John Owen (1616-1683)

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Biography of John Owen (1616-1683):

John Owen (1616-1683), theologian, was born of Puritan parents at Stadham in Oxfordshire in 1616. At twelve years of age he was admitted at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1632 and M.A. in 1635. During these years he worked with such diligence that he allowed himself but four hours sleep a night, and damaged his health by this excessive labour. In 1637 he was driven from Oxford by his refusal to comply with the requirements of Laud’s new statutes. Having taken orders shortly before, he became chaplain and tutor in the family of Sir Robert Dormer of Ascot in Oxfordshire. At the outbreak of the civil troubles he adopted Parliamentary principles, and thus lost both his place and the prospects of succeeding to his uncle’s fortune. For a while he lived in Charterhouse Yard, in great unsettlement of mind on religious questions, which was removed at length by a sermon which he accidently heard at St Michael’s in Wood Street.

His first publication, in 1642, The Display of Arminianism, dedicated to the committee of religion gained him the living of Fordham in Essex, from which a “scandalous minister” had been ejected. Here he was married, and by his marriage he had eleven children.

Although he was thus formally united to Presbyterianism, Owen’s views were originally inclined to those of the Independents, and, as he acquainted himself more fully with the controversy, he became more resolved in that direction, though later he would return to Presbyterianism (as seen in his writings). He represented, in fact, that large class of persons who, falling away from Episcopacy, attached themselves to the very moderate form of Presbyterianism which obtained in England as being that which came first in their way. His views at this time are shown by his Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished. At Fordham he remained until 1646, when, the old incumbent dying, the presentation lapsed to the patron, who gave it to some one else. He was now, however, coming into notice, for on April 29 he preached before the Parliament. In this sermon, and still more in his Thoughts on Church Government, which he appended to it, his tendency to break away from Presbyterianism is displayed.

The people of Coggeshall in Essex now invited him to become their pastor. Here he declared his change by founding a church on Congregational principles, and, in 1647, by publishing Eshcol, as well as various works against Arminianism. He made the friendship of Fairfax while the latter was besieging Colchester, and urgently addressed the army there against religious persecution. He was chosen to preach to Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles, and succeeded in fulfilling his task without mentioning that event, and again on April 19, when he. spake thus:-“The time shall come when the earth shall disclose her slain, and not the simplest heretic shall have his blood unrevenged; neither shall any atonement or expiation be allowed for this blood, while a toe of the image, or a bone of the beast, is left unbroken.”

He now became acquainted with Cromwell, who carried him off to Ireland in 1649 as his chaplain, that he might regulate the affairs of Trinity College; while there he began the first of his frequent controversies with Baxter by writing against the latter’s Aphorisms of Justification. In 1650 he accompanied Cromwell to Scotland, and returned to Coggeshall in 1651. In March Cromwell, as chancellor, gave him the deanery of Christ Church, and made him vice-chancellor in September 1652. In 1651, October 24, after Worcester, he preached the thanksgiving sermon before Parliament. In October 1653 he was one of several ministers whom Cromwell, probably to sound their views, summoned to a consultation as to church union. In December in the same year he had the honour of D.D. conferred upon him by his university. In the Parliament of 1664 he sat, but only for a short time, as member for Oxford university, and, with Baxter, was placed on the committee for settling the “fundamentals” necessary for the toleration promised in the Instrument of Government. He was, too, one of the Triers, and appears to have behaved with kindness and moderation in that capacity. As vice-chancellor he acted with readiness and spirit when a general rising in the west seemed imminent in 1655; his adherence to Cromwell, however was by no means slavish, for he drew up, at the request of Desborough and Pride, a petition against his receiving the kingship (see Ludlow’s Memoirs, ed. 1751, p. 224). During the years 1654-58 his chief controversial works were Divina Justitia, The Perseverance of Saints (against Goodwin) and Vindiciae Evangelicae (against the Socinians). In 1658 he took a leading part in the conference which drew up the Savoy Declaration.

