H. Henry, Grand Rapids, 1969, for a discussion of this question of changes is the Protestant doctrine of Scripture.

      Indeed, it is significant that Owen dealt in some detail with the relationship of the Holy Spirit to Scripture in his greatest contribution to the discipline of systematic theology (doctrinal divinity), his five-volume exposition of the doctrine of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity.¹  The first of the five, published in 1674, is the longest and bears the title, Pneumatologia, or, A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit: wherein an Account is given of His Name, Nature, Personality, Dispensation, Operations and Effects.  Subsequent volumes dealt with the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the understanding of Scripture, to His helping of the believer in prayer and to His work as the Advocate and Comforter of the Church and as the Author of spiritual gifts.

¹These are in Works, III and IV.

      Although the Protestant Reformation had brought a new emphasis to the role of the Spirit in the Church, it was left to divines of the seventeenth century to develop this emphasis.  Amongst these Owen stands supreme.  In the preface to Pneumatologia he declared, “I know not of any who ever went before me in this design of representing the whole economy of the Holy Spirit.”  He was not repudiating the work of those early Fathers who had sought to define the doctrine of the Spirit; neither was he repudiating the work of Calvin or Bucer.  Rather he combined “the suffrage of the Ancient Church” with “the plain testimonies of the Scripture” and “the experience of them who do sincerely believe.”  The new element here is the place given to experience, the account of the reception of divine grace through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers.  As Dr Nuttall remarks, this stress on experience was not confined to Puritans and Nonconformists in the seventeenth century.¹  This was the century which had Hamlet as its prototype and exemplar and which produced a philosophical system which began with “cogito, ergo sum.”²  This fact in no way invalidates Owen’s Biblical emphasis on personal experience; it merely sets it in context.

¹Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, Oxford, 1947, p. 7.

²That of Descartes. (“I think, therefore I exist.”)

      In his thinking and preaching Owen closely linked the gift of Christ to the world with the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.

For when God designed the great and glorious work of recovering fallen man and the saving of sinners, to the praise of the glory of his grace, he appointed, in his infinite wisdom, two great means thereof.  The one was the giving of his Son for them, and the other was the giving of his Spirit unto them.  And hereby was way made for the manifestation of the glory of the whole blessed Trinity; which is the utmost end of all the works of God.

He held that “the great promise of the Old Testament, the principal object of the faith, hope and expectation of believers, was that concerning the coming of the Son of God in the flesh.”  This being so “the Holy Ghost, the doctrine concerning his person, his work, his grace, is the most peculiar and principal subject of the Scriptures of the New Testament.”  He believed that “no doctrine ... is more fully and plainly declared in the Gospel than this of our regeneration by the effectual and ineffable operation of the Holy Spirit.”¹  So naturally many pages are spent in the elucidation of this doctrine and of the subsequent doctrine of sanctification, the making of the heart and life of the believer holy.

¹Works, III, p. 23 and 29.

      The principal aim of the five volumes was thoroughly to expound an important doctrine.  Owen also sought to confute three contemporary erroneous views of the Holy Spirit and His work.  The two most obvious of these were the Quaker notion of the inner light and secret revelations and the Socinian denial of the deity of the Spirit.  The third, though less obvious, was much more common both amongst Churchmen and Dissenters.  Many people admitted the truth of the deity of the Holy Spirit but they paid no attention to His work of regeneration and sanctification in their hearts and lives.  Thus their living denied their doctrine.  In both his principal aim and his subsidiary tasks Owen more than succeeded.  His work was attacked by William Clagett, a chaplain to Charles II;¹ nevertheless, it remains to this day the most exhaustive exposition of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the English language.

            ¹Clagett’s study was entitled A Discourse Concerning the Operations of the Holy Spirit.  John Humfrey defended Owen’s views and Clagett replied to Humfrey.  See Orme, p. 297.

      Amongst Owen’s practical writings, which were designed to help the reader practise love to God and man, were studies on The Nature of ... Indwelling Sin (1668) and The Grace and Duty of being Spiritually-Minded (1681).¹  The former was based on a series of sermons preached either at Stadhampton or in London from Romans 7:21 (“I find then a law that when I would do good evil is present with me”).  By modern standards it contains a rather pessimistic view of human nature and its susceptibility to sin and temptation, but it is thoroughly in the Augustinian and Calvinist tradition.  It begins with the following statement by Owen: “That the doctrine of original sin is one of the fundamental truths of our Christian profession hath been always owned in the Church of God.”  The whole treatise then expounds what original sin really means in terms of the evil impulses, desires, affections and actions that proceed from the human heart.  Owen clearly believed that the mortification of sin in the life of the believer could not truly begin until he was conscious of the power of indwelling sin in his old, Adamic nature.  The latter treatise with a more positive theme was the result of his meditations as he lay ill in his home at Ealing.  When partially recovered he put his thoughts into sermon-form and addressed them to his church in Leadenhall Street.  Later he prepared the sermons for the press.  As with the letters he wrote to Sir John and Lady Hartopp and Charles Fleetwood which were briefly considered above, this book (and others of this period) reveal that Owen’s mind during his last few years of life were much taken up with meditation upon the Person of Christ, and of heaven.  To some this may appear as a form of escapism but to the Christian it is the goal of all theology.  Owen defined being spiritually-minded as the exercise of the mind in its thoughts and the inclination of the mind in its affections upon God, His omnipotence and omnipresence and upon His Son, Jesus Christ.  Whilst the doctrinal content is always there, this treatise rises above doctrine in the sense that its aim is to achieve a living relationship between the believer and his Saviour, a relationship which Owen himself must certainly have enjoyed to produce such sermons and books.

