John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse: Preaching, Prophecy and Politics 1138087769, 9781138087767

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Conventions
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Owen’s prophetic worldview
I. Owen’s eschatological framework
i. A panorama of Western history dominated by the rise of Antichrist
ii. The timetable for the coming destruction of Antichrist
iii. A golden age of latter-day glory
II. Prophetic intertextuality
III. The application of Owen’s prophetic worldview to his recent past
i. Encroaching idolatry
ii. The growth of tyranny
IV. Conclusion
2 The identification and interpretation of providentially significant events
I. Identifying providentially significant events
II. The necessity of interpreting providence
III. The particular eschatological framework Owen used to interpret providence
i. The ‘vengeance of the temple’ and the ‘recompenses for the controversy of Zion’
ii. The ‘measuring of the temple’ and the restoration of worship
iii. The establishment of a glorious ‘new heaven and earth’
IV. Two descriptions of this turbulent transitional period
i. The ‘shaking’ of heaven and earth
ii. Providential ‘dissolutions’ and ‘alterations’
V. The application of this interpretation of providence
VI. Conclusion
3 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies
I. Understanding the times
II. Improving the times by reformation and separation
i. Reformation and separation in church polity
ii. Reformation and separation in worship
iii. Reformation and separation in doctrine
III. Reformation and separation in Owen’s Oxford
IV. Conclusion
4 The magistrate’s response to providentially significant events
I. The godly magistrate in Owen’s apocalyptic chronology
i. The ‘interest’ of Christ and his people
ii. The ‘unravelling’ of civil and ecclesiastical powers
II. The nature of the desired constitutional settlement
i. Not destroying civil power, but rather translating it
ii. Ambivalence towards particular political forms
iii. The importance of the rhetoric of providence
III. The magistrate’s reform programme
IV. Conclusion
5 The obligations of the magistrate and the search for a church settlement
I. Defining the boundaries between magistracy and ministry
i. The magistracy must not allow the ministry to meddle in its role
ii. The magistracy must not interfere in the church’s worship and discipline
iii. The magistracy must not allow its rightful religious authority to be challenged
II. A settlement which must include and protect all the godly
i. Limited toleration for the sake of including all who agreed in fundamentals
ii. Protecting against peace-disturbing blasphemy, heresy and public idolatry
III. Proposals for a church settlement which would see the gospel propagated
IV. Owen’s preferred settlement as a via media
V. Conclusion
6 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation
I. A sinfully negligent nation
II. Warnings which threatened judgment
III. The application of Owen’s warnings
IV. Conclusion
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse

John Owen was one of the most significant figures in Reformed Orthodox theology during the seventeenth century, exerting considerable religious and political influence in the context of the British Civil War and Interregnum. Using Owen’s sermons from this period as a window into the mind of a selfproclaimed prophet, this book studies how his apocalyptic interpretation of contemporary events led to him making public calls for radical political and cultural change. Owen believed he was ministering at a unique moment in history, and so the historical context in which he writes must be equally considered alongside the theological lineage that he draws upon. Combining these elements, this book allows for a more nuanced interpretation of Owen’s ministry that encompasses his lofty spiritual thought as well as his passionate concerns with more corporeal events. This book represents part of a new historical turn in Owen Studies and will be of significant interest to scholars of theological history as well as early modern historians. Martyn Calvin Cowan is Lecturer in Historical Theology at Union Theological College, Northern Ireland.

Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World Edited by Fernando Cervantes, Peter Marshall and Philip Soergel For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/ReligiousCultures-in-the-Early-Modern-World/book-series/RCEMW

Titles in the Series: Images of Islam, 1453–1600 Turks in Germany and Central Europe Charlotte Colding Smith Female Piety and the Catholic Reformation in France Jennifer Hillman Exile and Religious Identity, 1500–1800 Edited by Jesse Spohnholz and Gary Waite The Renaissance Ethics of Music Singing, Contemplation and Musica Humana Hyun-Ah Kim Calvinism, Reform and the Absolutist State in Elizabethan Ireland Mark A. Hutchinson Indulgences after Luther Pardons in Counter-Reformation France, 1520–1720 Elizabeth C Tingle Conversion to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy Peter A. Mazur Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610–1690 An Intellectual History Catherine Ballériaux Food and Religious Identities in Spain, 1400–1600 Jillian Williams John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse Preaching, Prophecy and Politics Martyn Calvin Cowan

John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse Preaching, Prophecy and Politics

Martyn Calvin Cowan

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Martyn Calvin Cowan The right of Martyn Calvin Cowan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cowan, Martyn C., author. Title: John Owen and the civil war apocalypse : preaching, prophecy, and politics / Martyn Calvin Cowan. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Religious cultures in the early modern world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017015135 | ISBN 9781138087767 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315110271 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Owen, John, 1616–1683—Sermons. | Prophecy— Sermons. | Great Britain—History—Civil War, 1642–1649— Religious aspects—Christianity—Sermons. Classification: LCC BX5207.O88 C69 2017 | DDC 285/.9092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015135 ISBN: 978-1-138-08776-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-11027-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In memory of my Father, George Cowan (1930–1993)

Contents

Acknowledgements Conventions List of Abbreviations

1

xi xiii xv

Introduction

1

Owen’s prophetic worldview

8

I. Owen’s eschatological framework 8 i. A panorama of Western history dominated by the rise of Antichrist 9 ii. The timetable for the coming destruction of Antichrist 13 iii. A golden age of latter-day glory 16 II. Prophetic intertextuality 18 III. The application of Owen’s prophetic worldview to his recent past 20 i. Encroaching idolatry 21 ii. The growth of tyranny 24 IV. Conclusion 26 2

The identification and interpretation of providentially significant events I. Identifying providentially significant events 38 II. The necessity of interpreting providence 44 III. The particular eschatological framework Owen used to interpret providence 47 i. The ‘vengeance of the temple’ and the ‘recompenses for the controversy of Zion’ 47 ii. The ‘measuring of the temple’ and the restoration of worship 49

37

viii

Contents iii. The establishment of a glorious ‘new heaven and earth’ 51 IV. Two descriptions of this turbulent transitional period 54 i. The ‘shaking’ of heaven and earth 54 ii. Providential ‘dissolutions’ and ‘alterations’ 56 V. The application of this interpretation of providence 57 VI. Conclusion 60

3

The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies

68

I. Understanding the times 68 II. Improving the times by reformation and separation 72 i. Reformation and separation in church polity 74 ii. Reformation and separation in worship 76 iii. Reformation and separation in doctrine 79 III. Reformation and separation in Owen’s Oxford 81 IV. Conclusion 86 4

The magistrate’s response to providentially significant events

95

I. The godly magistrate in Owen’s apocalyptic chronology 95 i. The ‘interest’ of Christ and his people 97 ii. The ‘unravelling’ of civil and ecclesiastical powers 99 II. The nature of the desired constitutional settlement 102 i. Not destroying civil power, but rather translating it 102 ii. Ambivalence towards particular political forms 104 iii. The importance of the rhetoric of providence 109 III. The magistrate’s reform programme 112 IV. Conclusion 114 5

The obligations of the magistrate and the search for a church settlement I. Defining the boundaries between magistracy and ministry 124 i. The magistracy must not allow the ministry to meddle in its role 124 ii. The magistracy must not interfere in the church’s worship and discipline 127 iii. The magistracy must not allow its rightful religious authority to be challenged 128

123

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ix

II. A settlement which must include and protect all the godly 130 i. Limited toleration for the sake of including all who agreed in fundamentals 130 ii. Protecting against peace-disturbing blasphemy, heresy and public idolatry 131 III. Proposals for a church settlement which would see the gospel propagated 134 IV. Owen’s preferred settlement as a via media 138 V. Conclusion 143 6

Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation I. II. III. IV.

153

A sinfully negligent nation 153 Warnings which threatened judgment 158 The application of Owen’s warnings 163 Conclusion 169

Conclusion

178

Select bibliography Index

185 215

Acknowledgements

This monograph is adapted from my University of Cambridge doctoral dissertation. I must thank my supervisor, the Dean of Peterhouse, Dr Stephen Hampton, for his excellent guidance and generous encouragement. I would also like to thank my examiners, Prof John Morrill and Prof John Coffey, for a very stimulating viva. During my time in Cambridge, I enjoyed and benefited from being part of the Peterhouse community, not least when Lee Gatiss arrived to work on Owen’s commentary on Hebrews: I am indebted to the now Dr Gatiss in many ways. In the Divinity Faculty, the History of Christianity Seminar (convened by Prof Duffy and Dr Rex) was a regular source of intellectual development. Within the wider early-modern community at Cambridge, particular thanks must go to Hunter Powell for sharing invaluable insights from his own research into the Dissenting Brethren. I have also benefitted from the knowledge and assistance of the staff at the University Library and the Dr Williams’s Library in London. More widely, Owen scholar Prof Crawford Gribben has profoundly influenced my whole approach to the writing of history and has on a number of occasions offered me enormously helpful advice. I wish to thank the congregation of First Presbyterian Church Saintfield, Co. Down, for providing financial support during my doctoral research. Special mention must also be made of my great friend and ministerial colleague, Dr Michael McClenahan, who has been a constant help and encouragement to me in both my pastoral and academic work. Thanks should also go to the late Dr Mike Ovey, Dr David Field and Dr Garry Williams who, during my time at Oak Hill Theological College, first inspired me to study historical theology by showing me its relevance to the life and witness of the contemporary church. I now have the privilege of being involved in theological education, and I am delighted to be part of the faculty led by Principal Stafford Carson at Union Theological College, Belfast. Special thanks should go to my family and friends. This work could simply not have been undertaken without the support and generosity of my mother and sister. But, in particular, my wife Kathy deserves special praise for her love, patience and complete support – in many ways, this project is as much hers as mine. I wish to dedicate this monograph to the memory of my late father, who would have been delighted that some of his old books were brought down from the shelf to help with its completion.

