It soon became de rigeur for every self-respecting Reformed minister to have these 16 green hardbacks in their distinctive white and green wrappers on his shelves. I remember being told how Dr Lloyd-Jones was given a set of Owen as a wedding present and how Spurgeon had said that mastering Owen's works was a sure route to being a profound theologian.
Personally, I resisted the urge to have a set on my shelves until a friend informed me that his brother-in-law had decided to become a Quaker, so I could have a full set for a knock down £20!
These days, of course, most people tend to buy single volumes and specific works in paperback and use the Internet to access the works themselves and the seven extra volumes on Hebrews.
The year 2016 sees another anniversary – it is the four hundredth anniversary not only of Shakespeare's death but also of Owen's birth. Like London buses then, which often come in pairs, there is presently a great stimulus, especially this year, to blow the cobwebs off your Banner reprints or download something on your kindle or ipad and get down to reading some Owen.
Neglect
As popular as Owen is in some circles, he is not popular with all. Carl Trueman reminds us that he is
in many ways, the forgotten man of English theology … scholarly interest in his work since his own day has been minuscule … (he) is today almost entirely neglected, although he was one of the intellectual lights of his time.
He is neglected, Trueman suggests, because he was a theologian, a Puritan and a nonconformist to boot. Even some who are unfazed by all that see him as a prime example of the scholastic perversion of Calvin’s thought presumed to have occurred in the seventeenth century.
Reading him
It is generally agreed, even among fans, that Owen is hard to read. His writings have been described as
“intolerably heavy and 'prolix'” (Robert Hall Jr 1764-1831).[though not “a sea of mud” - his opinion of Gill not Owen]“on the whole ... difficult to read” (Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers)“more of a burden than a pleasure” to begin (Sinclair Ferguson)“heavy and hard to read” (Jim Packer)
Spurgeon agrees with the consensus but suggests his style is simply condensed. He is hard to read “because he gives notes of what he might have said, and passes on without fully developing the great thoughts of his capacious mind”.
Biographies
I think that if we know a bit about Owen's life, it may help us get into him. Sinclair Ferguson says “Little is known of his life, and biographers have never found it easy to reconstruct the details of his spiritual pilgrimage”. That may give the wrong impression. A fair bit can be scraped together and several biographies of varying quality and length exist.
An anonymous memoir appeared in 1720 and the following year John Asty (1672-1730) wrote another to accompany a volume of posthumous sermons. In the nineteenth century William Orme (1787-1830) and Andrew Thomson (1814-1901) wrote biographies and in the twentieth century so did Peter Toon (1939-2009), who also produced a volume of correspondence. Ferguson and Trueman have both produced overviews of the man and his theology and a new book of that sort by Crawford Gribben is out soon. One of my favourite biographies is Simonetta Carr's beautifully illustrated one for children.
Asty wrote of Owen
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 master 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.
Connections
There are many ways into Owen.
As a Welshman (with a son called Owain, the original form of the name Owen) I am aware that Owen's father was Welsh and he had relatives in Wales. His ancestry has been traced back to Llywelyn ap Gwrgan, twelfth century Prince of Glamorgan.
Owen was in fact an Englishman, of course, and has been described as “the greatest theologian of the English Puritan movement” or “the English Calvin”.
The Scots and Irish will no doubt be drawn to the fact that he spent some time in both countries.
Americans can ponder the year 1665 when emigration to New England was a distinct possibility.
Owen also sat on a committee established by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1688) to consider readmitting Jews to England, which they were, as advocated by Amsterdam rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657).
It is well known that Owen was part of the national church, now termed Anglican, until he became a Dissenter. Never a separatist by choice he was, however, an Independent or Congregationalist. He departed from the presbyterian fold on reading New Englander John Cotton (1685-1752) on the subject. Some Presbyterians are still keen to claim him as their own, some even claiming a deathbed return.