¹Works, VII.

      Owen’s greatest work of Biblical exposition was, without any doubt, his study of the Epistle to the Hebrews, published in four folio-volumes between 1668 and 1684.¹  When he finished it he is reported by one who was very close to him to have said: “Now my work is done: it is time for me to die.”  Unlike most modem commentators, but in harmony with the majority of his contemporaries, Owen believed that the author of the Epistle was the Apostle Paul.  The first of the folio-volumes contained preliminary “exercitations” (Owen’s word) on questions of authorship, original language, and other topics.  In the second volume he considered two basic doctrines of the Epistle, namely the doctrines of the Sabbath and the Priesthood of Christ.  To the former topic, which had often been studied by earlier Puritans, he added little if anything that was new.  In dealing with the second theme he justly claimed that his treatment was more extensive and thorough than any other published study.  The Epistle to the Hebrews, of course, demonstrates that Jesus Christ is superior both to angels and to Moses; more importantly, it shows that He is the great High Priest (4:14) after the order not of Aaron but of Melchizedec, and His Priesthood is eternal.  At one and the same time He offered, and was Himself, the final sacrifice.  To the rich Old Testament background of this theme and to its relevance to Christian theology Owen did full justice.

¹Works, XVIII–XVIV.

      The two other volumes contained the Commentary itself, into which Owen put the wealth of his knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Rabbinical learning, Protestant theology and human nature.  He had three aims: to explain the actual meaning of the text; to attack any heresies or errors (especially in Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Socinianism) based on a false understanding or neglect of the text; and to apply any truths he found within the text to the practical needs of Christians who wished to grow in grace and knowledge.  He went, as it were, through the length and breadth of his subject leaving no stone unturned and no dark corner without light.  As with the exposition of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, this Commentary is exhaustive.  Indeed for most students of the Epistle it is too exhaustive.  They prefer to consult Delitzsch, Wescott or more modern writers.

      A word or concept that often occurs in this Epistle to the Hebrews is “covenant.”  The new covenant, inaugurated by Christ’s death and resurrection, is described, for example, as “a better covenant,” better, that is, than the covenant God made with Moses (cf. 8:6).  So we find an extensive treatment of covenant (federal) theology by Owen in this Commentary.  As no previous reference has been made to this important ingredient of seventeenth-century Puritan and Reformed theology, which was obviously a central idea in Owen’s thought, it will be appropriate to describe in brief his interpretation of it.¹  He held that there were two basic covenants between God and man.

        ¹There does not yet exist a satisfactory study of the origins and early development of Federal Theology.  Cf. the articles listed in P. Toon, Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism, pp. 29–30.

There were never absolutely any more than two covenants: wherein all persons indefinitely are concerned.  The first was the covenant of works made with Adam and with all in him.  And what he did as the head of that covenant, as our representative therein, is imputed unto us as if we had done it, Romans 5:12.  The other is that of grace, made originally with Christ and through him with all the elect.¹

¹Works, XXII, p. 391.

He admitted that the relationship between Jehovah and Adam was “not expressly called a covenant.”  Nevertheless, he held that it contained “the express nature of a covenant for it was the agreement of God and man concerning obedience and disobedience, rewards and punishments.”  If the covenant of works was made in the Garden of Eden the covenant of grace was made in heaven.  It had “its beginning in God’s love from all eternity.”  “All the elect of God were, in his eternal purpose and design, and in the everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son, committed unto him, to be delivered from sin, the law, and death, and to be brought into the enjoyment of God.”

      It may be asked, what relationship did Owen conceive to exist between these two covenants and the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and New covenants?  First, we may note that he believed that the Mosaic covenant (Exodus 20ff) “revived, declared and expressed all the commands” of the covenant of works in its decalogue.  Further, it revived the sanction, curse and sentence of death for transgressors and the promise of eternal life as a reward for perfect obedience.  So the Mosaic covenant was related in essence to the original covenant of works.¹  On the other hand, the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12ff.) and the New covenant (Matthew 26:28 etc.) were the publication, at the human level, in two related forms of the eternal covenant of grace.  In eternity God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit covenanted to redeem the elect (Owen sometimes called this the covenant of redemption), but putting this into operation on earth meant the publication and ratification of the Abrahamic and New Covenants.

¹Works, XXΠI, pp. 77–8.