Conventions

Please note the following conventions: •

•

•

• • • •

Quotations from Owen are normally from the first edition, but, to aid the reader, a reference is also included, in square brackets, to the 24 volume Goold edition of his works (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–55) All other works by Owen are cited according to the short title ascribed to them by Goold, followed by the volume and page number – in the first reference to such works, the year of first publication, or, in the case of unpublished Restoration sermons, the date of preaching, is added In quotations from the primary texts, the spelling and orthography of the original first editions are preserved – other quotations from Owen are given as they appear in Goold In all quotations, the long ‘s’ and i/j and u/v have been modernised All extracts from the Bible are given as recorded in the primary source: on other occasions, the King James Bible is used The place of publication for all referenced early modern works is London, unless otherwise stated All dates are given old style, but the year is taken to begin on 1 January

Abbreviations

A&O

Abbott

Baillie Burton CDPR

CJ Clarke Papers

Correspondence

CSPD DWL LJ Ludlow Nickolls

ODNB Orations

C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660, 3 vols. (London: HMSO, 1911) W.C. Abbott, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945) Robert Baille, Letters and Journals, ed., David Laing, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Bannatyne, 1841–42) J.T. Rutt, ed., Diary of Thomas Burton, Esq., 4 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1828) S.R. Gardiner, ed., Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906) Journals of the House of Commons The Clarke Papers, vols. 1–4, ed. C.H. Firth (1891–1901); vol. 5, ed. Frances Henderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) The Correspondence of John Owen (1616–1683) With an Account of his Life and Work, ed., Peter Toon (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1970) Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Commonwealth Period, 13 vols. Dr Williams’s Library, London Journals of the House of Lords C.H. Firth, ed., The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1894) John Nickolls, ed., The Original Letters and Papers of State, Addressed to Oliver Cromwell; Concerning the Affairs of Great Britain (1743) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The Oxford Orations of Dr. John Owen ed. and trans. Peter Toon (Callington: Gospel Communication, 1971)

xvi Abbreviations Savoy Declaration A Declaration of the Faith and Order Owned and Practised in the Congregational Churches in England (1658) Stephen William Stephen, ed., Register of the Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh and Some Other Brethren of the Ministry, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1921–1930) TSP Thomas Birch, ed., Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, 7 vols. (1742)

Introduction

The recent resurgence of interest in John Owen (1616–83) rightly identifies him as one of the most significant Reformed Orthodox theologians of the seventeenth century.1 During the period 1646–59, he exercised great influence as a leader of Congregationalism, chaplain to Cromwell, preacher and advisor to Parliament and the Council of State, Dean of Christ Church Oxford and, subsequently, the university’s Vice-Chancellor. There are a number of works representative of the steadily building interest and scholarly revision of Owen. Sebastian Rehnman’s Divine Discourse (2002), a study of Owen’s Prolegomena, revealed a theologian who drew deeply on patristic, medieval and renaissance sources. Carl Trueman reexamined important areas of Owen’s theology in The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology (1998) and John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man (2007). Others, such as Kelly Kapic and Brian Kay, have turned their attention to his pastoral theology.2 Despite these advances, Tim Cooper, in a review article from 2008, concluded that ‘Owen scholarship needs to take a new turn, one more informed by historical context and conversation, one much less defensive about Owen, for all his many strengths, and one prepared to cast a more critical eye over his achievements’.3 Cooper went on to play his part in rectifying this with his John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (2011), which examined the bitter feud between these two theologians. Edwin Tay offered a study of his soteriology in The Priesthood of Christ: Atonement in the Theology of John Owen (2014), Christopher Cleveland explored Thomism in John Owen (2013) and Andrew Leslie examined Owen’s understanding of the relationship between Scriptural authority and faith in The Light of Grace (2015). Most recently, Crawford Gribben has offered a richly textured portrait of Owen in John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (2016). Alongside Owen studies, parallel developments have taken place in the study of early modern sermons. Such sermon scholarship has shown the importance of preaching to religious, cultural and political life, and has emphasised the value of sermons as literary artefacts and historical sources. For instance, the landmark study The English Sermon Revised (eds. Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, 2000) has been followed by, inter alia,

2

Introduction

David Appleby’s study of the farewell sermons of ministers ejected from the Church of England in 1662, Black Bartholomew’s Day: Preaching, Polemic and Restoration Nonconformity (2007), Arnold Hunt’s The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590–1640 (2010) and Mary Morrissey’s Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (2011). More recently, the Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (eds. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington and Emma Rhatigan, 2011) has provided a comprehensive survey of the composition, delivery and reception of preaching during this period. This monograph will draw on the methodology of such scholarship in order to analyse Owen’s sermons so as to achieve a richer understanding of Owen than that which presently exists. The primary sermon texts to be considered in this study include Owen’s nine extant parliamentary sermons and four further sermons preached on a national stage (namely, at the relief of Colchester in 1648, after the suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford in 1649, while a Cromwellian army chaplain in Scotland in 1650, and at the funeral of Henry Ireton in 1652, respectively). These will be supplemented by four other pieces of expository material published posthumously in 1721 (The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship, Of Walking Humbly with God, Providential Changes an Argument for Universal Holiness, and The Sin and Judgment of Spiritual Barrenness). It will be argued that these may, plausibly, and with varying degrees of certainty, be dated to the period under consideration. Careful attention will also be given to several treatises which first appeared as sermons preached during the 1650s, namely, Of Communion with God (1657), Of Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656) and Of Temptation: the Nature and Power of it (1658). In Seeing Things Their Way (2009), Richard Muller cautioned historians to ‘avoid the enormous pitfalls of a decontextualized or badly contextualized history’.4 In the same collection of essays, John Coffey and Alister Chapman insisted that religious ideas need to be understood ‘first and foremost on their own terms’.5 This work sets out to follow their lead by locating Owen’s preaching from the Civil War and Interregnum in its historical context. It takes into account some of the latest research in religious, political, and military history in order to understand Owen’s preaching on its own terms. Such contextualisation necessitates some consideration being given to the networks to which Owen belonged: in the first instance, to the five Dissenting Brethren of the Westminster Assembly, namely Jeremiah Burroughes, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sydrach Simpson and William Bridge. In due course, they were joined by Joseph Caryl and William Greenhill in dissenting from the Assembly’s views on church government.6 In this work, we will also touch on other important links Owen had to Scotland, Ireland and New England.7 Throughout, Owen and his colleagues will be spoken of as Congregationalists, since they disavowed the polemical epithet ‘Independent’ because of its sectarian connotations.8 These were orthodox Reformed theologians, committed to churches as covenanted bodies of

Introduction

3

visible saints, whose views on religious authority, church discipline and the nature of synods are best described as congregational.9 The sermons will be further contextualised by an examination of the Scriptural texts expounded by Owen. His listeners and readers were biblically literate and familiar with the political application of the Scriptures, and consequently, as Kevin Killeen has argued, ‘the early modern sermon yields its full political dividend only by attention to the intricacies of the biblical texts that are its subject’.10 The central thesis of this book is that Owen’s sermons from this period are best described as a form of ‘prophetic preaching’.11 Taking the voices and assuming tropes of the biblical prophets, Owen offered an explanation of the events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis and urged his hearers and readers to make a proper response. Patrick Collinson very helpfully summarises the message of this genre as ‘always the same: most favoured, more obligated, most negligent’.12 This pattern is certainly evident in Owen’s preaching from 1646–59 as he drew attention to the undeserved blessings of apocalyptic significance that the nation had experienced, set forth the obligation incumbent upon it to respond appropriately to this unique providential moment and also lamented the nation’s failures to do so, with warnings of the consequent threat of divine judgment. This identification of Owen’s preaching as ‘prophetic’ does not fit within the taxonomy suggested by John Wilson in his The Pulpit In Parliament (1969) in which he distinguished sharply between ‘prophetic’ and ‘apocalyptic’ preaching. The ‘prophetic’ genre was said to stress human agency and conditionality, whereas the ‘apocalyptic’ genre emphasised that ‘God ruled the course of historical events and would bring out of the ominous present a glorious future quite independently of human agency’. According to Wilson, prophetic preachers advocated orderly reformation, whereas apocalyptic preachers generally espoused revolutionary acts destructive of constituted authority. He suggested that ‘through the Independents this speculative and apocalyptic exegesis of the scriptures, with the derivative millenarianism, moved from the background to the foreground of Puritanism as the differentia of a party within the movement’. Wilson offered this as a rationale of the Independents’ lack of interest in constructing a national church.13 However, Wilson’s framework requires rethinking, not least because it risks imposing an anachronistic distinction drawn from modern biblical studies between prophetic and apocalyptic literature onto early modern preaching.14 By contrast, this study will show that rather than standing in opposition to one another, the significant apocalyptic material in Owen’s sermons is complementary to, and indeed inseparable from, the prophetic material. Owen claimed that the apocalyptically significant events he believed himself to be witnessing were evidence of the highly favoured and privileged position enjoyed by England. Rather than a prophetic-reformist outlook being at odds with an apocalyptic-transformationist perspective, it will be shown that for Owen, reformation was required precisely because he believed a great divine transformation to be underway. Furthermore, within the comprehensive