As for Baptists, it has been noted that Owen was sympathetic towards them, even defending them at times. He recommended his publisher Nathaniel Ponder (1640-1699) to John Bunyan (1628-1688) and is said to have enjoyed Bunyan's preaching. He is suppose to have remarked to Charles II (1630-1685), when he expressed surprise at Owen's admiration for Bunyan, “Had I the tinker's abilities, please your Majesty, I would most gladly relinquish my learning”. Stories of Owen interceding with his old tutor Thomas Barlow (1608-1691) for Bunyan to be released from prison are probably apocryphal.
Pastor's kids will note that he grew up in a manse and anyone who works with students will be interested in the period when he was a College Dean, then Vice-Chancellor at Oxford. At that time a famous, albeit hostile, description spoke of how he scorned all formality with “powdered hair, snake-bone band strings, (ie very large tassels), lawn band, a large set of ribbands pointed at his knees, and Spanish leather boots with large lawn tops, and his hat mostly cocked.”
The root of this was opposition to academic dress, which he thought superstitious, and to all needless formality. Another anecdote displaying this is one given by Orme who says that of Owen that
In 1657, he was brought by Mr Colt into Westminster Hall, as a witness against Mr Dutton; and on being desired to take the oath, he requested the New Testament to be opened before him, and said that he would lift up his hand; but refused to submit to the ridiculous ceremony of kissing the book. The Jury requested the Court to inform them whether this mode of swearing could be admitted; on which Lord Chief Justice Glynn told them the Doctor's oath was perfectly sufficient.
As a young man, while studying hard, he was also keen on javelin throwing, long jump and bellringing. He also learned to play the flute. I say these things as people's idea of Owen is often ill-informed.
We could also mention how he struggled to come to assurance for some time as a young man.
There were many sorrows in his life – the deaths of all his children and eventually of his first wife, for example.
He lived too in one of the most tumultuous religious and political periods in history.
He was, of course, a writer and a theologian (an inscription on his tomb says that “with more than herculean strength, he strangled three poisonous serpents, the Arminian, the Socinian and the Roman”) and an influential man in politics and church life.
Above everything else, however, I think we have to say that Owen was, like most of us here today, chiefly a pastor. Steve Griffiths (Redeem the Time) has written
To date, no one has yet managed to reveal Owen the man. In an attempt to meet this challenge, new questions have had to be asked … a new premise has had to be sought ... namely: what was of fundamental importance to Owen and what was his primary motivation in ministry? The answer is blindingly simple. Owen was a pastor. Of fundamental importance to him was the spiritual growth of those amongst whom he ministered. His primary motivation was the growth in holiness of his flock. Everything else stems from that truth. He was not primarily concerned with unswerving faithfulness, or otherwise, to Calvin, Aristotle or Augustine. ... Owen’s first loyalty was to no man. God was his judge ….
Ferguson says, similarly, that his own reading of Owen has convinced him “that everything he wrote for his contemporaries had a practical and pastoral aim in view - the promotion of true Christian living”. At his funeral, David Clarkson (1622-1686) said of Owen that “it was his great Design to promote Holiness in the Life and Exercise of it among you.”
We can divide his story into four unequal sections
Early Years in Oxfordshire and London, 1616-1643
Owen was a second son. Two more sons and a girl followed. Little is known of his mother but his father Henry was a Welshman. Rarely making personal remarks in his writings, Owen did write in 1657
I was bred up from my infancy under the care of my father, who was a nonconformist all his days, and a painful labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. (XIII 224).
Owen senior had come up to Oxford to study and at the time of Owen's birth was minister of Stadhampton (now Stadham), with Chislehampton, small villages five or six miles outside Oxford, that formed a Puritan parish supported by the wealthy D'Oyley family.
After initial schooling, probably at home, from the age of 10 John and older brother William attended a school in Oxford, under a tutor called Edward Sylvester. The boys' education was financed by an uncle back in Wales.
After two years with Sylvester they went on to Queen's College, Oxford. Owen was only 12 but that was not so unusual then. They gained their BAs in 1632, their MAs in 1635. Toon says that despite his enthusiasm for sports and other pastimes his desire or knowledge was so great that
... he often allowed himself only four hours of sleep ... His health was affected, and in later life, when he was often on a sick-bed, he regretted these hours of rest that he had missed as a youth.
