Life of Dr. John Owen. Part Six
Owen's church-book presents the names of some of the chiefs
of Nonconformity as members of his flock, and "honourable women not a few."
Among others, there have been found the names of more than one of the heroes of
the army of the Commonwealth,- such as Lord Charles Fleetwood and Colonel
Desborough; certain members of the Abney family, in whose hospitable mansion
the saintly Isaac Watts in after times found shelter for more than thirty
years; the Countess of Anglesea; and Mrs Bendish, the granddaughter of
Cromwell, in whom, it is said, may of the bodily and mental features of the
Protector remarkably reappeared.
Some of these might be able at times to
throw their shield over the head of Owen in those changeful and stormy years.
And there were other persons more powerful still,-such as the Earl of Ornery,
the Earl of Anglesea, Lord Berkeley, Lord Willoughby, Lord Wharton, and Sir
John Tremor, one of the principal secretaries of state; who, though not members
of Owen's church, were religiously disposed, and Owen's friends, and inclined,
as far as their influence went, to mitigate the severities against the
Nonconformists generally.
Owen's intimacy with these noblemen probable
accounts for that interview to which he was invited by the King and the Duke of
York, and which has been faithfully chronicled by all his biographers.
Happening to be at Tunbridge Wells when his majesty and the duke were also
there, he was introduced to the royal tent. The king freely conversed with him
on the subject of religious liberty, and expressed his wish to see the
Dissenters relieved of their disabilities. On his return to London, he invited
Owen to repeated interviews, uttering the same sentiments as he had done during
the first conversation, and at length intrusted him with a thousand guineas, to
be employed by him in mitigating the sufferings of his poorer brethren. The
general policy of Charles sufficiently accounts for these gleams of royal
sunshine.
But the importance of those friendships is not seen by us until
we have marked the use which Owen made of them in the cause of his suffering
brethren. It is well known that when the Parliament again assembled, it
expressed its strong displeasure at the king's indulgence, and never ceased its
remonstrances until the licenses to places of worship had been withdrawn. A
disposition, it is true, began to show itself to distinguish between the
Protestant Nonconformists and the Romanists, and to point restriction more
particularly against the latter; but the act, which was professedly intended to
bear against them was so clumsily constructed as to be capable of reaching all
who did not conform, and Churchmen were not slow in giving it this direction.
The Nonconformists were exposed anew to the persecuting storm; informers were
goaded by increased rewards; and among thousands of less illustrious sufferers,
Richard Baxter suffered joyfully the spoiling of his goods, and was condemned
to what his ardent spirit did indeed feel bitterly,- a year of almost unbroken
silence. Owen, however, appears to have been left comparatively unmolested,-
probably owing to the influences we have specified; and it is interesting to
learn from an adversary with what zeal and constancy he employed his advantages
to warn and succour the oppressed. "Witness his fishing out the king's
counsels, and inquiring whether things went well to his great Diana, liberty of
conscience?-how his majesty stood affected to it?.- whether he would connive at
it and the execution of the laws against it? who were or could be made his
friends at court?- what bills were like to be put up in Parliament?.--how that
assembly was united or divided? And according to the disposition of affairs he
did acquaint his under officers; and they, by their letters each post, were to
inform their fraternity in each corner of the kingdom how things were likely to
go with them, how they should order their business, and either for a time omit
or continue their conventicles." Surely this was being able to find nothing
against him, except as concerning the law of his God.
There was no
sufferer in whose behalf Owen exerted his influence more earnestly than John
Bunyan. It is well known that, as a preacher, Bunyan excited, wherever he went,
an interest not surpassed even by the ministry of Baxter. When he preached in
barns or on commons, he gathered eager thousands around him; and when he came
to London, twelve hundred people would be found gathered together at seven on
the dark morning of a winter working-day, to hear him expound the Word of God.