Baxter declares that at the death of Cromwell Owen joined the Wallingford House party. This, though supported by the fact that under the Restoration he had among his congregation a large number of these officers, Owen himself utterly denied. He appears, however, to have assisted in the restoration of the Rump Parliament, and, when Monk began his march into England, Owen, in the name of the Independent churches, to whom Monk was supposed to belong, and who were keenly anxious as to his intentions, wrote to dissuade him from the enterprise.

In March 1660, the Presbyterian party being uppermost, Owen was deprived of his deanery, which was given back to Reynolds. He retired to Stadham, where he wrote various controversial and theological works, in especial the laborious Theologoumena Pantodapa, a history of the rise and progress of theology. In 1661 was published the celebrated Fiat Lux, a work in which the oneness and beauty of Roman Catholicism are contrasted with the confusion and multiplicity of Protestant sects. At Clarendon’s request Owen answered this in 1662 in his Animadversions; and this led of course to a prolonged controversy. Glarendon now offered Owen perferment if he would conform. Owen’s condition for making terms was liberty to all who agree in doctrine with the Church of England; nothing therefore came of the negotiation.

In 1663 he was invited by the Congregational churches in Boston, New England, to become their minister, but declined. The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts soon drove him to London; and in 1666, after the Fire, he, as did other leading Nonconformist ministers, fitted up a room for public service and gathered a congregation, composed chiefly of the old Commonwealth officers. Meanwhile he was incessantly writing; and in 1667 he published his Catechism, which led to a proposal from Baxter for union. Various papers passed, and after a year the attempt was closed by the following laconical note from Owen: ” I am still a well-wisher to these mathematics.” It was now, too, that he published the first part of his vast work upon the Epistle to the Hebrews.

In 1669 Owen wrote a spirited remonstrance to the Congregationalists in New England, who, under the influence of Presbyterianism, had shown themselves persecutors. At home, too, he was busy in the same cause. In 1670 Parker attacked the Nonconformists in his own style of clumsy intolerance. Owen answered trim; Parker repeated his attack; Marvell wrote The Rehearsal Transprosed; and Parker is remembered by this alone.

At the revival of the Conventicle Acts in 1670, Owen was appointed to draw up a paper of reasons which was submitted to the House of Lords in protest. In this or the following year Harvard university invited him to become their president; he received similar invitations from some of the Dutch universities.

When Charles issued his Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, Owen drew up an address of thanks. This indulgence gave the dissenters an opportunity for increasing their churches and services, and Owen was one of the first preachers at the weekly lectures which the Independents and Presbyterians jointly held in Plummer’s Hall. He was held in high respect by a large number of the nobility (one of the many things which point to the fact that Congregationalism was by no means the creed of the poor and insignificant), and during 1674 both Charles and James held prolonged conversations with him in which they assured him of their good wishes to the dissenters. Charles gave him 1000 guineas to relieve those upon whom the severe laws had chiefly pressed. In 1674 Owen was attacked by one Dr Sherlock, whom he easily vanquished, and from this time until 1680 he was engaged upon his ministry and the writing of religious works. In l680, however, Stillingfleet having on May 11 preached his sermon on “The Mischief of Separation,” Owen defended the Nonconformists from the charge of schism in his Brief Vindication. Baxter and Howe also answered Stillingfleet, who replied in The Unreasonableness of Separation. Owen again answered this, and then left the controversy to a swarm of eager combatants. From this time to his death he was occupied with continual writing, disturbed only by an absurd charge of being concerned in the Rye House Plot. His most important work was his Treatise on Evangelical Churches in which were contained his latest views regarding church government. During his life he issued more than eighty separate publications, many of them of great size. Of these a list may be found in Orme’s Memoirs of Owen. For some years before his death Owen had suffered greatly from stone and asthma. He died quietly, though after great pain, at Ealing, on August 24, 1683, and was buried on September 4th in Bunhill Fields, being followed to the grave by a large procession of persons of distinction. “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.”

