Welcome to the Man of God Podcast, a ministry of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky. This is the voice of the narrated Puritan, puritanaudiobooks.com. Today, I'm going to read a review from a magazine called the Free Church Magazine from the year 1853 from the country of Scotland. The following article is called John Owen's works. The nature of a season visibly affects the growth of physical things. And there are moral seasons which affect the growth of the mind and the character. Periods of strenuous social conflict would appear to be those seasons which produce the richest harvests of the mind. The Reformation was such a season. And accordingly, there appeared simultaneously in the several kingdoms of Europe a greater number of men of exalted character and creative energy than ever existed together at the same time in the world. A similar season there was during the last European conflict, and the intellectual harvest was then to what it had been at the Reformation, if the moral one was inferior. The only other illustration we shall mention is taken from the period of the Civil War. In respect to all the highest interests of man, that was the most illustrious period of civil history that has ever been. It was the political origin of the modern world, as a reformation was its origin ecclesiastically. Religion, after travailing in birth with freedom during more than a century, brought forth a man-child on the favored soil of our beloved land. and that period is the historic life spring of British freedom as it now exists. That was a season especially fertile in great minds, not to mention others. It produced Oliver Conwell, the greatest of modern rulers, whose profound nature has seemed to men of succeeding times like a dark and unfathomable abyss. It raised the soul of John Milton to the heavens and made his name synonymous with sublimity. And it produced one who, though he had less genius, had as wide an intellect as either. John Owen, the undoubted prince of British divines. To the praise of being solid, sound, judicious, and thoroughly conscientious, the writings of John Owen are as much entitled as those of any other divine whatever. They have, however, characteristic excellencies of a superior kind. In pointing out these, it may be useful to indicate John Owen's position. In a period of great parties, in a state of animated antagonism to one another, John Owen belonged exclusively to neither. He was neither a strict, independent, a modern Episcopalian, nor a high Presbyterian. Nominally an independent, he was yet at one period of his life a dean and expressed his matured views on the nature of church government and substantial conformity with presbytery. It was, however, a great mistake to infer from this that Owen was either a timid neutral or a self-seeking latitudinarian who shaped and varied his opinions in accordance with the times and circumstances. principle and not policy dictated his position. In him we see a great individual mind, actuated solely by calm, courageous and devoted adherence to truth for its own sake, standing erect amid the hostile parties of his times, doing homage to what was scriptural in all, unseduced by the exclusiveness or excess of any. placing God before every association of men in the Bible, above every creed of human composition. From the position which he occupied, John Owen's mind had the amplest scope for free and full development. He was not like a forest tree which requires to limit and conform its shape to that of adjacent trees. nor was he like a garden tree that is pruned and trimmed, and receives its form from art and not from nature. He was like a solitary tree, growing in a fertile soil, and which spreads out on all sides as fully expanded boughs in negligent yet beautiful magnificence, hence Though imminently orthodox, there is a continual spontaneity about his writings. We see his orthodoxy, not bearing on it the form and pattern of an external mold, but growing out of his own nature, nourished by the truth of God's Word. His orthodoxy was a fountain out of which water flowed, and not a cistern into which water had been poured. Without the least pretense to originality, or the least affectation of novelty, there is not a more original writer on theology in the English language, nor one who has given the more old ideas a stamp of his own mind. placing them in a new and better setting, or widening their range by discovering that the Ithmus opened on both sides into an infinite continent of thought. At once, a cause and effect of the above-mentioned qualities was John Owen's profound acquaintance with the Word of God. His works show him to have been a most diligent and successful student of the Word, and possessed of that strong and instinctive sagacity that intuitive perception of spiritual analogy, which, when possessed in an imminent degree, form the highest qualification of an interpreter of scripture, insight into the Word of God. John Owen's acquaintance with scripture was not desultory, but systematic. Not technical, but scientific. Not arranged under the divisions and subdivisions of a human system, but exhibited in connection with the great and enduring relations which