4

Introduction

reformation which he and other Congregationalists envisaged, the quest for a national church settlement was actually a high priority. This monograph also challenges the assessment of Owen and the Congregationalists in Tai Liu’s Discord in Sion (1973). Liu’s starting point was that the various proposals for political and religious settlements during our period emerged out of differing eschatologies. Like Wilson, Liu portrays the Presbyterians as reformers and the Congregationalists as among those who were seeking revolutionary transformation. But, Liu further contends that in 1652, Owen changed both his emphasis and rhetoric and began to retreat from his earlier millenarianism, a process which reached its conclusion with the failure of the Barebones Parliament at the end of 1653. After this, Liu believed, millenarianism lived on in the Fifth Monarchy movement, a group denounced by Owen and his associates. To Liu, there was ‘no doubt’ that the Cromwellian church settlement ‘erected by the Independent divines’ was ‘a great retreat from the eschatological precepts they had cherished in the early years of the Puritan Revolution’.15 There are fundamental problems with such analysis. As Jeffrey Jue had pointed out in his study of the millenarian Joseph Mede, the differences between the various shades of Puritan eschatology are very nuanced, and in the 1970s (when many of the works dealing with early modern millenarianism were written), a number of scholars, including Liu, wrongly equated millenarianism with the ideology which gave rise to the ‘English Revolution’, an ideology which, they believed, all but disappeared after the Restoration.16 Such historiography has been corrected. For example, Richard Greaves has explored how the revolutionary potential of Puritanism did not disappear after 1660; indeed, he illustrates this by pointing to the alleged discovery of six or seven cases of pistols at Owen’s home in Stadhampton in the wake of Thomas Venner’s abortive Fifth Monarchist uprising in 1661.17 Warren Johnston also challenges this broad analysis in Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England (2011), and he demonstrates that after the Restoration, apocalyptic ideas remained an important part of the intellectual landscape.18 This monograph, therefore, aims to challenge two misconceptions: the first, that the prophetic and the apocalyptic are at odds with one another, with the prophetic being associated with reformation and the apocalyptic with radicalism; and secondly, the idea that in 1652–53, Owen departed from the eschatological position he had previously held. In regard to the latter, it will demonstrate that there is instead a remarkable consistency to Owen’s eschatological framework from 1646 through to 1659. It will also show how, rather than retreating from pursuing a programme of reformation in church and state, if anything, Owen’s agenda became more ‘radical’ as the 1650s progressed.19 Chapter 1 sets out the particular apocalyptic chronology which formed an integral part of Owen’s prophetic worldview. Rather than speaking of a somewhat vague and generic millenarianism, it shows the important

Introduction

5

theoretical differences that existed between Owen’s eschatology and that of the Fifth Monarchists. Whilst changing circumstances may have led him to emphasise different parts of his eschatology, the chapter makes the case that there was no fundamental shift in Owen’s eschatological framework from 1646 to 1659. It goes on to demonstrate that Owen’s interpretation of the events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis was based on this eschatological scheme, showing how the application of this perspective to Owen’s recent past led him to contend that during the Laudian era England stood under divine judgment. Chapter 2 explains how Owen used this particular eschatological framework to interpret what he identified as providentially significant events during the Civil War and Interregnum. It will show how he came to the conclusion that England was witnessing an undeserved divine visitation of apocalyptic significance which would, in time, bring about nothing less than a new heavens and earth, which he conceived of as an overturning and transformation of both church and state. For Owen, the favour shown to the nation placed great obligation upon the people to respond appropriately. Chapter 3 therefore examines Owen’s prophetic call for the nation to understand the times and to ‘improve’ these mercies by comprehensive godly reformation, an important part of which required a visible separation between the true and false church. It will show how Owen’s own response to these obligations can be seen in microcosm in the programme of godly reform that he sought to implement in Cromwellian Oxford. Owen’s prophetic preaching throughout this period called magistrates to have an instrumental role in reformation, thus being the kind of godly magistrate promised to the church in its coming golden age. Chapter 4 therefore explains how Owen’s eschatology led him to believe that the magistrate’s particular calling was to separate the civil and ecclesiastical powers and to set them in their respective spheres. It explores the factors which guided Owen’s thinking about the quest for a new political settlement, as well as some of the specific elements of godly reform which he believed the magistrate to be obligated to pursue. The fifth chapter deals with Owen’s conception of the duties of the magistrate in matters of religion and shows that Owen believed that magistracy and ministry might cooperate in order to be a powerful force for national reformation. Seen in this light, the Cromwellian church settlement did not represent a retreat from the eschatology Owen espoused. The chapter also shows how Owen’s proposals for what he held to be a ‘middle way’ religious settlement were intended to unite and protect all the godly during the transitional period before the latter day glory. Like the biblical prophets, Owen believed that the nation persistently failed to respond appropriately and he decried what he saw as both individual and national ingratitude, infidelity, and negligence. In the final chapter, the temptations and sins Owen perceived are used to illustrate his growing

6

Introduction

disillusionment with the direction the Protectorate came to take and how he discerned apocalyptic tokens of God’s wrath. It will also explore some of the important persuasive ends for which these warnings were deployed. In particular, it will demonstrate how these threats of divine wrath were used to justify some of Owen’s most ‘radical’ thoughts about the political use of irregular means and extraordinary power. Such analysis suggests that the so-called ‘experience of defeat’ late in the 1650s may actually have been a confirmation of over a decade of his prophetic preaching. It compels us to rethink an abstract approach to the study of Owen’s theology which would portray him as an isolated and scholastic theologian and ignore his selfidentification as a prophetic preacher as described in this monograph.

Notes 1 The conventional wisdom of the significance of Reformed Orthodoxy as an intellectual movement has been overturned by works such as: Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003); David Steinmetz, Calvin in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Willem J. van Asselt, The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669) (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Recent examples of similar interest in other Reformed Orthodox British Puritans from the period of High Orthodoxy include: Mark Jones, Why Heaven Kissed Earth: The Christology of the Puritan Reformed Orthodox Theologian, Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2010); Mark Jones and Michael A.G. Haykin, eds., Drawn Into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2011). 2 Kelly M. Kapic, Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007); Brian K. Kay, Trinitarian Spirituality: John Owen and the Doctrine of God in Western Devotion (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2007). 3 Tim Cooper, ‘State of the Field: John Owen Unleashed: Almost’, Conversations in Religion & Theology 6 (2008): 226–57. 4 Richard A. Muller, ‘Reflections on Persistent Whiggism and Its Antidotes in the Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Intellectual History’, in Alister Chapman et al., eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 150. 5 John Coffey and Alister Chapman, ‘Introduction: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion’, in Alister Chapman et al., eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 15. 6 Hunter Powell, The Crisis of British Protestantism: Church power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 7 Francis J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the AngloAmerican Puritan Community, 1610–1692 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), 189–244. 8 An Apologeticall Narration (1644), 23. 9 For Congregationalist belief and practice, see: Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957); Joel Halcomb, ‘A Social History of Congregational Religious Practice during the Puritan Revolution’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2010).

Introduction

7

10 Kevin Killeen, ‘Veiled Speech: Preaching, Politics and Scriptural Typology’, in Peter McCullough et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 396, 400. 11 The shorthand of ‘prophetic preaching’ has been usefully employed by the following scholars: Patrick Collinson, ‘Biblical Rhetoric: The English Nation and National Sentiment in the Prophetic Mode’, in Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger, eds., Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 284; Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching’, in Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, eds., The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43–58. 12 Collinson, ‘Biblical Rhetoric’, 28. 13 John F. Wilson, Pulpit in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil Wars, 1640–1648 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 223, 230. 14 Wilson, Pulpit, 198. 15 Tai Liu, Discord in Zion: The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution 1640– 1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 73–4, 141–3. 16 Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 3, 20. Another work dealing with such complexities is Crawford Gribben’s The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000). 17 Richard L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 53–6; Richard L. Greaves, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 138. 18 Warren Johnston, Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in Later SeventeenthCentury England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011). 19 As revisionist historians have shown, the use of the concept of ‘radicalism’ within the early modern period is fraught with difficulty. It is used here in the sense in which Wilson employed, namely to describe those whose apocalyptic outlook ‘at least potentially legitimated the destruction of all established order’; see Wilson, Pulpit, 230.