Among these admiring multitudes Owen had often been discovered;--the most
learned of the Puritans hung for hours, that seemed like moments, upon the lips
of this untutored genius. The king is reported to have asked Owen, on one
occasion, how a learned man like him could go "to hear a tinker prate;" to
which the great theologian answered "May it please your majesty, could I
possess the tinker's abilities for preaching, I would willingly relinquish all
my learning." For some years Bunyan's confinement in the prison of Bedford had,
through the kindness of his good jailer, been attended with many mitigations;
but towards the latter part of it, its severities had been greatly increased,
and Owen used every effort to engage the interest of his old friend and tutor,
Dr Barlow, for his release. Some of the details of this matter have been
questioned by Southey, and its date is uncertain; but the leading facts seem
above reasonable suspicion, and it is pleasing to know, that after some
perplexing delay, Owen's interposition was successful in obtaining Bunyan's
enlargement.
During these chequered and anxious years, Owen's untiring pen
had been as active as ever. In 1669 he had published "A brief Vindication of
the Doctrine of the Trinity; as also, of the Person and Satisfaction of
Christ;" a little treatise, containing the condensed substance of his great
controversial work against Biddle and the Continental Socinians,- the
"Vindiciae Evangelicae."
There was wisdom in thus supplying the church with
a less controversial manual on those vital questions. Many of Owen's larger
works remind us of some ancient castle, with its embrasures and port holes,
admirably fitting it for the purposes of defense, but in the same degree
rendering it unsuitable as a peaceful habitation. In little more than forty
years after Owen's death, this little work had passed through seven editions.
In 1672 he had published "A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church Peace
and Unity," etc.; a work combining enlarged and generous sentiment with wise
discrimination, and in which Owen enters at great length into the question
respecting the occasional attendance of Nonconformists on the parish churches,-
a question which found him and Baxter once more ranged on opposite sides.
And there were other works whose origin dated from this period, in which we can
trace the faithful watchman, piously descrying the coming danger, or seeking to
rear bulwarks against the already swelling tide. Two of these were precious
fragments been off from his great work on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
enlarged to meet present exigencies. The first was his "Treatise on the
Sabbath;" in which he joined with Baxter, and all the other great writers among
the Puritans, in seeking to preserve this precious fence, which the goodness of
God has drawn around the vineyard of his church, and which he found assailed on
the one hand by fanatics, who denounced it as a mere ceremonial and carnal
observance, and by the more numerous and noisy disciples of the "Book of
Sports," who hated it for its spirituality. The reader will be struck with the
contrast between the Puritan Sabbath, as it is depicted in its staid and solemn
cheerfulness by a Puritan divine, and as he often beholds it caricatured by the
modern popular writer; and as he finds Owen arguing with the same classes of
antagonists, and answering the same argument and objections as are rife at the
present day, he will be disposed to subscribe to the theory, that errors have
their orbits in which they move, and that their return may be calculated at a
given juncture. The other work of this class to which we refer was, "The Nature
and Punishment of Apostasy Declared, in an Exposition of Hebrews 6:4-6." It was
emphatically a book for the times; when the multitudes who had merely played a
part in religion in Cromwell's days had long since thrown off the mask, and
taken amends for their restraints in the most shameless excesses; when to be
sternly moral was almost to incur the suspicion of disloyalty; when to be
called a Puritan was, with many, more discreditable than to be called a
debauchee; and when the noon day licentiousness of Charles' court, descending
through the inferior ranks of life, carried every thing before it but what was
rooted and grounded in a living piety.
But the greatest work of Owen at
this period was one which we leave its elaborate title to describe,--"A
Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit; in which an account is given of his name,
nature, personality, dispensation, operations, and effects. His whole work in
the Old and New Creation is explained; the doctrine concerning it vindicated
from opposition and reproaches. The nature and necessity also of Gospel
holiness, the difference between grace and morality, or a spiritual life to God
in evangelical obedience and a course of moral virtues, is stated and
explained." The better part of two centuries have elapsed since this work of
Owen's was given to the world, and yet no English work on the same vital
subject has approached it in exhaustive fulness. Wilberforce owns his
obligations to it as one of his great theological textbooks; and Cecil declares
that it had been to him "a treasure-house" of divinity. It was not merely the
two common extremes of error that Owen grappled with in this masterly
treatise,--that of the enthusiasts who talked of the inward light and of secret
revelations, and that of the Socinians who did not believe that there was any
Holy Ghost, and of whose scanty creed it has been severely said, that it is not
likely often to become the faith of men of genius. There was a third class of
waters at that time, from whom Owen apprehended more danger than either,--men
who, in their preaching, dwelt much upon the credentials of the Bible, but
little upon its truths,--who would have defended even the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit as an article of their creed, and at the same time would have derided
all reference to the actual work of divine grace upon a human heart as the
"weak imagination of distempered minds." Much of Owen's treatise has reference
to these accommodating and courtly divines, and is, in fact, a vindication of
the reality of the spiritual life. He is not always able to repress his satire
against these writers. Some of them had complained that they were reproached as
"rational divines;" to which he replied, that if they were so reproached, it
was, so far as he could discern, as Jerome was beaten by an angel for being a
Ciceronian (in the judgment of some), very undeservedly.