Taken in part from The Encyclopedia Britannica Ninth Edition, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885)

The Complete Works of John Owen:

The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. (330 pages) -popular-
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Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit. (817 pages)
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The Works of John Owen, Volume 1. (564 pages)
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Contains a lengthy biography of Owen, and miscellaneous letters and sundry items pertaining to his life.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 2. (480 pages)
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This volume contains:

1. The first part of Pneumatologia (or, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit)
   1. Book 1: General Principles
      1. Chapter 1: Concerning the Holy Spirit and His Work
      2. Chapter 2: The Name and Titles of the Holy Spirit
      3. Chapter 3: The Divine Nature and Personality of the Holy Spirit Proved and Vindicated
      4. Chapter 4: Peculiar Works of the Holy Spirit in the First or Old Creation
      5. Chapter 5: Way and Manner of the Divine Dispensation of the Holy Spirit
   2. Book 2: Peculiar Operations of the Holy Spirit
      1. Chapter 1: Under the Old Testament Preparatory for the New
      2. Chapter 2: General Dispensation of the Holy Spirit with Respect Unto the New Creation
      3. Chapter 3: Work of the Holy Spirit with Respect Unto the Head of the New Creation, the Human Nature of Christ
      4. Chapter 4: Work of the Holy Spirit in and on the Human Nature of Christ
      5. Chapter 5: The General Work of the Holy Spirit in the New Creation, with Respect Unto the Members of That Body Whereof Christ is the Head
   3. Book 3: The Work of the Holy Spirit
      1. Chapter 1: In the New Creation by Regeneration
      2. Chapter 2: Works of the Holy Spirit Preparatory Unto Regeneration
      3. Chapter 3: Corruption or Depravation of the Mind by Sin
      4. Chapter 4: Life and Death, Natural and Spiritual, Compared
      5. Chapter 5: The Nature, Causes, and Mean of Regeneration
      6. Chapter 6: The Manner of Conversion Explained in the Instance of Augustine
   4. Book 4: The Nature of Sanctification and Gospel Holiness Explained
      1. Chapter 1: The Nature of Sanctification and Gospel Holiness Explained
      2. Chapter 2: Sanctification a Progressive Work
      3. Chapter 3: Believers the Only Object of Sanctification and Subject of Gospel Holiness
      4. Chapter 4: The Defilement of Sin, Wherein it Consists, With its Purification
      5. Chapter 5: The Filth of Sin Purged by the Spirit and Blood of Christ

The Works of John Owen, Volume 3. (534 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. A Continuation of Pneumatologia (or, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit)
   1. Book 4: The Nature of Sanctification and Gospel Holiness Explained
      1. Chapter 6: The Positive Work of the Spirit in the Sanctification of Believers
      2. Chapter 7: Of the Acts and Duties of Holiness
      3. Chapter 8: Mortification of Sin, the Nature and Causes of It
   2. Book 5: Necessity of Holiness
      1. Chapter 1: Necessity of Holiness From the Consideration of the Nature of God
      2. Chapter 2: Eternal Election a Cause of and Motive Unto Holiness
      3. Chapter 3: Holiness Necessary From the Commands of God
      4. Chapter 4: Necessity of Holiness From God’s Sending Jesus Christ
      5. Chapter 5: Necessity of Holiness From Our Condition in This World
2. The Reason of Faith, or, An Answer Unto That Inquiry Wherefore We Believe the Scripture to Be the Word of God
3. The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God, as Revealed in His Word

The Works of John Owen, Volume 4. (618 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer
2. A Discourse on the Holy Spirit as a Comforter
3. A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts
4. “The Divine Original of the Scriptures”
5. “The Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scriptures”
6. Pro Sacris Scripturis Adversus Hujus Temporis Fanaticos

The Works of John Owen, Volume 5. (676 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Two Short Catechisms
2. Theomaxia Agtethogziastike (or, A Short Display of Arminianism)
3. Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu (or, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ)
4. Of the Death of Christ

The Works of John Owen, Volume 6. (558 pages)
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Contains The Doctrine of the Saint’s Perseverance Explained and Confirmed