1

Owen’s prophetic worldview

To the modern reader, one of the most shocking aspects of Owen’s sermons is the prevalence of apocalyptic language usually issuing in vitriolic condemnation of the papal Antichrist. However, in post-Reformation England, such views of the Papacy were commonplace and not confined to a fanatical fringe. The English Protestant ‘apocalyptic tradition’ increasingly came to define history in apocalyptic terms, and the identification of the Pope with Antichrist had all but canonical status in significant parts of the Church of England.1 Although there were some important exceptions, Owen was not altogether overstating his case when in 1662 he pronounced that ‘the greatest part of men amongst us do look upon [the Papacy] as the Antichrist foretold in the Scripture’.2 This identification depended on a particular view of the book of Revelation and a number of other biblical passages.3 Revelation was widely understood to tell the story of Western history through its description of the opening of a seven-sealed scroll, angels sounding seven trumpets and the pouring of seven vials containing the wrath of God. Not least through the influence of Joseph Mede (1586–1638), whom Owen described as ‘a Learned Person of this Nation’, a firm link was seen to exist between Revelation and the prophetic visions of the book of Daniel. A section from 2 Thessalonians 2 was also incorporated into this apocalyptic scheme, and Owen described it foretelling how, in ‘the western world’, ‘Satan and his agents, persecutors and seducers . . . almost extinguished’ the light of truth leaving the pre-Reformation church with only ‘the empty names of Church and Gospel’.4 Such a hermeneutical approach to these texts, described by modern biblical scholars as a form of historicism, provided Owen with a panoramic view of a sequence of prophecies which were being fulfilled in a timeline of specific political and ecclesiastical events.5 As his colleague Thomas Goodwin explained, Revelation contained a history ‘from John’s time to the world’s end’, an ‘exact chronology’ of the world’s ‘monarchies’, and calculating the time of the fall of the papacy and the approach of Christ’s kingdom was ‘the thing herein principally aimed at’.6

I. Owen’s eschatological framework Owen was convinced that there was a link between the events described in these various apocalyptic narratives and specific political and ecclesiastical

Owen’s prophetic worldview

9

events in the present, which, when discovered, would unlock their significance. He assumed his hearers and readers would be familiar with such figures as the fourth ten-horned beast (Dan. 7:7), the little horn that subsequently appears (Dan. 7:8; 8:9), the man of sin and son of perdition (2 Thess. 2), the great red dragon and the two beasts (Rev. 12–13), the false prophet (Rev. 16:13), the whore of Babylon riding on the beast (Rev. 17) and above all, the dominating figure of the Antichrist (1 John 2:18). For Owen, images such as these were assigned to prominent figures in the sacred drama which, he believed, was being played out in the theatre of history, and each had some application to the contemporary Roman Catholic Church and the papacy. i. A panorama of Western history dominated by the rise of Antichrist In the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a giant statue: its head was gold, its arms and chest were silver, its belly was bronze, its legs iron and its feet were iron mixed with clay (Dan. 2). Owen believed that Daniel’s interpretation of the dream foretold a succession of four world empires, viz., Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. He believed that the statue’s two legs represented the partition of the Roman Empire into East and West, and its toes represented the subsequent division into ‘the ten-partite Empire of the West’. In a later vision, Daniel sees four beasts come up from the sea: the first like a lion, the second like a bear, the third like a leopard and the fourth had iron teeth and was more terrifying than the rest (Dan. 7:3–8). Again, this vision was assumed to correspond to the same four empires. As noted, Owen linked this vision to the book of Revelation, believing that Daniel’s fourth beast with ten horns anticipated the first beast of Revelation 13 with its seven heads and ten horns and which would reappear with the harlot described in Revelation 17.7 He explained that the ‘little horn’ on the fourth beast that uprooted three of the original horns referred ‘in the first place’ to ‘Antiochus the Illustrious’ (Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the adversary of the Jews in the Second Temple period). However, this ‘little horn’, which made war on the saints, was also ‘typical of the last persecution of the Christian church under Antichrist’.8 Owen rejected the two other main interpretative approaches to the eschatological material in scripture, namely preterism and futurism.9 The preterist view, which held that many of the prophecies of Revelation and Daniel had been fulfilled in the first century, became influential through the works of Hugo Grotius and the royalist Henry Hammond’s Paraphrase and Annotations on all the Books of the New Testament (1653).10 Owen was aware that some advocates of preterism endeavoured to break the important link that had been established between Daniel and the Apocalypse. For instance, he mentioned those who argued that the Kings of Syria and Egypt are the fourth Kingdom in Daniel and who consequently

10

Owen’s prophetic worldview

believed the prophecies of Daniel to have been fulfilled in Christ’s first advent.11 A proponent of this view was the London schoolmaster Thomas Hayne, who, in his Christs Kingdom on Earth Opened According to the Scriptures (1645), denied that the fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire and located the fulfilment of Daniel’s visions firmly in the past.12 Owen explicitly dismissed this view, believing instead that the history of Western Christianity had been dominated by this fourth Roman monarchy in its various manifestations. The other hermeneutical approach that Owen rejected was futurism. It viewed the prophecies of the Apocalypse as awaiting their fulfilment in the three-and-a-half-year reign of a coming Antichrist. Owen refers to this when he says, ‘The Papists say, that antichrist shall be a Jew, of the tribe of Dan, and that he shall persuade the Jews that he is their Messiah; that by their help, and others joining with them, he shall conquer many nations, destroy Rome . . . and afterwards be destroyed himself by fire from heaven’.13 As Owen suggests, this was often held to be the dominant Roman Catholic position and was associated with Francisco Ribera (1537–91) and Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621).14 From references scattered through Owen’s works, it is possible to reconstruct his view of the history of the Roman Empire in its various manifestations, as he saw them, whether pagan or papal. Initially, he spoke of how the dragon (i.e. Satan) had used ‘the heathen power of the Roman Empire’ in order to persecute the early church. Despite this opposition, he believed that in a ‘few years’ after the time of Christ, the gospel had been preached to the ‘habitable parts of the earth’.15 Indeed, Owen believed that by the end of the second century ‘the sound of the Gospel went out into all the Nations’.16 Following the tradition of John Bale (1495–1563), John Foxe (1516–87) and William Camden (1551–1623), Owen believed that pagan Britain had been evangelised by Joseph of Arimathea, long before the papal emissary Augustine of Canterbury set foot in Kent at the end of the sixth century.17 Relying on sources as diverse as the first-century poet-historian Lucan’s account of the Druids in Pharsalia and Inigo Jones’s Stone-Heng (1655), Owen portrayed the prior religion of the ancient Britons as idolatrous and ‘feirce and barbarous’, even extending to human sacrifice.18 His indebtedness to Foxe is again shown by the two citations used as proof of how he believed the gospel quickly took root in English soil. First, Tertullian (c. 160–c. 204) claimed that the remote parts of Britain, as yet unsubdued by the Romans had already been made subject to Christ.19 Secondly, a homily by Origen (c. 185–c. 255) triumphantly proclaimed that the inhabitants of Britain had embraced the Christian faith.20 Owen believed that, in time, religion declined and, citing the sixthcentury British monk Gildas’s major work, De Excidio Britanniae, spoke of the ‘wickednes, oppression, and villany’ of the Britons.21 He argued that the church across the Roman Empire apostatised and that, as a consequence, the Empire crumbled under divine judgment (Rev. 6:12–17).22

Owen’s prophetic worldview

11

Owen described this as being the first of ‘two most famous and remarkable changes of Government’ in Europe. The warring northern ‘barbarous Nations’ invaded and ‘shivered’ the Roman Empire of the West into pieces and conquered its territory. Owen believed that this turbulent period of conquest ended with ‘Rome it self sacked’ and ‘the Franches in Gall, the Saxons in England, the West Goths in Spaine, the East Goths and Longobards into Italy, and . . . the Almans in Germany’. In England, he claimed that the Saxons invaded in 469, ‘fattening the land with the blood of the Christian inhabitants’.23 Within Owen’s apocalyptic chronology, the fracturing of the Roman Empire, which had previously ‘withheld the man of sin from acting his part’, allowed the papal Antichrist to rise to power (2 Thess. 2:6–7). First, the ten proto-nations which he believed emerged from this transitional period eventually professed Christianity. However, according to Owen, their ‘conversion’ in the fifth and sixth centuries was not actually a true conversion at all, but a ‘great composition . . . between Christianity and Paganism’ in that the nations retained much of their corrupt pagan worship: ‘in particular the British church was much degenerate’.24 Secondly, the dragon craftily moulded and empowered the emerging primacy of the Bishop of Rome, and the ten nations were gradually seduced into submitting to his authority. Owen cast these events in apocalyptic language: these nations ‘submitted to the usurpation of the Man of Sin’ or, changing the apocalyptic imagery, ‘the Romane Harlot . . . procured the ten Kings or kingdoms, into which the last head of the Romane Empire sprouted about the yeer 450’.25 The time around the year 600 was a watershed for Owen, the significance of which date is explained by Goodwin and John Cotton as the time when the beast (Rev. 13), which had been wounded by the Barbarians, was healed under Emperors Justinian and Phocas.26 Owen believed that part of this healing process involved the Byzantine emperor Phocas granting primacy within the church to Boniface III by giving him the title of universal bishop (c. 606–607). Thus, early in the seventh century, the papacy received further authority which, in Owen’s mind, it immediately used to ‘introduceth secretly a new Worship’.27 Once begun, he held that this apostasy grew ‘by degrees’ for the next two hundred years.28 The second ‘famous and remarkable’ change of government occurred during the 300-year period 750–1066. Owen stated that during this transition the ‘influence of the Pope’ is ‘easily discernible’. It began in 751 with the transfer of the ‘French Crown’ from the Merovingian to Carolingian dynasty which, Owen explained, had been authorised ‘by Papal Authority’.29 Pepin (714–68) assisted the cause of the Church against the Germanic Lombards, granting conquered territory to Stephen II (752–57), who crowned him as the Patricius Romanorum in return. This strengthened the Papacy’s position against both its old enemy the Lombards and the demands of the Byzantine emperor. Pepin’s son Charlemagne (742–814) conquered and donated