By April 1635 the brothers were ordained as deacons and had started their BD studies, normally a seven year course.
Ten years before, Charles I (1600-1649) had succeeded his father James (1566-1625). Charles was married to the French Catholic Princess and held strong, ultimately divisive, views on the divine right of kings. In 1633, he appointed William Laud (1573-1645), previously Bishop of London and Chancellor of Oxford University, Archbishop of Canterbury. An autocratic prelate, he led a new movement that was Arminian and a precursor to the high church movement within Anglicanism. Such things were anathema to Puritans like Owen, Calvinistic and low church almost to a man.
For Owen paintings, crossings, crucifixes, altars, copes and vestments were “but Roman varnish, an Italian dress” for devotions and likely to lead people into the clutches of Antichrist. The new emphasis on “the divinity of Episcopacy, auricular confession” and such-like was, he feared, intended to turn the clock back and to the bad old days and lead England into the arms of the Pope. (See VIII, 28).
While Cambridge clung on to Puritanism, Oxford was coming increasingly under Laud's influence and Owen was very uncomfortable. With his father's approval (but not his uncle's) he left the university and became a household chaplain, firstly to Sir Robert Dormer (1610-1643) at Ascot, near Stadhampton, then in Hurley, Berkshire, to John, the second Baron Lovelace (1616-1670), husband to Anne, daughter and heiress of Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Cleveland. Dormer was sympathetic to Puritanism but with the outbreak of the first English Civil War sided with the King.
Having now been cut off by his uncle in Wales, Owen headed for London. It was there that his years of spiritual gloom finally came to an end. His conversion story is one that, like that of Spurgeon, magnifies God's providence and grace. Owen went with a cousin to hear the celebrated Dr Edmund Calamy the elder (1600-1666) in Aldermanbury Chapel. Calamy did not show up and a country preacher whose name Owen was never able to trace stood in. The text Matthew 8:16 Why are ye so fearful, O ye of little faith? was God's means of bringing Owen to assurance.
Country Pastor and Army Chaplain in Essex then Ireland and Scotland, 1643-1650
In 1642 Owen published his first book (the first of more than 80 in his lifetime) – A Display of Arminianism {1}. He dedicated it to a Parliamentary committee on religion that in turn recommended him to the vicarage of Fordham, Essex, where he settled in July 1643. While there he wrote two catechisms for their use {2} as well as a little handbook The Duties of pastors and people distinguished {3}. In 1644, he married Mary Rooke (d 1675) from nearby Coggeshall. Over the years they had 11 children. Only one daughter survived into adulthood. After an unhappy marriage, she returned home, dying of TB shortly after.
By this time the Puritan party was increasingly in the ascendancy. The Westminster Assembly began to sit in 1643 and in 1645 Laud was executed. Owen was not invited to join the assembly as he was still young but people were beginning to notice him. In April 1646 he was invited to preach for the first time before the Long Parliament on a monthly fast day. He preached from Acts 16:9 urging the evangelisation of the whole land and calling for religious toleration (Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy{4}). It was to be the first of many such opportunities.
In 1646, following changes in Fordham, Owen was forced out but became vicar at nearby Coggeshall where there was a congregation with a good Puritan history. He was preceded by Obadiah Sedgwick (c1600-1658) and before that, for 30 years, by another Puritan, John Dod. Congregations grew under Owen's ministry, often reaching the two thousand mark.
At first Owen, it seems, was a moderate presbyterian, but he tells us (XIII, 223) that he came to accept Congregationalism, as set out in Cotton's 1644 work Keys of the Kingdom. Owen himself wrote on the subject three years later (Eshcol; or Rules of Direction for the Walking of the Saints in Fellowship {5}). Not a separatist, Owen sought to work within the established system, arranging things in Coggeshall so that there was a gathered congregation within the parish system. They alone received communion.