      This summary is of course inadequate, but before we leave this topic we may ask whether Perry Miller’s widely accepted thesis that Puritan federal theology was a device to take the sting out of the “harsh” doctrine of God’s sovereignty applies in the case of Owen’s teaching.¹  The answer would seem to be clearly in the negative since Owen uses covenant theology both in his Commentary as well as in his The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677)² in order to emphasise the sovereignty and predestination of God.  And all human response to the covenant of grace is seen by him in the light of God’s gracious assistance and empowering of individual believers.  Covenant Theology provided both for Owen and many of his colleagues the intellectual framework for their views of God’s relationship with man, and man’s place and role in the world.  In the covenant of redemption they found the key to the meaning of creation and of salvation; in the larger term of reference, the covenant of grace, they could understand the reason for the choice of Abraham and his descendants as an elect nation, for the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, for the Church, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Last judgement and heaven and hell.  Within the covenant of works they found the key to the nature and responsibilities of man, his place in the universe, his suffering and the presence of evil in the world.  It was certainly a comprehensive concept and was in the background of Owen’s thoughts from 1643 onwards.

        ¹E.g., P. Miller, Errand into the Wilderness, Cambridge, Mass., 1956, pp. 48ff.  Cf. The critique of Miller’s views in J. S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England, Oxford, 1970.

        ²Works, V.

      The final volume of the Commentary on Hebrews was completed whilst Owen was living at Ealing.  He was constantly ill and his physicians were often in attendance.  His friends in both Old and New England waited for the expected news of his death whilst Owen himself suffered in quiet confidence.¹  Writing to Charles Fleetwood he expressed his delight that he was going to the One whom his soul loved.²  “I am leaving the ship of the Church in a storm,” he continued, “but while the great Pilot is in it the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable.”  On the morning of 24th of August 1683 he was visited by William Payne, a minister from Saffron Walden in Essex who was supervising the printing and proof-reading of Owen’s recently completed Meditations on the Glory of Christ.  Seeing his friend, Owen exclaimed, “O, brother Payne, the long-wished-for day is come at last, in which I shall see the glory in another manner than I have ever done or was capable of doing in this world.”³  This sentiment is often found in the book that Payne was proof-reading.

The revelation made of Christ in the blessed Gospel is far more excellent, more glorious, and more filled with rays of divine wisdom and goodness, than the whole creation and the just comprehension of it, if attainable, can contain or afford.  Without the knowledge hereof, the mind of man, however priding itself in other inventions and discoveries, is wrapped up in darkness and confusion.  This, therefore, deserves the severest of our thoughts, the best of our meditations and our utmost diligence in them.  For if our future blessedness shall consist in being where He is, and beholding of His glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in a constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation that is made in the Gospel, unto this very end, that by a view of it we may be gradually transformed into the same glory.⁴

        ¹Cf. the letters to increase Masher in Collections of the Mass. Hist. Soc. 4th Series, 1852, VIII, pp. 496 and 500.

        ²Correspondence, No. 98, p. 174.

        ³Orme, p. 342.

        ⁴Works, I, p. 275.

      So it was that on the twenty-first anniversary of the Great Ejection of 1662, another sad day came upon English Protestant Dissent.  Its greatest theologian and most ardent advocate of religious toleration was no more on earth, but with his Lord.  From Ealing Owen’s body was conveyed to a house in St James, Westminster, and from here, on the 4th September, it was taken to Bunhill Fields for burial, attended by the carriages of sixty-seven noblemen and gentlemen, as well as by a great crowd of ordinary people.  With no natural children or grandchildren to survive him, Owen left behind, as Calvin hid done a century earlier, many “spiritual” sons and daughters to preserve his name and teaching.

Chapter VIII – Epilogue

      John Owen has been described in a variety of ways by his admirers and friends.  In the seventeenth century he was “the Calvin of England” to Ambrose Barnes, a Congregationalist from Newcastle,¹ while to Anthony Wood, the Oxford Anglican, he was an “Atlas and Patriarch of Independency.”²  For a modern Congregationalist, Dr Erik Routley, he was “the greatest of the Puritan scholastics,”³ while he is described on the jacket of the 1965 reprint of Vols. I–XVI of his Works by the Banner of Truth Trust as “the greatest Britain theologian of all time.”  All four descriptions contain one or more aspects of the whole truth.  Certainly Owen was the kind of man whom his contemporaries as well as his later readers seem either to have loved or to have despised.  If the intransigent Anglicans, Samuel Parker and George Vernon found both Owen and his principles distasteful, David Clarkson found them to be exemplary.  In his funeral sermon for Owen in 1683, Clarkson expressed the opinion that the account of the life of Owen “due to the world required a volume,” not merely a few words in an oration.  For, he stated, “a great light is fallen; one of eminency for holiness, learning, parts and abilities; a pastor, a scholar, a divine of the first magnitude; holiness gave a divine lustre to his other accomplishment, it shined in his whole course, and was diffused through his whole conversation ... He had extraordinary intellectuals, a vast memory, a quick apprehension, a clear and piercing judgement; he was a passionate lover of light and truth, of divine truth especially, he pursued it unweariedly, through painful and wasting studies, such as impaired his health and strength, such as exposed him to those distempers with which he conflicted many years.”⁴  A similar estimate of Owen written by Thomas Gilbert appears on his tombstone in Bunhill Fields.⁵  It describes the dead Nonconformist as “furnished with human literature in all its kinds and in all its degrees” and using it all “to serve the interests of Religion and to serve in the Sanctuary of God.”  Owen was “a scribe every way instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom of God” and “the effulgent lamp of evangelical truth.”⁶

        ¹Memoirs of Ambrose Barnes, ed. W. H. D. Longstaffe, 1867, p. 16.