12

Owen’s prophetic worldview

even more territory to the Pope, thus strengthening the relationship between the Frankish king and the Papacy. When Leo III (795–816) crowned him Imperator Romanorum on Christmas Day 800, for Owen, the implication was that the Pope had usurped the authority to grant and legitimate temporal political power.30 It was in this time that Owen believed that the ‘ten kingdoms’ became recognisably ‘distinct Dominions’.31 Owen made reference to two events which marked the close of this transitional period. The first was the transfer of power to Hugh Capet (938–96), the founder of the Capetian line of French kings, in 987. Owen argued that in this the Papacy, through the intrigue of the Archbishop Adalbero (d. 989), acted to bring down the Carolingians.32 The second was the conquest of England by the Normans, which Owen saw as another example of papal interference. No doubt what Owen had in mind was Alexander II’s (1061–73) decree which excommunicated King Harold and granted his throne to William, Duke of Normandy, who invaded under a papal banner.33 Although modern historians would certainly question his interpretations of events, Owen believed that the biblical prophecies provided him with a trustworthy key to unlock the meaning of history. For Owen, the meaning of this period of transition was clear: for 300 years, the papacy tightened its grip on political affairs. Alexander II’s successor, Gregory VII (1073–85), also known as Hildebrand, was regarded by Owen as the most Antichristian of all Popes in his ‘Luciferian Pride’, his ‘Trampling on all Christian Kings and potentates’, his ‘horrible Tyranny over the Consciences of all Christians’ and his assertion of ‘God-like Soveraignty’.34 It is certainly true that the papal reforms of the eleventh century permanently altered the relations between church and state in the West.35 Owen quoted the alleged inscription on the crown Pope Gregory gave to Duke Rudolf of Swabia in 1080: ‘Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo’ (The Rock gave the crown to Peter and Peter gives it to Rudolf).36 For Owen, the Papacy now controlled the transfer of power across Europe and, in doing so, greatly increased its own temporal authority. He cited Robert Bellarmine’s arguments from De Romano Pontifice that ‘the Pope had a temporall power indirectly over all Kings and Nations’ and transposed the rhetoric to claim that the papacy increased its power by ‘indirect means’.37 Revelation 13 was an important chapter in Owen’s understanding of the Papal Antichrist. In that vision, two beasts appeared, but, as Goodwin helpfully clarifies, this was taken as a vision of a single ‘twofold beast’ representative of Antichrist’s ‘double pretended claim’ of temporal and spiritual power. Thus, when Owen speaks of a beast exercising all the power of the first beast in the persecution of the saints, he is not referring to the first beast of chapter 13, but rather to the dragon, which Owen believed had governed the pagan Roman Empire. This new beast’s strength derived from the nations who gave it their power; in Owen’s prophetic scheme, the pope ascended ‘to his Soveraignty’ around 850 when the nations engaged with him.38

Owen’s prophetic worldview

13

Another figure on the apocalyptic stage was the ‘false prophet’ (Rev. 16:13).39 Owen believed that in this guise, Antichrist persuaded the ‘kings of the earth’ to follow the ‘Dictates of the Pope’ and ‘to imbrue their hands in the blood of the Martyrs’.40 In return for shedding the blood of the saints, the Pope granted Western kings their favoured titles. For example, the titles ‘Eldest Son of the Church, The Catholick, and Most Christian King, Defender of the Faith’ were given to the kings of France, Spain and England, respectively.41 Owen claimed that this had resulted in ‘Millions’ being martyred, ‘sacrificed to the insatiable Ambition and Tyranny of blood-thirsty Potentates’.42 He asserted that ‘the designe of a great part of the Revelation’ was to explain that this was the true source of the ‘horrible superstition and idolatry, all the confusion, blood, persecution, and warres, that have for so long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world’.43 Owen enumerated supposed instances of Papal tyranny, often drawn from the standard Protestant histories, e.g., Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), Knox’s Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun within the Realm of Scotland (1586) and Johann Sleidan’s Commentariorum de Statu Religionis et Republicae (1559).44 These included the crusades of the thirteenth century against the Albigenses of southern France, the persecution of the Waldenses and the attempts of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire to crush the Bohemian ‘heretic rebellion’ in the Hussite Wars of the fifteenth century.45 He spoke of the notorious Spanish soldier Fernando Álvarez de Toledo (1507–82), the third Duke D’Alva, in the Netherlands – Owen believed that under his rule ‘above sixty thousand persons were, in six yeares or little more, cut off in a Judiciall way’.46 Closer to home, he attributed the persecution of Wickliffites, Lollards and the Smithfield martyrs to ‘Antichrist and his adherents’ along with the Spanish Armada and Gunpowder Plot.47 According to Owen, God had, nevertheless, ‘preserved a people under the whole apostasy of antichrist’ – when Antichrist determined to put his mark on people, God called his people out of Babylon, away from her false worship (Rev. 14:6–10; 18:4).48 This was conceived of as the woman fleeing into the wilderness and being nourished there (Rev. 12:6–13:7).49 The small number of faithful witnesses was spoken of as the ‘two witnesses’ who prophesied in sackcloth (Rev. 11).50 ii. The timetable for the coming destruction of Antichrist Within Owen’s prophetic scheme, the dominance of Antichrist was coming to an end. In April 1649, he boldly proclaimed that the ‘season of the accomplishment of his great intendments for the good of his church’ was ‘nigh at hand, even at the doors’.51 Just as many centuries before pagan Rome had been broken, so also Antichristian Rome would be destroyed. As he confidently predicted in the early 1650s, there were seven vials full of divine wrath that God would ‘in these latter days poure out upon the Antichristian world, and all that partake with them in their thoughts of vengeance and

14

Owen’s prophetic worldview

persecution’ (Rev. 16).52 Within his chronology, Owen believed that by the mid-seventeenth century, ‘sundry vialls’ had already been poured out, and it can be argued that he believed that he was living in the time in which the fifth of these vials was being poured out onto the throne of the beast, plunging its kingdom into darkness (Rev. 16:10).53 He alluded to this text in 1646 when he stated that he would not go into the details of how a ‘viall was poured out upon the very throne’.54 In the marginal reference, he indicated exactly what he had in mind by citing ‘Romes Masterpiece’ and ‘Royall favourite’: this directs the reader to two works by William Prynne written as an exposé of Archbishop Laud’s alleged Papist proclivities: Romes masterpeece. Or, the grand conspiracy of the Pope and his Jesuited instruments to extirpate the Protestant Religion, re-establish Popery, subvert Lawes, Liberties, Peace, Parliaments, by kindling a Civill War in Scotland, and all his Majesties Realmes, and to poyson the King himselfe in case hee comply not with them in these their execrable Designes (1643); and The Popish royall favourite: or, a full discovery of His Majesties extraordinary favours to, and protections of notorious papists, priestes, Jesuites, against all prosecutions and penalties of the laws enacted against them notwithstanding his many royall proclamations, declarations, and protestations to the contrary: as likewise of a most desperate long prosecuted designe to set up popery, and extirpate the Protestant religion by degrees (1643). These works were based on papers which the crop-eared lawyer allegedly seized from Laud’s room in the Tower of London.55 By explicitly linking this passage of Revelation 16 to Prynne’s works, Owen reveals that he was not thinking only of the judgment of the papal throne in Rome. Rather, he was following other Congregationalist divines who believed that the fifth vial would, in time, bring an end to all forms of Episcopalian rule. For Owen, as for many nonconformists of his day, prelacy was an aspect of Papal tyranny. Thomas Goodwin described how with this fifth judgment, all clergy who ‘cleave unto the beast, and profess themselves of his number and company’ would find themselves ‘tumbled down from their usurped seats’.56 Similarly, John Cotton, who explicitly interpreted the fifth vial as the destruction of episcopacy opined, ‘you will finde little difference betweene Episcopacy and Popery, for they are governed by Popish Canons’.57 Owen cites the two anti-Laudian works by Prynne in order to demonstrate how he believed that in recent years, the English Episcopacy had been plunged into darkness. To use the language of Cotton, ‘Episcopall government doth it not grow darke? yea full of darknesse? . . . so as that it groweth base and vile, not onely in the eyes of godly, wise, and judicious Divines, but in the eyes of good people; nor of godly people alone, but of many civill, and orderly mindes’.58 Although Owen believed that he was witnessing events associated with the effusion of the fifth vial of divine wrath, he made no attempt to predict times and dates for the completion of the pouring out of the last two vials, concurring with Goodwin’s assessment that they were ‘further off to

Owen’s prophetic worldview

15

come’.59 Preaching before Parliament in October 1652, Owen acknowledged his uncertainty that the things associated with the final outpouring of the vials ‘may be, for any thing we know, a farre off’.60 The sixth vial was said to dry up the waters of the river Euphrates in order to allow passage for the return of the Jews, in prophetic idiom, ‘the kings of the east’ (Rev. 16:12). Owen believed that this was yet to come and that the waters of the Euphrates ‘doth yet rage’ and that the ‘Turkish power’ of the Ottoman Empire remained. Owen again followed Cotton by stating that it was ‘the power of the Romish Babylon supported by the Kings of the Nations, which must therefore be shaken and dryed up’.61 As Cotton explained, the Euphrates represented ‘the streame of their supportments,’ i.e., the revenues that financed Rome (and, in turn, he believed, the Ottoman Empire) by deeds of idolatry, sorcery, theft and murder.62 Cotton asserted that the ten Christian kings would, in time, cut off these sources of revenue. This helps to explain why Cotton allegedly urged Cromwell to take action to destroy Spanish Power in the Americas in order to seek the fulfilment of this prophecy. This was launched as the Western Design of 1654, an attack on the Spanish West Indies which hoped to capture the silver from the Mexican mines.63 It was the prospect of the pouring out of the sixth vial that led Owen to address MPs as those called to serve God ‘in the high places of Armageddon’ since this battle was precipitated by its outpouring (Rev. 16:16).64 Finally, the seventh vial would fall on Babylon, and as a result, ‘Rome and her adherents, shall not have so much left, as the Name or title, appearance or shew of a Church’ (Rev. 16:19–20).65 Again with ambiguity in regard to the timing, he proclaimed that ‘sooner or later’ Christ would ‘destroy the Antichristian Roman power, with all its adherents’ (Rev. 17–19).66 Returning to Daniel’s apocalyptic visions, in Owen’s scheme, the fall of Rome would come when a stone that had not been cut by human hands smashed into the feet at the base of the statue, destroying it. The stone then grew into a mountain that covered the earth (Dan. 2).67 Owen interpreted this as a prophecy of Jesus Christ destroying the final form of the Roman Empire and establishing a new phase of his kingdom. He also anticipated the fulfilment of Daniel 7 when, after the four successive monarchies were destroyed, the kingdom of Christ would be established, and dominion would ‘be given to the people of the Saints of the most High’ (Dan. 7:27).68 In 1649, he predicted that the days in which the ‘decree’ would go out for the establishment of this fifth godly monarchy were approaching.69 Despite the similarity of terminology, Owen deliberately distinguished his view from that of those described as Fifth Monarchists. By 1649, he was aware of those who introduced ‘confusion and disorder’ by ‘pretend[ing] to fancy to themselves a terrene kingly State unto each private particular Saint’. He dismissed the view that there would be a ‘Personal Reign of the Lord Jesus on Earth’. This was surely a reference to one of the principal exponents of Fifth Monarchism, John Archer, whose The Personall Raigne