Owen felt that Presbyterianism was not only wrong but increasingly intolerant. He wrote in 1646 “Heresy is a canker, but it is a spiritual one; let it be prevented by spiritual means: cutting off men’s heads is no proper remedy for it.” (VIII 229)
In 1647, he published one of his most famous works, an unanswered classic on particular redemption, Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu or The Death of Death in the Death of Christ {6}. Two contemporaries (Assembly divines, Byfield and Gower) wrote of it “pulling down the rotten house of Arminianism upon the head of those Philistines who would uphold it”. Baxter was one who was not happy with the book and entered into correspondence with Owen over it. The two continued to spar from that time on.
Owen largely escaped close involvement in the first English Civil War (1642-46) but when the second war began (1648) a rising of Royalists occurred in nearby Colchester where a Parliamentary committee had gathered. General Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671), leader of Parliament's forces, was sent to recover Colchester and deliver the committee. For nearly 10 weeks he maintained a strict siege of the town, basing himself in Coggeshall. A lifelong friendship developed with Owen. At the end of the siege, in which Owen describes himself as having been an "endangered spectator" he preached a thanksgiving sermon to the army at Colchester and another at Romford to the rescued committee {7}.
At the end of January 1649, Charles was executed and Owen was one of those asked to preach in Westminster the next day. His sermon Righteous Zeal Encouraged by Divine Protection on Jeremiah 15:19, 20 made no direct allusion to the events of the previous day but called for national repentance and reform. An appendix to the printed version pleaded for toleration and argued for state financing of evangelism {8}. It is not possible to discern Owen’s opinion on the regicide from the sermon, and he has been accused of dishonesty and cowardice.
Owen again preached before Parliament the following April, this time in Cromwell's hearing. His celebrated sermon was On the Shaking of Heaven and Earth from Hebrews 12:27 {9}. The next day, calling on General Fairfax's London home, he met Cromwell. On seeing Owen, Cromwell went to him, lay a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Sir, you are the person I must be acquainted with.” Owen courteously replied, “That will be much more to my advantage than yours.” Shortly after, as they walked in the garden, Cromwell proceeded to tell him of his forthcoming expedition to put down rebellion in Ireland and his desire that Owen should accompany him as chaplain and make a survey of the state and future prospects of Trinity College, Dublin.
Owen would have preferred to remain with his family and congregation but that summer he travelled, with the 12,000 strong army of Puritan soldiers, to Ireland. While there, he was ill much of the time but gave himself to reorganising Trinity College along Puritan lines and to preaching and writing a short book defending his work on particular redemption against Baxter (Death of Christ {12}, 1650}). He ministered to the troops during the infamous massacre at Drogheda, 35 miles north of Dublin. The campaign excites bitter wrangling among historians. On returning to England seven months later in February 1650, Owen pleaded with Parliament to send preachers to the Irish.
In April, Cromwell also returned and was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, Owen was made an official preacher to the state. This provided lodgings in Whitehall and a small income and entailed preaching on Friday afternoons in Whitehall Chapel and offering daily prayers at the meetings of the Council of State.
Cromwell was soon off on further expeditions, this time to Scotland. He had Owen and Joseph Caryl (1602-1673) to assist him as he sought to convince Scotland of the rightness of the regicide. In Edinburgh, with the Scottish ministers besieged in the castle, Owen won the affection of many with his preaching in St Giles. He tried to assist in allowing the ministers out from the castle to preach on the Lord’s days, but the offer was rejected.
Dean and Vice-Chancellor in Oxford, 1651-1660
The 1650s have been described as Owen’s most productive years. In this period he published De Divina Justitia Diatriba ({17}, 1653} a work on the justice of God and works on the perseverance of the saints ({19}, 1654) against Socinianism (Vindicae Evangelicae [Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated]) ({20}, 1655) and on Schism ({27}, 1657). He also wrote three well-known works still popular today in this period, on Mortification ({23}, 1656) Communion With God ({25}, 1657) and Temptation ({30}, 1658).