        ²Wood, History of the University of Oxford, ed. Gutch, Π, p. 650.

        ³Routley, English Religious Dissent, Cambridge, 1960, p. l0.

        ⁴The sermon is, printed in Orme, pp. 411ff.

        ⁵The Latin inscription is translated in Orme, p. 346, and reproduced in Appendix Π below.

        ⁶Owen’s wide reading is confirmed both by the references to other authors in his own books and by the size of his library.  This was sold by public auction in 1684 and according to the Catalogue, Bibliotheca Oweniana sive Catalogus Librorum, it contained 1418 Latin treatises, 32 bound volumes of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and 1454 English books.  They included works by every major theological and classical author as well as books on history, travel and geography.

      In these descriptions we see the beginning of the “nonconformist view of Owen” that was to be dominant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It was a view of Owen which arose from his writings, preaching and pastoral work after the Restoration.  His involvement in the political and ecclesiastical affairs of the Commonwealth and Protectorate was virtually forgotten or pushed into the background, despite the critical comments of Baxter in his Reliquiae.¹  Thus m the two Memoirs which were published in 1720–21 Owen is portrayed as pre-eminently the Calvinist divine, the writer on theological, devotional and practical themes, and the Biblical commentator.²  This is perhaps to be expected in that in 1721 a large portion of Protestant Dissent was quickly moving in the direction of Arminianism and Socinianism.  A few years earlier Cotton Mather, the American writer, had declared that “the Church of God was wronged in that the life of the great John Owen was not written.”³  Unfortunately, these two brief Memoirs did not wholly right the wrong that Mather had sensed.  If one removes from them the descriptions of the contents of Owen’s books there is very little biographical information left.

¹Baxter, Reliquiae, I, p. 101.

²I.e. the anonymous Life (1720) and that by Asty in 1721.

³Quoted by Orme, p. 2.

      It was not until 1820 that a full-scale attempt was made to write the life of Owen.  Entitled Memoirs of the Life and Writings of John Owen, it came from the pen of William Orme (1787–1830), a Congregational minister.  It was reprinted in 1826 as Volume I of Thomas Russell’s edition of The Works of John Owen.  This biography added much factual information to the knowledge of Owen’s life and connexions.  Orme, however, had been much influenced by the evangelical Calvinism of Robert Haldane and his view of Owen was necessarily coloured by this.  Though he had no basic disagreement with his subject’s theology, he did express criticism of Owen’s manner of style and writing.  More importantly, he found it difficult to believe that Owen, the great devotional writer, could have been closely involved in the “shadowy” activities of the Independents between 1649 and 1660.  So he chose either to deny Owen’s part in them or to minimise it.  Further, he simply grouped together all the material on Owen that he could find without employing any basic, unifying themes.

      The next influential biography to appear, written by Andrew Thomson of Edinburgh, was printed as part of the contents of Volume I of The Works of John Owen edited by W. H. Goold in 1850–53.  This was brief and took its information from the рrevious Memoirs but it was concise and easily read.  It provides an excellent picture of what has previously been described as the “nonconformist view of Owen,” a view that was shared by the evangelical Calvinists of the Scottish Kirk.  Thomson had little desire to investigate Owen’s political involvement; rather, he made a deliberate attempt to see him primarily as the theologian.  And he allowed himself to criticise Owen on one point only – his unfortunate controversy with Brian Walton over the various readings of ancient manuscripts of the Bible which were printed in the London Polyglot (1657) edited by Walton.

      If Thomson was hesitant to criticise him, Owen’s next biographer, James Moffatt, who became a noted Scottish theologian, was ready to bring his youthful and critical theological mind to bear upon his subject.¹  Unfortunately Moffatt seems to have done little original research and thus to have made use only of the previous biographies and the new secondary sources that had appeared since 1850.  This fact tends to make his evaluation of Owen less effective.  He was ready to admit that Owen’s relationship to the officers at Wallingford House in 1659 tarnished his reputation.  He was also quite free in his criticism of both the content and style of Owen’s book.  “Owen’s mind,” he stated, “was essentially abstract ... He failed to allow for the wind, and thus his sheer powers of ratiocination often played him false, when he had to deal with less logical but equally acute and earnest minds.”²  Here Moffatt allowed his rhetoric to run away with him.  However, he did consider that Owen’s writings on toleration and schism were important; further, he allowed that “the two subjects which may be said to have moved him to his highest reach of power” were “first, the infirmity of the human heart, as it aspired and twists in the moral passage and discipline of this life, and secondly, the splendour, the bliss, the pre-eminence of Jesus.”³  Here again the “nonconformist view of Owen” has come through.  Indeed it must come through, for some of Owen’s theological writings after 1660 continue to rank among vitally important theological books.