16

Owen’s prophetic worldview

of Christ upon Earth was published in 1641. Owen explained that Christ would not appear openly ‘unto carnall eyes’, but he would appear ‘in a more eminent manner than ever before’ (Rev. 19:12–13).70 Nevertheless, the millenarianism espoused by the Fifth Monarchists was on the rise. In October 1652, we find Owen countering this by stressing that the kingdom was ‘First, and Principally; in that which is internall and spirituall, in and over the soules of men’. He expressed his frustration that there were ‘Endlesse and irreconcileable’ differences about the nature of the kingdom which it was believed Christ would set up. It appears that he himself believed that Christ’s future reign would be ‘only differenced by more glorious degrees and manifestations of his power’. Believing that some Fifth Monarchists had ‘been so dazeled, with gazing after temporall glory’ he warned that to ‘dream of setting up an outward, glorious, visible kingdome of Christ’ was ‘an ungrounded presumption’. However, Owen was not rejecting millenarianism per se. His criticisms of the Fifth Monarchists came from his prophetic chronology: he reasoned that if the Jews remained uncalled and that if Antichrist was not yet destroyed, then it patently was not the time in which Christ would set up his kingdom. He distanced himself from the Fifth Monarchists, instead associating them with the Anabaptist proclamation of Münster as the New Jerusalem in 1534, parodying their vision as an attempt to establish Christ’s kingdom ‘here on a mole-hil’.71 In January 1654, in the aftermath of the failed Nominated Assembly, Owen, Goodwin, Nye and Simpson wrote a letter to the congregational churches strongly repudiating the Fifth Monarchists ‘if to no other end but to clere our selves before the Churches & the world, from any participation with them’.72 iii. A golden age of latter-day glory Despite his differences from the Fifth Monarchist millenarians, Owen did share with them a belief in a future golden age on earth. This was a departure from the dominant English Protestant apocalyptic tradition, represented by John Foxe and the Geneva Bible, which had located the millennium in the past and which believed that after Antichrist’s destruction, the end of history was imminent.73 It appears that Owen might initially have subscribed to such a view. In his preface to The Duty of Pastors (1643), Owen revealed something of his eschatology: The glasse of our lives, seemes to runne and keep pace with the extremity of time: the end of those ends of the world which began with the Gospell, is doubtless comming upon us, hee that was instructed what should bee, till time should be no more, said it was the last houre in his time: much sand cannot be behind, and Christ shakes the glasse: many minutes of that houre cannot remain; the next measure we are to expect is but a moment, the twinkling of an eye, wherein we shall all be changed; now as if the Horoscope of the decaying age had some secret

Owen’s prophetic worldview

17

influence into the wils of men to comply with the decrepit World, they generally delight to run into extreames.74 Here Owen viewed the sand as having almost run through the hourglass, believing that time was short, the second advent was near and that soon, the saints would be translated into eternity. In the marginal note to this quotation, Owen references Of the End of the World, the work of the Italian reformer Jerome Zanchi (1516–90), which espouses such a traditional eschatology.75 It appears that during the mid-1640s, Owen imbibed a millenarianism which instead awaited a future period of latter-day glory on earth. This was far more than simply an apocalyptic outlook or an eschatological optimism: rather, it was the belief that after the destruction of Antichrist, the church would be triumphant, all opposition to the kingdom would end and ‘the special presence of Christ’ would fill the world with ‘light and love’ (Isa. 60:12; Rev. 11:15; 16:17–19).76 To reuse Owen’s own image of the hourglass, previously he had believed that the sand had almost run through and that he stood near the end of history. Now, however, he had come to believe that the dark days which he was experiencing actually heralded not only the coming destruction of Antichrist, but also the future millennial kingdom. Thus, he eagerly anticipated another turn of the hourglass, another remarkable change of government, before the final consummation. Millenarianism had been condemned in both the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Second Helvetic Confession (1566). Not since the chiliasm of the ante-Nicene Fathers had any (apart from those on the radical fringes of Protestantism) espoused a future millennium. Nevertheless, with the eschatological works of Thomas Brightman, Joseph Mede and Johann Heinrich Alsted, the landscape was radically altered, and post-Reformation Protestant millenarianism entered the mainstream. One place where it found fertile soil was among the exiled Congregationalists in the Netherlands. William Bridge’s Babylon’s Downfall (1641), Jeremiah Burroughes’s Moses his Choice (1641) and the anonymous Glimpse of Sions Glory (1641) were all originally sermons preached in the Netherlands by those forced into exile by the Laudian regime. By the 1640s, the vision of a future millennium can no longer be regarded as the ideology of radical extremists; on the contrary, it was a mainstream eschatology.77 For Owen, this golden age was a time when God would ‘bring forth the Kingdom of the Lord Christ, unto more glory and power, then in former dayes’. This time would be characterised by at least four things. First, ‘Fulnesse of Peace’: it would be a world of righteousness, joy and quietness for the saints.78 Secondly, Christ would dwell in his church through the ordinances of worship being administered with power, purity and beauty.79 Thirdly, multitudes of converts would be brought into the church. The nations as nations would be converted as their kings and rulers brought their glory and honour to Zion.80 In this vein, Owen spoke of the day when

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the converted Irish would ‘enjoy Ireland so long as the Moon endureth’ (Ps. 72:7).81 Fourthly, the Jews would be converted.82 For 1,600 years, ‘nothing had seemed harder’, and yet Owen believed that God would graft in his ‘ancient people’ (Rom. 11).83 Owen exercised significant influence in the formulation of the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order in 1658. He was part of a committee nominated to draw up a text for consideration by representatives of the Congregational churches.84 In this confession, Owen’s four marks of latter-day glory can be detected in its chapter on the church which describes: a world of peace, righteousness, joy and quietness; gospel ordinances administered with power and beauty; multitudes of converts; and the conversion of the Jews. As the Lord in his care and love towards his Church, hath in his infinite wise providence exercised it with great variety in all ages, for the good of them that love him, and his own Glory; so according to his promise, we expect that in the latter days, Antichrist being destroyed, the Jews called, and the adversaries of the Kingdom of his dear Son broken, the Churches of Christ being inlarged, and edified through a free and plentiful communication of light and grace, shall enjoy in this world a more quiet, peaceable and glorious condition than they have enjoyed.85 Far from Owen abandoning millenarianism in 1653, a generic millenarianism remained part of the Congregationalist’s confession. In summary, Owen’s apocalyptic chronology was based on a historicist eschatology in which Western history was dominated by the rise of the papal Antichrist, its reign of idolatry and tyranny, and its coming destruction. It also included the prospect of a coming golden age of latter-day glory upon earth. England was included in this eschatological scheme as one of the ten Western nations, but Owen’s prophetic worldview enabled him to discern further divine purposes in national affairs with an even greater precision. Intertextual links between his apocalyptic chronology and the Old Testament filled out his prophetic vision as multiple parallels were drawn between Old Testament Israel and contemporary events in England.

