Walking with John Owen

It is getting lighter on my evening walks to chapel; last week, I had gone a mile or so before I needed a torch. The journey's companion was Dr John Owen. Something of an intellectual and vice-chancellor of Oxford University, his preaching wasn’t quite as winsome as Ambrose's and Bridge’s, but it was very helpful and wonderfully thorough. Owen had been Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain in Ireland and Scotland and was a leading congregationalist. He often preached before Parliament, including the day after the Charles I was beheaded. He pastored the old Commonwealth leaders after the restoration, when such men were less than popular. He campaigned for John Bunyan’s release from prison and was even employed by Charles II's government to combat Roman Catholic evangelistic literature. He turned down lucrative posts in the Church of England and an offer to become president of Harvard over in America. While being a straight-thinking Calvinist, he always campaigned for religious freedom, urging both the army, Parliament and later the King to refrain from persecuting Christians. He might have been an academic theologian, but he was also a pastor and friend to God’s people.

Attributed to John Greenhill, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I listened to his exposition of Hebrews 10:25:

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

He argued that those who regularly fail to meet with their local church were more prone to error, apostasy and false teaching. I have certainly noticed that those who cannot find the time or willpower to share worship can spare hours gazing at zany YouTube videos. They eagerly listen to 'teachers' to whom no decent church would yield its pulpit, whose strange ideas excite their love of novelty and spiritual pride. Down Howgill Lane, four sheep had escaped their field and were wandering further away from it because of my approach. The more they wandered, the harder it would be to return them. A fitting picture, thought I.

Some sweetmeats from the man’s own pen:

“Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

-Overcoming Sin and Temptation

“Before the work of grace the heart is ‘stony.’ It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.”

-The Holy Spirit

“When the Holy Spirit does his work of regeneration in the hearts of men he does not come on them with great powerful feelings and emotions which cannot be resisted. He does not possess men as evil spirits take possession of their victims.”

-The Holy Spirit

“Do not seek to empty your cup as a way to avoid sin, but rather seek to fill it up with the Spirit of life, so there is no longer room for sin.”

-Overcoming Sin and Temptation

As I walked and listened, the temperature was barely above zero and the ice was already thick and wide-spread. Only the once did I tumble, bruising my back and grazing a hand. Despite losing the concentration of his sole listener, Dr Owen continued preaching as though nothing had happened. I admired his unflappable style; would that I were so focussed a preacher.