divine things bear to one another, to man, and to events. He was intimately acquainted with the Bible. as one great organic whole, and as well as any man he appears to have perceived the grandeur of one theme. He knew the Bible in the relation of part to part, in the relation of the new covenant to the old, in the relation of divine truth to human nature, to human history, in its relation to the plans and purposes of God. and especially is Owen remarkable for the concrete method of discussing subjects. He did not look at a text merely as it stood related to the context, nor did he look at a controverted subject merely in its relation to the period of time which then was. His eminently retrospective and not less eminently prospective mind took up its positions in the center of the great plane of history. and believing that an unceasing purpose run through all ages. He studied the biography of doctrines and systems and showed them living and acting in the past, while he traced them downwards until they took their place in infinity and eternity. Among the Reformers, John Owen's mind was most nearly akin to that of John Calvin. Owen wanted the transparent clearness, the classical grace, the unrivaled tact in the distributions of thought by which the reformer above all others made dark things plain, deep things simple, and effectually presented great subjects in the briefest possible space. He had, however, John Calvin's disinterest in love of truth, and Calvin's delight in following hard after her, because of her intrinsic beauty. He strongly possessed a reformist tendency towards the theology of religion, the true Calvinian instinct of beginning with God, and of ever feeling that he was the first truth, as well as the first cause from whom all other truths came, and in whom all others harmonized. He had, as has been already noticed, that spiritual discernment for which John Calvin was so remarkable, which without effort seemed to enter into the meaning of the spirit, as if the author of the word had given to his mind a special instrumental adaptation to unlock the treasury of scriptural truth. If John Owen built on John Calvin's foundation, he carried forward to building farther than it had been by all the men who lived between John Calvin and himself. After these remarks which are made, not inconsiderately, our readers will be prepared for the statement that we are constrained by a sense of justice to give him the first place among English divines. If the works of all English writers on religion except one were to be destroyed, we do not know a single author from whose writing so much of doctrinal and practical theology could be learned as from those of Dr. Owen. The edition of his works published by Johnston and Hunter is a great boon to the public and highly creditable to the publishers. It consists of 16 volumes already published on doctrinal, practical, and controversial theology, besides eight volumes to be published afterwards containing a celebrated treatise known by the name of Theologomena. and his noble commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews. This issue of the works is the most valuable of all the cheap publication schemes with which we are acquainted, and being sold for a mere fraction of the price of former editions, and surpassing them in all various respects, and especially in accuracy, it has at once taken rank as a standard edition of the works of John Owen. The publishers have reason to congratulate themselves on having secured the editorial services of Dr. William Gould, acute, judicious, an industrious and successful student, an accomplished scholar, well-read in historical and didactic theology. And adding to all these, no small degree of the high and rare faculty of sound critical discernment, he has discharged a task assigned to him so as to secure general approbation. His notices, which are very many in number and composed of materials that lie not on the surface of history, show an extent of reading not often met with and so young a man. These works are introduced by a life of Dr. Owen from the pen of Andrew Thompson of Edinburgh. It is written in that clear, simple chase and fascinating style of which he is such a master. It contains all the material facts of Dr. Owen's life, and considering the difficulties of the times in which Owen lived, the difficult positions in which he was sometimes placed. and the peculiar delicate nature of some of the questions which a narrative of Owen's life necessarily brings under review. We must give the author great credit for the Christian kindliness and wisdom with which he has steered his way, and it would be morbid scrupulosity or worse to spend one moment's time in determining whether it might not be possible on one or two occasions to hold a different opinion from that which he has announced. It is the most classical and the most readable of all the lives of Owen that are worthy to be read. The 16 volumes of Owen now before us contain 57 distinct treatises on very diversified subjects almost all of which pertain to the central portions of doctrinal and vital Christianity, or to heirs by which these are seriously endangered. The editor has arranged the separate works