II. Prophetic intertextuality Owen’s understanding of the unfolding apocalyptic chronology and his generation’s place in it influenced his hermeneutical method, and he drew a number of important intertextual links between the book of Revelation and parts of the Old Testament. Such intertextuality is one of the reasons why a sermon need not necessarily be an exposition of an apocalyptic text in order for it to have an eschatological theme. For instance, Owen traced the history of Antichrist’s Babylon all the way back to the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11). In the culture of Babel, Owen observed two things: superstitious idolatry and oppressive tyranny. First, in

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regard to idolatry, Owen argued that there was no reference in scripture to idol worship before Babel, from which he concluded that the corruption of worship through idolatry began with the building of the Tower. He claimed that it became a centre for the worship of the sun and he believed it was what Herodotus described as the Temple of Belus.86 Second, tyranny was established by Babel’s founding father, Nimrod, the great hunter and the archetypal tyrant (Gen. 10:10).87 Owen believed that the ‘stones of the old Babel’ were used to build the city of Babylon.88 Pointing out that the Old Testament repeatedly spoke of the graven images and carved idols of Babylon, he claimed that the particular idolatry of the Babylonians was worshipping ‘men departed under Images made in their likeness’. Owen took this a step further in his exposition of this biblical theme by linking Babylonian idolatry to Nebuchadnezzar’s tyranny, believing Babylon to be ‘the first state in the world that ever persecuted for religion’. He traced the continuation of these themes into the New Testament and through to his day, arguing that the name of Babylon ‘and all that is spoken of it in the Old Testament, is transferred to the apostate Church of Rome’.89 To Owen, the Roman Catholic Church was the contemporary manifestation of ‘the Kingdom of Babel’ and ‘Popery’ was a Babylonian ideology that sought the ‘combined mixed power of heaven and earth’, i.e. it was ‘grasping temporall power, upon a spirituall account’.90 In issuing ‘tyrannical dictates’ to ‘fall down and worship’ the ‘great golden idol – Holy Church’ or be cast into the fiery furnace, the Pope resembled Nebuchadnezzar persecuting the faithful.91 Owen was convinced that the idolatrous images of departed men which were found in old Babylon’s worship reached their fulfilment in Roman Catholic ‘image worship’ and ‘their worshiping Saints departed’.92 Believing the Roman Catholic Church to be an idolatrous and persecuting church, Owen thought it entirely appropriate that it be called ‘Mystical Babylon’.93 The book of Revelation gives Babylon the spiritual name of Egypt and Owen used this to make further intertextual links with the Old Testament (Rev. 11:8). For him, the Israelites in Egypt suffered under a cruel Pharaoh and drifted into idolatry (Ezek. 20:8, 23:2–3, 8; Josh. 24:14).94 Again, Owen identifies his two marks of Antichrist, believing Egypt to have been a place of both superstition and oppression. Pressing the imagery of Egyptian slavery into service, Owen argued that the kings of Europe pledging fealty to the Pope were the contemporary manifestation of Pharaoh. Those under the sway of popery were oppressed by ‘cruell taske-Masters’ who imposed false worship by threat of ‘death, imprisonment, banishment’.95 This was a common theme among the Puritans. Jeremiah Burroughes saw Egypt as being allegorical of the bondage, idolatry and cruelty of Antichristian Rome, believing that the church had been in ‘spiritual Egypt’ for over twelve hundred years’.96 Such intertextual links between Owen’s apocalyptic chronology, the wider biblical narrative and the writings of the prophets enabled him to draw

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multiple analogies between Old Testament Israel and England. Michael McGiffert has described an ‘Israelite paradigm’ of biblical interpretation in which England was thought by ‘simple simile’ to represent Israel.97 More recent scholarship has corrected McGiffert’s assertion by showing that the application of the ‘Israelite paradigm’ was a good deal more fluid and imprecise. In their use of the Old Testament, early modern preachers could move ‘imperceptibly between their address to the individual, to the Church, to the nation, and to covenanted groups and remnants within both Church and nation’.98 By this method, Owen was able to offer a persuasive interpretation of the events he was witnessing. As John Coffey puts it, these preachers ‘prompted their congregations to inhabit the biblical narrative’. Such explanatory narratives had the power to capture the imagination: ‘In the minds of the godly, England was reenacting Israel’s Exodus (and Israel’s return from exile), leaving Egyptian bondage (or Babylonian captivity) behind, and marching towards the Promised Land’.99 Thus, for example, Owen called his hearers and readers to inhabit the biblical story in order to understand their present by, as it were, singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb (Rev. 15:3). By this he emphasised two of his critical tropes: first, that of ‘Temporall deliverance from outward yokes and bondage’ (tyranny), and, secondly, ‘spirituall deliverance’ from idolatry.100

III. The application of Owen’s prophetic worldview to his recent past Alien as it might be to the modern reader, within the English Protestant apocalyptic tradition, there was nothing unusual about giving an account of the rise of Antichrist within the Roman Catholic Church. Neither was it uncommon to ascribe the two marks of idolatry and tyranny to popery. However, as we shall see, in the 1630s, Owen reached startling conclusions about the extent of Antichrist’s influence in England. Owen made a rare autobiographical disclosure in a short discourse preached to a church meeting around the year 1672. In it, he revealed ‘it is now towards forty years since God enabled me to observe . . . that God had a controversy with the nation’. Such was the significance of the moment for Owen that he described himself awakening ‘like a man out of a dead sleep that lifts up his head, and rubs his eyes for a time’.101 The rest of this chapter will show how, at some stage in the 1630s, Owen came to believe that two of the marks of Antichrist, idolatry and tyranny, were actually to be seen in the English Protestant church and in England’s Protestant government. In this startling interpretation, his prophetic worldview enabled him to take what he regarded as contemporary manifestations of encroaching idolatry and growing tyranny and to weave them into his apocalyptic chronology, thus charging them with eschatological significance. He came to hold the opinion that ‘He that thinks Babylon is confined to Rome, and its open idolatry, knowes nothing of Babylon, nor of the new Jerusalem’.102

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i. Encroaching idolatry Owen believed that he had observed a corruption of religion in the 1630s. In his first parliamentary sermon (1646), Owen spelt out the manifestations of the idolatry he had identified in the worship and doctrine of ‘the late Hierarchists’:103 In worship, their paintings, crossings, crucifixes, bowings, cringings, Altars, Tapers, Wafers, Organs, Anthems, Letany, Rails, Images, Copes, vestments; what were they, but Roman vernish, an Italian dresse for our devotion, to draw on conformity with that enemy of the Lord Jesus; In doctrin, the Divinity of Episcopacy, auricular confession, free-will, predestination on faith, yea, works fore-seen, limbus patrum, justification by works falling from grace, authority of a Church, which none knew what it was, Canonicall obedience, holinesse of Churches, and the like innumerable, what were they but helps to sancta Clara, to make all our articles of Religion speak good Roman-Catholike?104 Modern scholars, identifying this trend to alter the theological and liturgical character of the church, have variously described it as Laudianism, AntiCalvinism and Carolinism. It was a movement associated with, inter alia, Richard Neile, William Laud, Richard Montague and John Cosin. We will term it Laudianism since Archbishop Laud became emblematic of the movement in the minds of many contemporaries. However, as Peter Lake has argued, its origins were in the Jacobean avant-garde conformity of bishops Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) and John Buckeridge (d. 1631).105 In a marginal note, Owen pointed readers to an exposé of Laud entitled Laudensium Autokatakrisis, the Canterburians Self-Conviction (1640) by Robert Baillie, one of the Scottish commissioners at the Westminster Assembly.106 Owen’s assessment was that even when comparing it to the thousand year ‘Roman Apostacy’, ‘I dare aver that never so many errors & suspicions in an 100 yeares crept into that Church as did into ours of England in 16’.107 Counting back from 1641, when the Long Parliament launched its programme of reformation, this yields the year of Charles’s accession (1625). Therefore, although Owen emphasised the role of Laud, he also regarded the king as having some role in initiating the liturgical changes of the 1630s. Owen believed that Laudianism was a ‘strong combination’ of Roman Catholic sympathisers within the Church of England who were intent on ‘the seducing of this poor nation’ and returning the English church to ‘their old father of Rome’. Owen’s conspiracy theory was that the policies of Charles and Laud were part of an agenda to assist the designs of ‘sancta Clara’, i.e. Christopher Davenport (c. 1595–1680), the Franciscan friar and controversialist.108 Davenport returned to England in the early 1630s and lodged near Somerset House with Queen Henrietta Maria’s Capuchin priests, pressing for reconciliation between the English and Roman Churches. When Owen describes his intention to make ‘all our

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articles of religion speak good Roman Catholic’, he appears to be alluding to Davenport’s most important work, Deus, Natura, Gratia (Lyon, 1634), which attempted to prove that there was no essential difference between the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Roman Catholic Creed.109 Owen’s words would have reminded Parliament of the seventh of 14 articles of impeachment they voted against Laud in February 1641, namely that he ‘conferred with Sancta Clara to further popery’.110 Whilst historians may cast doubt on the substance of Owen’s allegations, John Morrill does point out that at that time such fears of creeping popery and crypto-Catholicism were ‘widely believed and not wholly foolish’.111 In the marginal notes of the published sermon, Owen’s abbreviated references indicate exactly what he had in mind when he spoke of this alleged conspiracy: ‘See Ld dee. Coll. &c.’; ‘Coal from the Altar.’; and ‘Altare Christianum. Antidotum Lincoln. Case of Greg.’.112 These refer to: presumably the bishop of Peterborough Francis Dee; possibly the college head Samuel Collins;113 John Pocklington’s work Altare Christianum, or, The Dead Vicars Plea (1637); and two books by Peter Heylyn, A Coale from the Altar (1636) and Antidotum Lincolniense (1637). The most obvious thing that these four men had in common was their involvement in the nationwide altar policy of the 1630s. This required that communion tables be moved back to the east end of the chancel, placed altarwise and railed in.114 Commenting on their part in the Laudian regime, Anthony Milton describes Pocklington and Heylyn as Laud’s ‘clerical rottweilers’ and suggests that both may have received preferment for their efforts.115 John Pocklington (d. 1642) was an ardent advocate of Laudianism who asserted that the real presence justified the eastward position and that bowing to the railed altar conformed to the practice of the early church.116 In Altare, licensed by one of Laud’s chaplains, he argued that the term ‘altar’ was used in antiquity and by the church fathers. In mentioning him, Owen was concurring with Parliament’s decision to single Pocklington out for humiliation some years earlier in February 1641 with its decree that Altare Christianum and Sunday no Sabbath (1636) should be publicly burnt in London and the universities, and that their author be suspended from his ministry and deprived of his livings.117 Peter Heylyn (1600–62), Laud’s chaplain and biographer and ‘a notable flatterer of the court’, engaged in a pamphlet war with Bishop John Williams over the government’s altar policy.118 He was taken to be the author of the anonymous A Coale from the Altar, for which he had obtained permission to print the Privy Council’s decision about the placement of a communion table at St Gregory-by-St Paul – what Owen’s marginal note specifically referred to as the ‘Case of Greg’.119 In this test case ruling from 3 November 1633, Charles had decided in favour of the dean and chapter of St Paul’s, who had moved the communion table in the parish church of St Gregory’s ‘from the middle of the chancel to the upper end’ where it was ‘placed altarwise’. The King, Heylyn argued, had ‘thereby given encouragement to the