Few glimpses are
given us of Owen's domestic history; but it appears that, in January 1676, he
was bereaved of his first wife. One of his early biographers says that she "was
an excellent and comely person, very affectionate towards him, and met with
suitable returns." He remained a widower for about eighteen months, when he
married a lady of the name of Michael, the daughter of a family of rank in
Dorsetshire, and the widow of Thomas D'Oyley, Esq. of Chiselhampton, near
Stadham. This lady brought Dr Owen a considerable fortune; which, with his own
property, and a legacy that we left him about the same time by his cousin,
Martyn Owen, made his condition easy, and even affluent, so that he was able to
keep a carriage during his remaining years. On all which Anthony Wood remarks,
with monkish spite, that "Owen took all occasions to enjoy the comfortable
importances of this life."
Many symptoms were now beginning to make it
evident that Owen's public career was drawing to a close. The excitements and
anxieties of a most eventful life, and the fatigues of severe study, were
making themselves visible in more than one disease. Asthma afflicted him with
such severity as often to unfit him for preaching; and stone, the frequent and
agonizing disease of studious men in those times, gave no uncertain signs of
its presence. In these circumstances it became necessary to obtain assistants,
both in the pastorate of the church in Leaderthall street, and also to act as
his amanuenses in preparing his remaining works for the press among those who,
for brief periods, were thus connected with him, we meet with the names of two
persons of rather remarkable history,- -Robert Ferguson, who, beginning his
life as a minister, became at length a political intriguer and pamphleteer,
and, after undertaking some perilous adventures in the cause of William,
ultimately became a Jacobite, and ended his eccentric and agitated course with
more of notoriety than of honour; and Alexander Shields, a Scotch man, whose
antipathy to Prelacy was surpassed by his piety, and whose name Scottish
Presbyterians still venerate as the author of the "Hind let Loose." These two
probably laboured with Owen principally in the capacity of amanuenses; but the
amiable and excellent David Clarkson shared with him the duties of the
pastorate, and rejoiced to divide the anxieties and toils, and soothe the
declining years, of the illustrious Puritan. Clarkson evidently won the
generous admiration of Baxter; and Dr Bates beautifully spoke of him as "a real
saint, in whom the living spring of grace in his heart diffused itself in the
veins of his conversation. His life was a silent repetition of his holy
discourses."
With the help of his amanuenses, Owen completed and
published, in 1677, "The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, through the
Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ, Explained, Confirmed, and
Vindicated,"--a work in which all the ratiocinative strength and command of
resources of his best controversial days appear undiminished. We concur,
indeed, to a certain extent, in the censure which has been charged against that
part of it which treats of the nature of justifying faith, as tending to
perplex a subject whose very simplicity makes explanation equally impossible
and unnecessary. The censure, however, ought not to be confined to Owen; for on
the subject of faith the Puritan divines, with their scholastic distinctions,
were far inferior to the theologians of the Reformation. The great difficulty
about faith is not a metaphysical but a moral one; and there is truth in the
observation, that elaborate attempts to describe it are like handling a
beautiful transparency, whose lustre disappears whensoever it is touched.