He spent these years in Oxford. Oxford had been a royalist stronghold in the civil wars but by the late 1640s Parliament had begun to bring the University under its control and was seeking to make it a centre for piety and learning. In 1651 Owen replaced Presbyterian Edward Reynolds (1599-1676) as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford's leading college. In Oxford he worked alongside his friend Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680), President of Magdalen. Owen went to Oxford reluctantly but when Cromwell was a little later made University Chancellor he willingly became vice-chancellor, this time replacing Daniel Greenwood (d 1679), another Presbyterian insufficiently supportive of the government.
Owen presided at most university meetings, served as an administrator and restrained worldly students from excess. His lectures in theology promoted Reformed theology and Puritan piety. He set up several boards to regulate religious life. Undergraduates were required to repeat Sunday sermons to “some person of known ability and piety” and were to have private evening prayers with their tutors.
Owen preached regularly at Christ Church and on alternate Sundays with Goodwin at St Mary’s. Those sermons were the seeds of the later treatises on mortification and temptation. Under Owen's leadership, the university’s treasury, according to an unsympathetic modern historian, (Mallet, 2:396) “increased tenfold, its salaries were restored, its rights maintained, its studies and its discipline improved”. Owen’s godly leadership brought peace, security and spiritual growth during a difficult period of recovery following the chaotic civil war years.
Thomson gives a fascinating anecdote of an occasion when a student was warned to avoid all profane and obscene expressions and personal reflections in an oration but failed to do so.
Owen repeatedly warned him to desist from a course so dishonouring to the university; but the youth obstinately persisting in the same strain, he at length commanded the beadles to pull him down. This was a signal for the students to interpose; on which Owen, determined that the authority of the university should not be insolently trampled on, rose from his seat, in the face of the remonstrances of his friends, who were concerned for his personal safety, drew the offender from his place with his own hand, and committed him to Bocardo, the prison of the university – the students meanwhile standing aloof with amazement and fear at his resolution.
In 1653, against Owen's wishes, he and Goodwin were made Doctors of Divinity. That same year he preached again before Parliament following the victory over the Dutch fleet. Throughout the period Owen was frequently called to London by Cromwell to settle disputes and participate in various attempts at church settlement.
In 1658, with Goodwin and others, he helped to draft the Congregationalist Standard The Savoy Declaration a modification of the Westminster Confession. He was probably the primary author of its lengthy preface.
Owen lost favour with Cromwell in the Protector’s last years. He firmly opposed the idea of making Cromwell king. His power began to diminish when Cromwell resigned the chancellorship and his son, Richard Cromwell (1626-1712), succeeded him. Under Richard, Owen and his ilk soon lost their ecclesiastical positions to Presbyterian divines. John Conant (1608-1694), Presbyterian rector of Exeter College replaced Owen as vice-chancellor. Owen and Goodwin's Sunday afternoon sermons at St. Mary’s stopped soon after and then, as power passed from the Protectorate to the restored monarchy of Charles II, Edward Reynolds returned as Dean of Christ Church. Owen preached before Parliament for the last time on February 4, 1659 (The Glory and Interest of Nations Professing the Gospel {32})
Latter years in Oxfordshire and the London area, 1660-1683
At the Restoration Owen apparently retired to a small estate at Stadhampton, where he continued to preach despite the Great Ejection of 1662. He had now lost every position of influence. He lived in relative seclusion but continued to show a “miraculous fertility of authorship” (Thomson). In 1661 Theologoumena Pantodapa, the substance of Latin lectures at Oxford (Volume XVII of the Works not translated until 1994) appeared {35}. It was during this time too that he produced Animadversions on Fiat Lux ({36,} 1662) in reply to a call to Romanism from a Franciscan friar. He produced a first volume anonymously and when derided for that, he produced a Vindication in his own name ({38}, 1664).