        ¹The biography is in the “Introductory Sketch” in The Golden Book of John Owen, ed. J. Moffatt, 1904, pp. 1–96..

        ²Ibid, p. 46.

        ³Ibid, pp. 87–8.

      Without, it is hoped, neglecting this “nonconformist view” of Owen, the present study has aimed to portray the total Owen, the pastor, the chaplain, the educator, the ecclesiastical statesman, the politician and the theologian.  Nevertheless, it must be admitted that despite the many new facts about his career and connexions which have come to light in this study, Owen as a man, as a human being, still remains an elusive character.  After reading the Reliquiae or Dr Nuttall’s biography,¹ one feels that one knows Owen’s contemporary, Richard Baxter, as a real, living person, but the same cannot be said of Owen after reading this or previous “Memoirs.”

      To a certain extent we still cannot get nearer to Owen than did Asty when he wrote:

As to his person his stature was tall, his visage grave and majestic and withal comely: he had the aspect and deportment of a gentleman, suitable to his birth.  He had a very large capacity of mind, a ready invention, a good judgement, a great natural wit which being improved by education, rendered him a person of incomparable abilities.  As to his temper he was very affable and courteous, familiar and sociable; the meanest persons found an easy access to his converse and friendship.  He was facetious and pleasant in his common discourse, jesting with his acquaintance but with sobriety and measure; a great mater of his passions especially that of anger; he was of a serene and even temper, neither elated with honour, credit, friends, or estate, nor depressed with troubles and difficulties.²

¹Nuttall, Richard Baxter, 1965.

²Asty, p. xxxiii.

      The majestic deportment of Owen is partially confirmed by the portraits of him that still may be seen.¹  Of his natural wit, tinged perhaps at times with a little sarcasm, we have an example in one of his letters to John Thornton.  Referring to the scientific activity of Henry Oldenburgh and his friends Owen wrote: “I hope that they are upon some serious consultations for the benefit of mankind, how a hen may sit on her eggs and addle none, how oysters may be so geometrically layd that instead of 200 or 300 an oyster wench may lay 8 or 900 in her basket at once and sell them all without tearing her throat or tiring her head.”²  That Owen was “a great master of his passions” is evident from the way he conducted theological controversy.  As Stillingfleet remarked, Owen’s writings were coloured “by civility and decent language.”  Finally, to illustrate Owen’s affectionate nature, we may quote from the postscript of the letter to Thornton mentioned above.  “Our musk melons are ripe,” he wrote, “witness that I have sent you some; I would have sent more, but you know Matthew!”  Matthew was his young son.

            ¹As far as I know the extant portraits of Owen are as follows:

                1.  The portrait in the National Gallery, London.

                2.  The portraits ш the Congregational College, Manchester, Baptist College, Bristol, and Mansfield College, Oxford.

        The N.P.G. portrait is of the younger Owen whilst those ш the denominational Colleges are of the older Owen.

                3.  The Radio Times Hulton Picture Library.  Here the portrait is of Owen in academic dress.

            ²Correspondence, No. 70, p. 132.

      As viewed in terms of both the seventeenth century and Christian history as a whole, Owen obviously stands out as a great theologian.  This fact has been readily admitted throughout this book.  However, let it not be forgotten that he was a theologian of the seventeenth century!  We may briefly illustrate this point.  First, his methodology was based on an Aristotelian education and is not in common use today.  Secondly, like so many of his contemporaries, he dealt with most topics in such detail (meandering “ad nauseam” through that which many would now regard as trivialities) that he obscured the main principles in a plethora of words.  Thirdly, he defended positions (e.g. the antiquity of Hebrew vowel-points and the Pauline authorship of Hebrews) which informed evangelical scholarship has long since abandoned.  Finally, he used and interpreted the Old Testament in a way which few wood do today.  For example, he deduced the duties of the Christian magistrate (i.e. the English Parliament) directly from the duties laid down in the Old Testament for the King of Israel; the compilers of the Westminster Confession of Faith also did this but it is significant that modern Presbyterian Churches have changed the chapter on the civil magistrate.  These things being so it surely behoves modern readers of Owen’s writings to approach them with care if they are to gain from them the maximum benefit.

      Taking into account he was a man of the seventeenth century the one real criticism that may fairly be levelled against Owen, and which has already been raised, concerns his literary style.  The words of John Stoughton written a century ago are still apt:¹

It is to be feared Owen will never gain that position in literature to which his learning and abilities fairly entitle him; and the comparative neglect which encircles one of the greatest names in English theological literature is a confirmation of the great critical maxim, that no writer, however able, can secure for his works abiding popularity if he be heedless of the style and dress in which he arrays his thought.

And today Owen’s long, involved sentences and many digressions of thought seem even more removed from contemporary style and idiom.

¹Stoughton, British Heroes and Worthies, London, n.d., p. 174.