The Works of John Owen, Volume 7. (536 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. A continuation of The Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance Explained and Confirmed
2. The Mortification of Sin in Believers
3. The Nature and Power of Temptation.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 8. (536 pages)
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This volume contains Vindicae Evangelicae (or, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated), part 1.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 9. (524 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Vindicae Evangelicae (or, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated) part 2
2. Of the Death of Christ, and of Justification
3. A Review of the Annotations of Hugo Grotius
4. A Dissertation on Divine Justice.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 10. (580 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
2. The Same Subject Vindicated
3. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity
4. The Person and Satisfaction of Christ.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 11. (582 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. The Doctrine of Justification by Faith
2. “Gospel Grounds and Evidences of the Faith of God’s Elect”.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 12. (600 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Christologia (or, A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ)
2. “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, in His Person, Office, and Grace”.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 13. (516 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers
2. Phronema toi Pneumatos (or, The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded).

The Works of John Owen, Volume 14. (570 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. A Practical Exposition on the Hundred and Thirtieth Psalm
2. A Treatise on the Dominion of Sin and Grace
3. A Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 15. (590 pages)
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This volume contains thirteen sermons and two other works:

1. A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy in Sending the Means of Grace to Undeserving Sinners (Acts 16:9)
2. A Country Essay for the Practice of Church Government There – pdf, 38 pp.
3. Ebeneezer: A Memorial of the Deliverance of Essex County and Committee (Habakkuk 3:1-9)
4. Righteous Zeal Encouraged by Divine Protection (Jeremiah 15:19-20)
   
5. Of Toleration and the Duty of the Magistrate About Religion
6. The Steadfastness of Promises and the Sinfulness of Staggering (Romans 4:20)
   
7. The Strength of Faith, part 1 (Romans 4:20)
   
8. The Strength of Faith, part 2 (Romans 4:20)
   
9. The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (Hebrews 12:27)
   
10. The Branch of the Lord the Beauty of Zion, or, The Glory of the Church in its Relation Unto Christ (Isaiah 56:7
11. The Advantage of the Kingdom of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World (Ezekiel 17:24)
12. The Labouring Saint’s Dismission to Rest (Daniel 12:13)
    
13. Christ’s Kingdom and the Magistrate’s Power (Daniel 12:15-16)
    
14. God’s Work in Founding Zion and His People’s Duty Thereupon (Isaiah 14:32)
    
15. God’s Presence With a People, the Spring of Prosperity, With Their Special Interest in Abiding With Him (2 Chronicles 15:2)
    

The Works of John Owen, Volume 16. (584 pages)
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This volume contains forty-five sermons and fourteen short discourses of practical cases of conscience.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 17. (660 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions
2. Twenty-five Discourses Suitable to the Lord’s Supper
3. “The Nature and Causes of Apostacy”
4. “Some Considerations About Union Among Protestants”
5. “The State and Fate of the Protestant Religion”.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 18. (652 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. Animadversions on a Treatise Entitled ‘Fiat Lux’
2. Vindication of the Animadversion on ‘Fiat Lux’
3. “The Church of Rome No Safe Guide”.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 19. (636 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. “The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished”
2. “Eschol” (or, “A Cluster of Fruit of Canaan”)
3. Treatises on Schism
4. “Questions Concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate About Religion, Proposed and Resolved”
5. “A Discourse Considering Liturgies”
6. “A Short Catechism”
7. “A Vindication of the Nonconformists from the Charge of Schism.”

The Works of John Owen, Volume 20. (616 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. An Inquiry into the Original Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches.
2. An Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet’s Book of the Unreasonableness of Separation
3. The True Nature of a Gospel Church and its Government.

The Works of John Owen, Volume 21. (634 pages)
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This volume contains the following:

1. “A Discourse Concerning Love, Church-Peace, and Unity”
2. A Survery of a Discourse Concerning Ecclesiastical Polity
3. Various tracts and shorter works
4. Orationes Sex Oxonii Habitae.