This great work was probably the ripened fruit of many years of thought But as
we examine the productions of Owen during the few remaining years of his life,
it is easy to discover that they belonged principally to three classes, and two
of those especially, owed their origin to events that were occurring around
him, and to dangerous tendencies which his ever-vigilant eye was quick to
discover. First, there were his various writings against Popery, such as his
"Church of Rome no Safe Guide;" his "Brief and Impartial Account of the
Protestant Religion;" and, in some degree also, his "Humble Testimony to the
Goodness of God in his Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations." In all of
these we hear the watchman answering, "What of the night?" He is alive to the
sympathies of Charles and his court with Popery,--to the readiness of not a few
in the Church of England to move in the direction of Rome,--to the avowed so
Romanism of the Duke of York, and his possible succession to the throne,--and
to the dangers to religion, to liberty, and to every thing meet dear to man,
which these lowering evils portended. The wisdom and foresight of Dr Owen in
many parts of these writings, which we now read in the light of subsequent
events, strike us with surprise, often with admiration.
In addition to
beholding the Protestants duly inspirited and alarmed on the subject of Popery,
Owen longed to see all alienations and divisions among them dispelled, and the
various parts of the great Protestant community so united and mutually
confiding, as to be prepared to resist their common adversary. Not that he was
the less convinced of the necessity and duty of separation from the Episcopal
Church; for in a controversy with Stillingfleet, into which an ungenerous
assault of that able Churchman drew him, he had produced one of his best
defenses of Nonconformity; but he felt a growing desire, both to see the real
differences between the venous branches of the Nonconformist family reduced to
their true magnitude, and, in spite of the differences that might, after all,
remain, to behold them banded together in mutual confidence and united action.
His work on "Union among Protestants" was written with this wise and generous
design; and this, we are persuaded, was one of the chief ends contemplated by
another work,--his "Inquiry into the Origin, Nature, Institution, Power, Order,
and Communion of Evangelical Churches" We are quite aware that some have
represented this highly valuable treatise as a recantation of Dr Owen's views
on church polity, and a return to those Presbyterian sentiments with which he
had entered on his public life; but an examination of the treatise, we think,
will make it evident that this was not in Owen's thoughts, and that his aim was
rather to show how far he could come to meet the moderate Presbyterian, and to
lay down a platform on which united action, in those times of trouble and of
perils, which all division aggravated, could consistently take place.
Accordingly we find him, while admirably describing the true nature of a Gospel
church, as a society of professed believers, and refusing to any man or body of
men "all power of legislation in or over the church," avowing it as his
conviction, that "the order of the officers which was so early in the primitive
church,-- viz. of one pastor or bishop in one church, assisted in rule and all
holy ministrations with many elders, teaching or ruling only,--does not so
overthrow church order as to render its rule or discipline useless." And in
reference to the communion of churches, while repudiating every thing like
authoritative interference and dictation on the part of any church or assembly
of rulers, he holds that "no church is so independent that it can always, and
in all cases, observe the duties it owes to the Lord Christ and the church
catholic, by all those powers which it is able to act in itself distinctly,
without conjunction of others; and the church which conies its duty to the acts
of its own assemblies, cuts itself off from the external communion of the
church catholic." He holds that "a synod convened in the name of Christ, by the
voluntary consent of several churches concerned in mutual communion, may
declare and determine of the mind of the Holy Ghost in Scripture, and decree
the observation of things true and necessary, because revealed and appointed in
the Scripture." And farther, that "if it be reported or known, by credible
testimony, that any church has admitted into the exercise of divine worship any
thing superstitious or vain, or if the members of it walk, like those described
by the apostle, Phil.3:18,19, unto the dishonour of the Gospel and of the ways
of Christ, the church itself not endeavouring its own reformation and
repentance, other churches walking in communion therewith, by virtue of their
common interest in the glory of Christ and honour of the Gospel, after more
private ways for its reduction, as opportunity and duty may suggest unto their
elders, ought to assemble in a synod for advice, either as to the use of
farther means for the recovery of such a church, or to withhold communion from
it in case of obstinacy in its evil ways" We do not attempt to measure the
distance between these principles and the Presbyterianism of Owen's day, or the
diminished distance between them and the modified Presbyterianism of our own;
but we state them, with one of Owen's oldest biographers, as an evidence of his
"healing temper in this matter;" and we even venture to suggest whether, at
some future period of increased spirituality and external danger, they may not
form the basis of a stable and honorable union among the two great evangelical
sections of modern Nonconformists
But besides the outward dangers to
Protestantism, which made Owen so eager for union among his friends, we
discover another and more interesting explanation still in the increased
occupation of his mind with the great central truths of the Gospel, and his
growing delight in them. The minor distinctions among Christians come to be
seen by us in their modified proportions, when we have taken our place within
the inner circle of those great truths which constitute the peculiar glory and
power of Christianity; and this inner and more radiant circle formed more and
more the home of Dr Owen's heart. This is evident from the three great
doctrinal and devotional works which were produced by him at this period, and
which we have yet to name.