      It is greatly to be regretted that none of Owen’s diaries were preserved.  Perhaps in Puritan fashion he destroyed them before his death.  From them we could perhaps have entered into the secrets of his heart and mind and learned much more of his inner life.  As it is, we have to rely on a few letters and a few remarks of others to seek to understand him as a man.  And these are insufficient to probe the depths of his character.  So Owen must remain hidden as it were behind a veil.  His actions, his concerns and his theology we have gleaned from his letters, his books, and contemporary sources but his secret thoughts remain his own.  However, this much can be said: Owen shines through the available information as a truly great man, whose one basic concern in word and deed, book and action, was the proclamation of Jesus Christ and His gospel.

Additional Note:

      Since this book was written a further brief study of Owen has appeared.  It covers only the years 1616–1660, and is entitled, John Owen, Commonwealth Puritan (1972).  The author, Dr R. G. Lloyd, died in 1968, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript, which is why the book stops at 1660.  The treatment is at a popular level and no attempt was made by the author to consult manuscript sources or recent studies of Puritanism and Protestant Nonconformity.

Appendix  I

THE WORKS OF DR JOHN OWEN

 1.  A Display of Arminianism (1643)

 2.  The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished (1643)

 3.  Two Short Catechisms, wherein the Doctrines of Christ are explained (1645)

 4.  A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy, a Sermon (1646)

 5.  Eshcol; or Rules of Direction for the Walking of the Saints (1647)

 6.  Salus Electorum, Sаnguis Jesu; or the Death of Death (1647)

 7.  Ebenezer; a Memorial of the deliverance in Essex: two sermons (1648)

 8.  Righteous Zeal: a sermon with an Essay on Toleration (1649)

 9.  The Shaking of Heaven and Earth: a sermon (1649)

10. Of the Death of Christ, the Price He Paid (1650)

11. The Steadfastness of the Promises: a sermon (1650)

12. The Branch of the Lord: two sermons (1650)

13. The Advantage of the Kingdom of Christ: a sermon (1651)

14. The Labouring Saint’s Dismission to Rest: a sermon (1652)

15. Christ’s Kingdom and the Magistrate’s Power: a sermon (1652)

16. Humble Proposals for the Propagation of the Gospel [with others] (1652)

17. Proposals for the Propagation of the Gospel ... also some principles of Christian religion [with others] (1653)

18. De Divina Justitia Diatriba (1653)

19. The Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance (1654)

20. Vindiciae Evangelicae: or the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated (1655)

21. Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656)

22. A Review of the Annotations of Grotius (1656)

23. God’s Work in Founding Zion: a sermon (1656)

24. God’s Presence with His People: a sermon (1656)

25. Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (1657)

26. Of Schism (1657)

27. A Review of the True Nature of Schism (1657)

28. An Answer to a later Treatise of Daniel Cawdry about ... Schism (1658) in A Defence of Mr John Cotton (1658)

29. Of Temptation: the Nature and Power of it (1658)

30. Pro Sacris Scripturis Exercitationes adversus Fanaticos (1658)

31. Of the Divine Original ... of the Scriptures (1659)

32. A Vindication of the Hebrew and Greek Texts (1659)

33. The Glory and Interest of Nations: a sermon (1659)

34. Two Questions concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate about Religion (1659)

35. Theologovmena Pantodapa (1661)

36. Animadversions on a Treatise entitled Fiat Lux (1662)

37. A Discourse concerning Liturgies (1662)

38. A Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux (1664)

39. Indulgence and Toleration Considered (1667)

40. A Peace-Offering, in an Apology and Humble Plea for Indulgence (1667)

41. A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God (1667)

42. The Nature, Power, Deceit and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin (1667)

43. A Practical Exposition of Psalm cxxx. (1668)

44. Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews, I (1668)

45. Truth and Innocence Vindicated (1669)

46. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1669)

47. An Account of the Grounds and Reasons on which Protestant Dissenters desire Liberty (1670)

48. Reflections on a Slanderous Libel (1670)

49. Exercitations concerning the ... Day of Sacred Rest (1671)

50. A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church-Peace and Unity (1672)

51. A Vindication of some passages in a Discourse concerning Communion with God (1674)

52. A Discourse on the Holy Spirit (1674)

53. An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, II (1674)

54. The Testimony of the Church is not the chief reason for our believing the Scripture to be the Word of God (printed in N. Vincent, The Moming-Exercises against Popery) (1675)

55. How we may bring our hearts to bear reproofs (printed in S. Annesley, A Supplement to the Morning-Exercises) (1676)

56. The Nature of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel (1676)

57. The Reason of Faith (1677)

58. The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677)

59. The Causes, Ways and Means of understanding the Mind of God (1678)

60. A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ (1678)

61. The Church of Rome no Safe Guide (1679)

62. Some Considerations of Union among Protestants (1680)

63. A Brief Vindication of the Nonconformists from the charge of Schism (1680)

64. A Continuation of the Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, III (1680)

65. An Inquiry into the Original, Nature ... and Communion of Evangelical Churches (1681)

66. An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God (1681)

67. The Grace and Duty of being Spiritually-minded (1681)

68. A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer (1682)

69. A Brief and Impartial Account of the Protestant Religion (1682)

70. The Chamber of Imagery in the Church of Rome Laid Open (in The Morning Exercises against Popery) (1683)

71. A Letter concerning the Matter of the Present Excommunications (1683)

72. Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ (1684)