under a three-fold division. The first doctrinal division consists of five volumes and contains treatises on the person and work of Christ, treatises relating to all the persons of the Trinity, treatises on the Holy Spirit, and on justification and faith. The second, her practical division, consists of four volumes and contains seven treatises on experimental religion and two volumes of sermons, the one of which was published during John Owen's lifetime and contains 16 discourses. The other is posthumous and contains no less than 82 discourses. The third, or controversial, division of Owen's works consists of seven volumes. Two of these are on the Arminian Controversy, one on the Sassanian Controversy, one on the Popish Controversy, one on the Rights and Duties of Descent, and two on Church Government. The two latter volumes, of a very miscellaneous nature, comprising no fewer than 25 separate tracts, which, among other subjects, contain discussions on schism, toleration, indulgence, the power of the civil magistrate, the nature of a gospel church, liturgies, evangelical love, church peace and unity. The arrangement adopted by the editor is the best it could have been for the general use of its readers. Probably there are some, and we are among the number, who would have preferred an arrangement strictly according to the original date of publication, as marking more clearly the various phases and the comparative progress of the author's mind. In our limited space, it is not possible to give anything entitled to the name of criticism on the words of Owen, Sir Tim. In the same reason, we are compelled to refrain from giving extracts, however desirable these are, to illustrate, to authenticate, and to animate criticism. According to the arrangement adopted, the first volume appropriately opens with the greatest, though the last, of all of the works of Hohen, his meditations on the person and glory of Christ, which is really one work, in two parts. Those whom others praise have vied with one another in their praise of these works. A work, says the late Dr. McCree, in whom there never was a sounder critic, or one more wise and cautious in his judgments, a work which, together with its continuation, The Meditations on the Glory of Christ, of all the works published by individuals since a reformation next to John Calvin's Institute, we would have deemed it our highest honor to have produced. It is richly replenished with that unction from the Holy One which tends to enlighten the eyes and cheer the heart, which sweetens the enjoyments of life, softens the hours of death, and prepares for the fruitions of eternity. These treatises are not controversial. They are not exegetical, neither are they doctrinal in the common sense of that term. They consist of a magnificent train of scriptural thought, ranging through the mighty compass of the glorious scheme of redemption. They are more entitled to be called the philosophy of the plan of salvation, even the works which bear that name. John Owen's Treatise on Communion with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is able and valuable both doctrinally and practically considered. It was published 22 years before his work on the person of Christ, and we discern in it the germs of that great work. The author had then gotten a glimpse of the ideas afterwards that unfolded, but as yet he is only working his way to them, which accounts for the feeling in reading it that we are waiting through a resisting medium. His great works on the Holy Spirit occupy the whole of one volume by itself. A second is occupied with related subjects, the reasons of faith, the causes, ways, and means of understanding the Word of God, the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer. The Holy Spirit is the comforter and is the author of spiritual gifts. These subordinate parts are all treated in the most masterly manner, and the principal work of which they are appendages is the most thorough discussion on the spirit as a whole with which the Church of God has yet been favored. There may be some points on which one might differ from the author, but this is certain, that no succeeding writer has given us more of an enlarged idea of divine truth on this head than John Owen has done. And it were well if the theology of our pulpits came up more nearly to the standard of the massive thinking of this volume on the Spirit. The same remarks apply to the last volume in this doctrinal division. This is a treatise on the doctrine of justification by faith through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. But we now proceed to make a few remarks on the practical works of Owen. His treatises on experimental religion are seven in number and bear the following titles. Of the mortification of sin and believers. Of temptation, the nature and power of it. the nature, power, deceit, and prevalence of indwelling sin, a practical exposition of Psalm 130, the nature of apostasy from the profession of the gospel, the grace and duty of being spiritually minded, of the dominion of sin and grace. These works are the most practical in the English language. Richard Baxter addresses a conscience ab extra. John Owen, with a candle of the