First, there appeared his "Christologia, or
Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ, God and man, with
the infinite wisdom, love, and power of God in the constitution thereof. As
also, of the grounds and reasons of his incarnation; the nature of his ministry
in heaven; the present state of the church above thereon; and the use of his
person in religion," etc. The root from which the whole discourse springs, is
the memorable declaration of our Lord to Peter, Matt.16:18, "And I say also
unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it:"--a declaration in which Owen
finds three great truths, whose illustration forms the substance of the
volume;-- that the person of Christ is the foundation of his church; that
opposition will be made by the powers of earth and hell to the church, as built
on the person of Christ; and that the church built on the person of Christ
shall never be separated from it or destroyed. It is easy to see what a rich
field of doctrinal statement, learned illustration, and devout reflection, is
opened for Owen's mind in these themes; and he expatiates in it with all the
delight of a mind accustomed to high and heavenly communion. It is pleasing to
mark how he casts off the cumbrous armour of a sometimes too scholastic style,
that had kept him down in some of his earlier treatises; and, rising from the
simply didactic into the devotional, aims to catch joyful glimpses of the glory
that is soon to be revealed.
Then followed his heart-searching,
heart-inspiring treatise on "The Grace and Duty of being Spiritually-minded,"
first preached to his own heart, and then to a private congregation; and which
reveals to us the almost untouched and untrodden eminences on which Owen walked
in the last years of his pilgrimage,--eminences for reaching which, it has been
said by one of the humblest and holiest of men of our own times, "it would
almost appear indispensable that the spiritual life should be nourished in
solitude; and that, afar from the din, and the broil, and the tumult of
ordinary life, the candidate for heaven should give himself up to the
discipline of prayer and of constant watchfulness."
The last production of
Owen's pen was his "Meditations and Discourses on the glory of Christ" It
embodies the holy musings of his latest days, and in many parts of it seems
actually to echo the presses of the heavenly worshippers. We may apply to
Owen's meditations, as recorded in this book, the words of Bunyan in reference
to his pilgrim,--"Drawing near to the city, he had yet a more perfect view
thereof." It is a striking circumstance, that each of the three great Puritan
divines wrote a treatise on the subject of heaven, and that each had his own
distinct aspect in which he delighted to view it. To the mind of Baxter, the
most prominent idea of heaven was that of rest; and who can wonder, when it is
remembered that his earthly life was little else than one prolonged
disease?--to the mind of Howe, ever aspiring after a purer state of being, the
favourite conception of heaven was that of holy happiness;-- while to the mind
of Owen, heaven's glory was regarded as consisting in the unveiled
manifestation of Christ. The conceptions, though varied, are all true; and
Christ, fully seen and perfectly enjoyed, will secure all the others. Let us
now trace the few remaining steps that conducted Owen into the midst of this
exceeding weight of glory.
We have already mentioned Lord Wharton, as one
of those noblemen who continued their kindness to the Nonconformists in the
midst of all their troubles. His country residence at Woburn, in
Buckinghamshire, afforded a frequent asylum to the persecuted ministers; just
as we find the castles of Mornay and De Plessis in France opened by their noble
owners as a refuge to the Huguenots.