73. A Continuation of the Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, IV (1684)

74. Of the Dominion of Sin and Grace (1688)

75. True Nature of the Gospel Church (1689)

76. Seasonable Words for English Protestants: a sermon (1690)

77. Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ Applied (1691)

78. A Guide to Church-Fellowship and Order (1692)

79. Two Discourses, of the Holy Spirit as Comforter ... and Author of Spiritual Gifts (1693)

80. Gospel Grounds and Evidences of the Faith of God’s Elect (1695)

81. An Answer unto Two Questions ... with Twelve Arguments against any Conformity to Worship not of Divine Institution (1720)

82. A Complete Collection of the Sermons of ... J. Owen ... also several tracts ... to which are added his Latin Orations (1721)

83. Three Discourses delivered at the Lord’s Table (1750)

84. Thirteen Sermons preached on various occasions (1756)

85. Twenty-five Discourses suitable to the Lord’s Supper (1760)

86. Posthumous Sermons (in Goold, Works, Vol. XVI) (1850)

Appendix  II

EPITAPH BY THOMAS GILBERT

On Owen’s tombstone in Bunhill Fields, London

 

JOHANNES OWEN, S.T.P.

Agro Oxoniensi Oriundus;

Patte insigni Theologo Theologus ipse Insignior;

Et seculi hujus Insignissimis annumerandus:

Communibus Humaniorum Literarum Suppetiis,

Mensura pacum Communi, Instructus;

Omnibus, quasi bene Ordinata Ancillarum Serie,

Ab illo jussis suae Famulari Theologiae:

Theologiae Polemicae, Practicae, et quam vocant Casuum

(Harum enim Omnium, quae magis sua habenda erat, ambigitur)

In illa, Viribus plusquam Herculeis, serpentibus tribus,

Arminio, Socino, Cano, Venenosa Strinxit guttura:

In ista suo prior, ad verbi Amussim, Expertus Pectore,

Universam Sp. Scti. OEconomiam Aliis tradidit:

Et, missis Caeteris, Coluit ipse, Sensitque,

Beatam quam scripsit, cum Deo Communionem,

In terris Viator comprehensori in caelis proximus:

In Casuum Theologia, Singulis Oraculi instar habitus;

Quibus Opus erat, et copia, Consulendi;

Scriba ad Regnum Caelorum usquequoque institutus;

Multis privatos intra Parietes, a Suggesto Pluribus,

A Prelo omnibus, ad eundem scopum collineantibus,

Pura Doctrinae Evangelici Lampas Praeluxit;

Et sensim, non sine aliorum, suoque sensu,

Sic praelucendo Periit,

Assiduis Infirmitatibus Obsiti,

Morbis Creberrimis Impetiti,

Durisque Laboribus potissimum Attriti, Corporis,

(Fabricae, donec ita Quassatae, Spectabilis) Ruinas,

Deo ultra Fruendi Cupida, Deseruit;

Die, a Terrenis Potestatibus, Plurimis facto Fatali;

Illi, A Coelesti Numine, felici reddito;

Mensis Scilicet Augusti XXIV° Anno a Partu Virgineo.

M.DC.LXXXIIIo AEtat. LXVIIo.x

 

      Translation: – John Owen, D.D. born in the county of Oxford, the son of an eminent Minister, himself more eminent, and worthy to be enrolled among the first Divines of the age.  Furnished with human literature in all its kinds, and in all its degrees, he called forth all his knowledge in an orderly train to serve the interests of Religion, and minister in the Sanctuary of his God.  In Divinity, practical, polemical, and casuistical, he excelled others, and was in all equal to himself.  The Arminian, Socinian, and Popish errors, those Hydras, whose contaminated breath, and deadly poison infested the church, he, with more than Herculean labour, repulsed, vanquished, and destroyed.  The whole economy of redeeming grace, revealed and applied by the Holy Spirit, he deeply investigated and communicated to others; having first felt its divine energy, according to its draught in the Holy Scriptures, transfused into his own bosom.  Superior to all terrene pursuits, he constantly cherished, and largely experienced, that blissful communion with Deity, he so admirably describes in his writings.  While on the road to Heaven his elevated mind almost comprehended its full glories and joys.  When he was consulted on cases of conscience his resolutions contained the wisdom of an Oracle.  He was a scribe every way instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  In conversation, he held up to many, in his public discourses, to more, in his publications from the press, to all, who were set out for the celestial Zion, the effulgent lamp of evangelical truth to guide their steps to immortal glory.  While he was thus diffusing his divine light, with his own inward sensations, and the observations of his afflicted friends, his earthly tabernacle gradually decayed, till at length his deeply sanctified soul longing for the fruition of its God, quitted the body.  In younger age a most comely and majestic form; but in the latter stages of life, depressed by constant infirmities, emaciated with frequent diseases, and above all crushed under the weight of intense and unremitting studies, it became an incommodious mansion for the vigorous exertions of the spirit in the service of its God.  He left the world on a day, dreadful to the Church by the cruelties of men, but blissful to himself by the plaudits of his God, August 24, 1683, aged 67.