He was apparently called to John Cotton’s church in Boston, Massachusetts, but nothing came of that. It is said that Clarendon urged him to write against Romanism and offered him a bishopric if he would conform. Owen declined to conform, offering to dispute with any man the validity of Independency and asking “not for preferment within the church, but simple toleration without it” (I 81)
In 1665, Owen was indicted at Oxford for holding religious conventicles in his home. He escaped without imprisonment. However, like many other Puritan pastors, he returned to London to preach after the Plague and the Great Fire. He started a small congregation, engaged in ongoing theological battles against Arminians and wrote several anonymous tracts promoting religious liberty as well as numerous edifying treatises for the spiritual growth of believers. His Indwelling Sin ({41}, 1667), Exposition of Psalm 130 ({44}, 1668) and the first volume of his massive commentary on Hebrews ({43}, 1668) were written during this period. In 1669 Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity ({46}, 1669) appeared and in the early 1670s, works on the Sabbath ({49}, 1671) on Evangelical Love ({50}, 1672) on the work of the Holy Spirit ({51}, 1674) and on apostasy ({56}, 1676).
In 1673, Owen’s congregation in London merged with a group that Joseph Caryl had served as pastor until his death. David Clarkson and others assisted him. He devoted much time to helping ministers such as Bunyan and John Asty's father, Robert Asty (1642-1681), offering financial assistance as well as spiritual advice. This earned him the title of “prince and metropolitan of Independency” (Beeke).
In January 1675, his first wife died. Not one to remain alone, within 18 months, he had married again. His second wife, Dorothy (nee Michell), was the widow of Thomas D’Oyly (d 1675) of Chislehampton, who had died shortly after Owen's first wife. This marriage and a legacy inherited around the same time meant that Owen lived out he rest of his life in comfortable material circumstances. However, he suffered much from asthma and gallstones in these last years, both of which often kept him from preaching.
One time, near the end of his life, while living in Kensington, his carriage was stopped coming along the Strand by two informers who seized his horses. A mob gathered around and violence threatened but a passing JP calmed the situation. Nothing came of it except a rebuke for the informers who were found to have acted improperly. It must have been hard, however, for an old and sick man to suffer such indignity.
With the help of amanuenses he kept writing, however, producing major works on Justification by Faith ({57}, 1677) Christologia: or, A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ ({60}, 1678) and The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded ({67}, 1681) as well as important works against Rome (eg Church of Rome No Safe Guide {61}, 1679) and on unity (eg Some Consideration of Union Among Protestants {64}, 1680}.
Shortly before his death, Owen wrote to a friend,
I am going to him whom my soul has loved, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love - which is the whole ground of my consolation. The passage is very irksome and wearisome, through strong pains of various sorts, which are all issued in an intermitting fever. All things were provided to carry me to London today, according to the advice of my physicians; but we are all disappointed by my utter disability to undertake the journey. I am leaving the ship of the church in a storm; but whilst the great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable. Live, and pray, and hope, and wait patiently, and do not despond; the promise stands invincible, that He will never leave us, nor forsake us.
On August 24, 1683, the twenty-first anniversary of the Great Ejection, Puritan minister William Payne (d 1726), arrived in Ealing, where Owen was living, to say that the first sheets of Meditations on the Glory of Christ {74}, 1684, had passed through the press. With uplifted eyes and hands, Owen replied
I am glad to hear it; but, oh brother Payne, the long wished for day is come at last, in which I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever done, or was capable of doing, in this world.
These were among his last words. He was buried, 11 days later, in Bunhill Fields, London. He was 67.
Part of the inscription on his grave in Latin has been translated thus
A scribe instructed in every way for the kingdom of God, this pure lamp of gospel truth shone forth on many in private, on more from the pulpit, and on all in his printed works, pointing everyone to the same goal. And in this shining forth he gradually, as he and others recognised, squandered his strength till it was gone. His holy soul, longing to enjoy God more, left the shattered ruins of his once-handsome body, full of permanent weaknesses, attacked by frequent diseases, worn out most of all by hard work, and no longer a fit instrument for serving God, on a day rendered dreadful for many by earthly powers but now made happy for him through the power of God ….
Paper given at the Carey Ministers' Conference
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