During his growing infirmities, Owen
was invited to Woburn, to try the effect of change of air; and also that others
of his persecuted brethren, meeting him in this safe retreat, might enjoy the
benefit of united counsel and devotion. It appears that while here his
infirmities increased upon him, and that he was unable to return to his flock
in London at the time that he had hoped; and a letter written to them from this
place, gives us so vivid a reflection of the anxieties of a period of
persecution, and so interesting a specimen of Owens fidelity and affection to
his people, in the present experience of suffering, and in the dread of more,
that we have peculiar delight in interweaving it with our narrative:-- [begin
of letter]
"Beloved In The Lord,- Mercy, grace, and peace be multiplied to
you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, by the communication
of the Holy Ghost. I thought and hoped that by this time I might have been
present with you, according to my desire and resolution; but it has pleased our
holy gracious Father otherwise to dispose of me, at least for a season. The
continuance of my painful infirmities, and the increase of my weaknesses, will
not allow me at present to hope that I should be able to bear the journey. How
great an exercise this is to me, considering the season, he knows, to whose
will I would in all things cheerfully submit myself. But although I am absent
from you in body, 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; and my prayer for you night and day is, that you may stand fast in
the whole will of God, and maintain the beginning of your confidence without
wavering, firm unto the end. I know it is needless for me, at this distance, to
write to you about what concerns you in point of duty at this season, that work
being well supplied by my brother in the ministry; you will give me leave, out
of my abundant affections towards you, to bring some few things to your
remembrance, as my weakness will permit.
"In the first place, I pray God
it may be rooted and fixed in our minds, that the shame and loss we may undergo
for the sake of Christ and the profession of the Gospel is the greatest honour
which in this life we can be made partakers of. So it was esteemed by the
apostles,--they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his
name's sake. It is a privilege superadded to the grace of faith, which all are
not made partakers of. Hence it is reckoned to the Philippians in a peculiar
manner, that it was given to them, not only to believe in Christ, but also to
suffer for him,--that it is far more honorable to suffer with Christ than to
reign with the greatest of his enemies. If this be fixed by faith in our minds,
it will tend greatly to our encouragement. I mention these things only, as
knowing that they are more at large pressed on you.
"The next thing I
would recommend to you at this season, is the increase of mutual love among
yourselves; for every trial of our faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ is also
a trial of our love towards the brethren. This is that which the Lord Christ
expects from us, namely, that when the hatred of the world does openly manifest
and act itself against us all, we should evidence an active love among
ourselves. If there have been any decays, any coldness herein, if they are not
recovered and healed in such a season, it can never be expected. I pray God,
therefore, that your mutual love may abound more and more in all the effects
and fruits of it towards the whole society, and every member thereof. You may
justly measure the fruit of your present trial by the increase of this grace
among you; in particular, have a due regard to the weak and the tempted, that
that which is lame may not be turned out of the way, but rather let it be
healed.
"Furthermore, brethren, I beseech you, hear a word of advice in
case the persecution increases,--which it is like to do for a season. 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 that are ready to despond or to halt, and to encourage them in
the Lord. Choose out those to 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 this blessed work. And I desire the persons may be of this number who are
faithful men, and know the state of the church; by this means you will know
what is the frame of the members of the church, which will be a great direction
to you, even in your prayers. Watch, now, brethren, that, if it be the will of
God, not one soul may be lost from under your care. Let no one be overlooked or
neglected; consider all their conditions, and apply yourselves to all their
circumstances
Finally, brethren, that I be not at present farther
troublesome to you, examine yourselves as to your spiritual benefit which you
have received, or do receive, by your present fears and dangers, which will
alone give you the true measure of your condition; for if this tends to the
exercise of your faith, and love, and holiness, if this increases your
valuation of the privileges of the Gospel, it will be an undoubted token of the
blessed issue which the Lord Christ will give unto your troubles. Pray for me,
as you do; and do it the rather, that, if it be the will of God, I may be
restored to you,--and if not, that a blessed enhance may be given to me into
the kingdom of God and glory. Salute all the church in my name. I take the
boldness in the Lord to subscribe myself your unworthy pastor, and your servant
for Jesus' sake, J. Owen.
"P.S. I humbly desire you would in your prayers
remember the family where I am, from whom I have received, and do receive,
great Christian kindness. I may say, as the apostle of Onesiphorus, 'The Lord
give to them that they may find mercy of the Lord in that day, for they have
often refreshed me in my great distress.'" [end of letter]
His infirmities
increasing, he soon after removed from London to Kensington, for country air;
occasionally, however, he was able still to visit London; and an incident which
happened to him on one of these visits presents us with another picture of the
times. As he was driving along the Strand, his carriage was stopped by two
informers, and his horses seized. Greater violence would immediately have
followed, had it not been that Sir Edmund Godfrey, a justice of the peace, was
passing at the time, and seeing a mob collected round the carriage, asked what
was the matter? On ascertaining the circumstances, he ordered the informers,
with Dr Owen, to meet him at the house of another justice of the peace on an
appointed day. When the day came, it was found that the informers had acted so
irregularly, that they were not only disappointed of their base reward, but
severely reprimanded and dismissed. Thus once more did Owen escape as a bird
from the snare of the fowler.