 

Abbreviations

Asty                         John Asty, “Memoir of Dr John Owen,” in A Complete Collection of the Sermons of Dr John Owen, 1721.

C.J.                         The Journals of the House of Commons.

Correspondence     The Correspondence of John Owen (1616–1683), ed. Peter Toon, 1970.

C.R.                         Calamy Revised, ed. A. G. Matthews, Oxford, 1934.

C.S.P.D.                  Calendar of State Papers (Domestic Series).

D.N.B.                     Dictionary of National Biography.

L.J.                          The Journals of the House of Lords.

Orme                       The Works of John Owen, ed. Thomas Russell, 1826, Volume I, “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Dr John Owen” by William Orme.

Oxford Orations     The Oxford Orations of Dr John Owen, ed. Peter Toon, Linkinhorne House, Linkinhorne (Cornwall), 1971.

Works                     The Works of John Owen, ed. W. H. Goold, Edinburgh, 1850–53, 24 Vols.

 

COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS

National	Personal: John Owen
1616 William Shakespeare dies	1616 Born.
1617 Raleigh’s expedition to Guiana
1620 Pilgrim Fathers sail to New England
1625 Charles I becomes King and marries Henrietta Maria
	1628 Enters Oxford University.
1630 Laud becomes Chancellor of Oxford.
	1632 Graduates B.A.
1633 Laud becomes Archbishop of Canterbury.          Samuel Pepys, the diarist, is born
	1635 Graduates M.A.
1637 Charles I introduces new Prayer Book in Scotland	1637 Becomes a private tutor
1640 Short Parliament meets. Long Parliament (1640–53) begins to sit.
1641 Irish Rebellion.          Grand Remonstrance
1642 Civil War begins	1642 Moves to London and experiences assurance of salvation
1643 Westminster Assembly meets.          Solemn League and Covenant signed	1643 Publishes his first book, A Display of Arminianism, and becomes minister at Fordham
1644 Battles of Marston Moor and Newbury	1644 Marries Mary Rooke
1645 Laud executed.         Formation of New Model Army
1646 End of first civil war	1646 Preaches before Parliament and moves to Coggeshall as minister.  He becomes a Congregationalist
1648 Siege of Colchester in the second brief civil war.          Pride’s purge of Parliament	1648 Chaplain at the siege of Colchester
1649 Charles I executed.          Cromwell’s expedition to Ireland	1649 Accompanies Cromwell to Ireland
1650 Cromwell invades Scotland	1650 Appointed preacher to the Council of State and a chaplain to Cromwell with the expedition to Scotland
1651 Battle of Worcester	1651 Appointed Dean of Christ Church
1652 War with the Dutch	1652 Appointed Vice-Chancellor
1653 Rumр of Long Parliament expelled.         Barebone’s Parliament.         Cromwell becomes Protector	1653 Created D.D.
1654 Cromwell’s first Parliament	1654 Appointed a “Trier” in the “Cromwellian” State Church
1655 The rule of the major-generals.         Penruddock’s rising	1655 Prepares the defence of Oxford
1656 Cromwell’s second Parliament
	1657 Opposes moves to make Cromwell the King.         Ceases to be Vice-Chancellor
1658 Cromwell dies and his son, Richard, becomes Protector	1658 Takes prominent part in the Savoy Assembly
1659 Richard Cromwell abdicates.         General Monck marches from Scotland	1659 Forms a gathered church of officers in London
1660 Convention Parliament.          Charles II returns.          Act of Indemnity	1660 Removed from Christ Church Deanery and so lives quietly at Stadhampton
1661 Cavalier Parliament begins its long sitting.         Corporation Act
1662. Act of Uniformity
	1663–4 Family move to Hartopp’s home in Stoke Newington
1664 Conventicle Act
1665 Five Mile Act.          The Plague in London
1666 Fire of London
1667 Fall of Clarendon          Milton publishes Paradise Lost	1667 Active in seeking to persuade Parliament pass a Toleration Act
	1669–70 Discusses Nonconformist Unity with Richard Baxter
1670 Secret treaty of Dover concluded by Charles II
1672 Declaration of Indulgence	1672 Personally thanks the King for the indulgence
1673 Test Act	1673 Union of Caryl’s church with that of Owen’s under the latter’s ministry
1674 Death of John Milton	1674 First Volumes on Doctrine of Holy Spirit and Epistle to Hebrews appear
	1675 First wife,’Mary, dies
	1676 Marries Dorothy D’Oyley
1678 Popish Plot
1679 Cavalier Parliament dissolved.         First Exclusion Parliament
1680 Second Exclusion Parliament	1680 Controversy with Dean Stillingfleet
1681 Third Exclusion (i.e. Oxford) Parliament
1683 Rye House Plot	1683 Dies at Ealing
1688 “Glorious Revolution”
1689 Toleration Act