Lord in his hand, descends into the conscience itself and lays bare all chambers of imagery. The former excels in solemn and earnest statement, the latter in scientific dissection, but his anatomy is divine. Richard Baxter draws his motives from time and eternity, heaven and hell, salvation and destruction. The other draws his motives from God and sin, and holiness, and especially from the majesty, purity, power, all-pervading presence of God, and from his unspeakable wisdom, grace, and goodness in the plan of redemption. Richard Baxter is more fitted to impress the conscience, John Owen to enlighten it. The one awakens, John Owen convicts. Richard Baxter is a most diligent cultivator of the soil, but John Owen trenches the soil, plows up the subsoil and submits every corner to the most rigorous grubbing. And if his process be slower, it is the more thorough. While in doctrinal theology, John Owen ascends into the heights as far as anyone has done before or since. In his practical works, he sounds the depths of the soul, analyzes the nature of sin, and with a vigorous and relentless yet skillful hand, he lays the act to the root of the tree. and the madoc to each root in succession, until he reaches those deep and delicate fine fibers which nourish the whole body of sin and death. The world probably does not contain a specimen of spiritual anatomy so accurate and profound as his treatise on indwelling sin. With what intensity of truth does he exhibit sin, with his power of deluding, befooling, enslaving, enchanting, bewitching human beings to their own undoing? He does not write about the evil of sin. A drawing of it, true to the inner life, is exhibited. While this treatise is eminently practical, it strongly confirms doctrinal truth, and its practical result is one test of the soundness of doctrine. So the confirmation of scriptural doctrine is one of the best tests of the soundness of those principles on which a practical treatise is constructed. Now, we question if any doctrinal work on original sin will give a person a deeper and firmer conviction of that truth than is done by the practical treatise of John Owen. Sin being of a moral nature, it is before the conscience, rather than the speculative intellect, that it is most convincingly exhibited And from this circumstance John Owen on indwelling sin will do more to convince that the doctrine of original sin is true than the treatise on that subject from the pen of Jonathan Edwards. His other practical works are of a kindred nature, but the one which stands next, if indeed it be not equal to his treatise on indwelling sin, is his commentary on Psalm 130. His treatise on apostasy is a masterly production full of solemn truths. the fruit of sanctified observation and patient reflection on the history of the church, and which has special value in the present times. John Owen possessed almost all the qualities necessary to form an able controversialist, sagacious, learned, candid, conscientious, in love with truth for its own sake and possessed of an industry which nothing could weary and a patience which nothing could exhaust. He tracked the adversary through every turning and winding and drove him out of the last of actual or conceivable subterfuges. This showed that he was a conscientious reasoner who was performing a public duty and sought to leave nothing undone. However, it makes his controversial pages sometimes rather tedious, though if one does master him fully, no other author requires to be read on the same point. His earliest controversial work, The Display of Arminianism, shows all his vigor, but it is not those constant interminglings of moral principles which characterize his work of later years. The death of death and the death of Christ thoroughly canvases the whole question respecting the end of our Lord's death. And on the extent of the atonement, nothing has been added of any importance to which John Owen put forth in his treatise, while he took a more enlarged view of the subject than was done in the recent controversy. To some we are well aware the character now given of Owen's works will appear too highly colored. Many will find it difficult, perhaps, to read his works at first. But the more he is studied, and the more one's own mind expands, the more exalted will the merits of John Owen appear, in the union of soundness and depth, a solidity and extension of view, of the practical and the doctrinal. a sound sense and pervading piety in the defense of truth. The refutation of error, the exposition of scripture, the dissection of our wonderful nature and the guidance of conscience he stands second to none. Advances have been made in biblical criticism since the days of Owen, but the platform of ideas on which he stood is as high as that on which a church now stands. Jonathan Edwards and John Owen were alike and yet dissimilar. I liken the conscientiousness of their speculations, all of which were steeped in sincerity. I liken their independence of mind. I liken being all their day's learners, even while instructors. Jonathan Edwards was a greater reasoner. John Owen was a greater thinker. Edwards was a more philosophic defender of truth. John Owen was his greatest expounder.