Retiring still farther from the scenes of
public life, Owen soon after took up his abode in the quiet village of Ealing,
where he had a house of his own and some property. Only once again did
persecution hover over him, and threaten to disturb the sacredness of his
declining days, by seeking to involve him and some other of the Nonconformists
in the Rye House plot; but the charge was too bold to be believed, and God was
about, ere long, to remove him from the reach of all these evils, and to hide
him in his pavilion, from the pride of man and from the strife of tongues.
Anthony Wood has said of Owen that "he did very unwillingly lay down his head
and die," but how different was the spectacle of moral sublimity presented to
the eyes of those who were actual witnesses of the last days of the magnanimous
and heavenly-minded Puritan! In one of his latest writings, when referring to
the near approach of the daily expected and earnestly desired hour of his
discharge from all farther serve in this world, he had said, "In the continual
prospect hereof do I yet live, and rejoice; which, among other advantages
unspeakable, has already given me an inconcernment in those oppositions which
the passions or interests of men engage them in, of a very near alliance unto,
and scarce distinguishable from, that which the grave will afford." And all the
exercises of his deathbed were the prolonged and brightening experience of what
he here describes. In a letter to his beloved friend Charles Fleetwood, on the
day before his death, he thus beautifully expresses his Christian affection,
and his good hope through grace:-- [begin of letter]
"Dear Sir,--Although I
am not able to write one word myself, yet I am very desirous to speak one word
more to you in this world, and do it by the hand of my wife. The continuance of
your entire kindness, knowing what it is accompanied withal, is not only
greatly valued by me, but will be a refreshment to me, as it is, even in my
dying hour. 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 all 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. I am greatly afflicted at the
distempers of your dear lady; the good Lord stand by her, and support and
deliver her. My affectionate respects to her, and the rest of your relations,
who are so dear to me in the Lord. Remember your dying friend with all
fervency. I rest upon it that you do so, and am yours entirely, J. Owen."
[end of letter]
The first sheet of his "Meditations on the Glory of
Christ" had passed through the press under the superintendence of the Rev.
William Payne, a Dissenting minister at Saffron Waldon, in Essex; and on that
person calling on him to inform him of the circumstance on the morning of the
day he died, he exclaimed, with uplifted hands, and eyes looking upwards, "I am
glad to hear it; but, 0 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." Still it was no easy thing for that robust
frame to be broken to pieces, and to let the struggling spirit go free. His
physicians, Dr Cox and Sir Edmund King, remarked on the unusual strength of
that earthly house which was about to be dissolved; while his more constant
attendants on that consecrated hour were awe-struck by the mastery which his
mighty and heaven-supported spirit maintained over his physical agonies "In
respect of sicknesses, very long, languishing, and often sharp and violent,
like the blows of inevitable death, yet was he both calm and submit under all."
At length the struggle ceased; and with eyes and hands uplifted, as if his last
act was devotion, the spirit of Owen passed in silence into the world of glory.
It happened on the 24th of August 1683, the anniversary of St. Bartholomew's
Day;--a day memorable in the annals of the Church of Christ, as that in which
the two thousand Nonconformist confessors had exposed themselves to poverty and
persecution at the call of conscience, and in which heaven's gates had been
opened wide to receive the martyred Protestants of France. Eleven days
afterwards, a long and mournful procession, composed of more than sixty
noblemen, in carriages drawn by six horses each, and of many others in mourning
coaches and on horseback, silently followed the mortal remains of Owen along
the streets of London, and deposited them in Bunhill-fields,--the Puritan
necropolis.
"We have had a light in this candlestick," said the amiable
David Clarkson, on the Sabbath following; "we have had a light in this
candlestick, which did not only enlighten the room, but gave light to others
far and near: but it is put out. We did not sufficiently value it. (continued
in part 7...)
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