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metropolitans, bishops, and other ordinaries, to require the like in all the churches committed to them’.120 Francis Dee (d. 1638) ‘had evolved into the Laudian prelate par excellence’.121 As bishop of Peterborough, he issued articles of enquiry in September 1634 to ascertain if communion tables had been ‘cancelled’ in at the east end of the church.122 As Tom Webster points out, through the actions of Dee and his deputies, Peterborough (a diocese dominated by godly ministers and patrons) was perhaps the first diocese to implement successfully the Laudian altar policy.123 In 1637, Laud reported to the King that ‘My lord of Peterburgh hath taken a great deal of pains, and brought his diocese into very good order’.124 Samuel Collins (1576–1651), provost of King’s College and regius professor of divinity at Cambridge, was responsible for beautifying the chapel at King’s. His work met with the approval of Queen Henrietta Maria, and by 1637, there were altar candles, tapers, crucifixes and purple velvet altar linen. A court rumour circulated that Collins had said ‘he was hartily gladd He had never spoken agaynst Transubstantiation in his whole lyfe hetherto And that he hoped to live till he might speake of it’.125 Despite moving the altar and placing it tablewise in 1640, he was deprived of the provostship by Manchester’s parliamentary visitation of 1645. It was significant that Owen should highlight Collins because in the year the sermon was preached and published, the king attempted to nominate him as Bishop of Bristol.126 For Owen, these men had ‘set up a stage, and furnished it with all things necessary for an unbloody sacrifice’. Employing hyperbolic apocalyptic language, he describes this altar policy as an attempt ‘to set up the abomination of a desolation’ and to ‘close with the god Maozim’ (Dan. 11:31, 38).127 Although the Authorised Version translates ‘Maozim’ as ‘god of forces’ and the Geneva Bible as ‘the god of Mauzzim’, Luther and Foxe repeatedly rendered it ‘the god of the mass’.128 For Owen and others like him, this alerted them to the fact that the nation stood under God’s judgment. This explains why for some Puritans, attitudes to conformity were changing. Owen was very influenced by John Cotton and the Dissenting Brethren of the Westminster Assembly. The following vignette captures their changing attitudes to conformity during the 1630s: in January 1624, John Cotton wrote to John Williams, the Bishop of Lincoln, offering excuses for his lack of exact conformity.129 A decade later, with Charles and Laud unwilling to tolerate such excuses about his St Botolph’s ministry, Cotton’s attitude hardened. When Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, John Davenport and William Twisse attempted to persuade Cotton to compromise and conform to the new ceremonialism, Cotton turned the tables and convinced them about the necessity of nonconformity.130 These men, like Owen, had their eyes opened to see that the Laudian regime was promoting what they thought of as crypto-popery. In addition to his concerns about Laudian ceremonialism, Owen was also concerned with Arminianism within the English church. Even if few of the

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men he referred to as Arminians were true disciples of Jacob Arminius, at the very least, his description recognised the theological Anti-Calvinism of many who fell into this group, and it is surely significant that Owen’s first book was entitled A Display of Arminianisme (1643).131 Owen viewed doctrinal Anti-Calvinism as part of the idolatrous agenda. He portrayed these ‘innovators’ as those who sought to ‘erect a Babel of Antichristian confusion’.132 The ‘new Popish Arminian errors’ that had been introduced included the idol of ‘free-will’ and ‘the new goddesse contingency’.133 Owen was surely again alluding to Peter Heylyn as an advocate of such teaching when in Salus Electorum (1648) he referred to a ‘P.H.’, whom he numbered among ‘the late Arminians’, describing them as the ‘varnished offspring’ of the ‘old Pelagians’.134 Another example of such Anti-Calvinism would be Thomas Jackson (1579–1640), President of Corpus Christi, Oxford, in the 1630s. Jackson’s most controversial publication, The Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, spoke of how ‘the Omnipotent doth eternally decree an absolute contingency in most humane acts’.135 Owen experienced the rise of ceremonialism and doctrinal anti-Calvinism first-hand during his student days. He entered Oxford in 1628, two years before Laud assumed the Chancellorship. Thus, he would have felt Laud’s influence, not only in the ceremonialism implemented at his College, Queen’s, under Laud’s ‘lieutenant’ Christopher Potter (provost 1626–46), but also right across the university.136 Records of a royal audience held at Woodstock in August 1631 reveal the rumour that Provost Potter had expounded Arminian views with impunity.137 At Queen’s, ‘the fellowship were to wear the surplice, stand at the creed and gospel, and bow at the name of Jesus and to the altar’.138 By 1634, the communion table was placed under the east window of the college chapel.139 Potter, ‘regarded by Calvinists as a turncoat’, was awarded a deanery for his loyalty. Commenting on Laud’s Chancellorship, Anthony Milton notes how he was ‘anything but a figurehead chancellor’ and that he was ‘much more regularly involved with routine university affairs than any of his predecessors’. By the time in the early 1630s when Owen was awoken to the divine controversy, ‘Arminian views were being both preached and printed at Oxford’.140 In 1637, the year Owen left Oxford, the Chancellor or one of his allies was visitor of all but one college: Laud’s former patron, Archbishop Neile, was visitor of Queen’s.141 ii. The growth of tyranny Owen not only saw an encroaching tide of idolatry, but he also believed that the people of England languished under a cruel yoke which could only be described as ‘Babylonian’.142 Owen professed himself astonished that ‘the people of England . . . yielded a willing eare to so many Popish errours, and an obedient shoulder, to such a heavy burden of Superstitions, as in a few years were instilled into them, and laid upon them: voluntarily by their own sinfull neglect’.143

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The Laudian regime used the notorious prerogative Court of High Commission to discipline offending clerics and to control the censorship of books. Owen wrote about ‘our High Commission Court’ where Satan ‘set up a shop on earth to practise his trade’.144 It would appear that Owen thought that trade to be falsehood and tyranny. In 1625, it was affirmed that the Caroline High Commission had ‘full power and authority . . . to visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend in all places within this our realm of England all such errors, heresies, crimes, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities spiritual and ecclesiastical wheresoever’.145 In the summer of 1632, at the Court of High Commission, Laud successfully prohibited pews being placed east of the communion table.146 The regime’s aggressive use of Episcopal visitation drove Puritan clergy from their positions within the church and saw ‘some in prisons, some banish’d to the ends of the earth, merely on the accont of the worship of their God’.147 Owen uses a stark biblical trope to describe how ‘many thousands left their native soyle, and went into a vast and Howling wildernesse in the utmost parts of the world, to keep their soules undefiled and chast’ (Deut. 32:10).148 For instance, after Cotton was summoned to appear before the High Commission, facing the threat of either ‘imprisonment’ or ‘banishment’, he chose to leave Boston and emigrate to New England.149 After his return from the Netherlands, Burroughes claimed that he was reviled for having fled England after suffering under Bishop Matthew Wren. Owen’s interpretation of the plight of such refugees would have served to mitigate against this by giving the exodus eschatological significance.150 Owen likened Charles to a cruel idolatrous Pharaoh, regarding his personal reign as an 11-year tyranny.151 He spoke of the ‘Late KING’ as one of the European rulers who despised and oppressed the people of God, keeping them in bondage and not freeing them to go and worship. He claimed that Charles supposed his ‘main interest’ to be ‘in holding fast Prelacy’, what Owen immediately described as an oppressive ‘Antichristian encroachment’ upon the godly.152 Using one of the tropes of Egyptian slavery, Owen explicitly spoke of the Laudian era as a time when ‘cruell taske-Masters’, under ‘that pretence of glory, beauty, comeliness and conformity’ and the ‘Chimaera’ of ‘order, decency, and the Authority of the Church’ forced on the saints ‘a ceremonious pompous, outward shew worship, drawne from Pagan, Judaical, and Antichristian observations’.153 For Owen in the 1630s, the outlook was bleak. Looking back over the Laudian regime, he asserted that ‘God had a controversy with the nation’.154 The issue was not simply confined to those in leadership in church and state. Owen argued that the sins which had ‘possessed the Governours of the Nation’ had been ‘wrapt in the consent of the greatest part of the people’ and ‘without unpresidented mercy’ both ‘People and Nation’ were ‘obnoxious to remedilesse ruine’.155 He feared that the nation had so ‘abused’ and ‘forsaken’ the gospel that they might have forfeited it altogether and he contended that ‘The glory of God was of late by many degrees departing from the Temple in our land’.156 Here Owen employs the prophetic tropes of

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Ezekiel, who in a mounting series of vignettes sees the glory of God poised to depart from the midst of a people slowly and by stages because of their idolatry and corrupt government (Ezek. 8:1–11:25). This view had been articulated by some of the leading Puritans in the 1630s. Thomas Hooker insisted before his exodus to Holland and then Boston: ‘God is going his glory is departing, England hath seene her best dayes . . . God is packing up of his Gospell, because no body will buy his wares’. Similarly, one of the charges levelled against Samuel Ward of Ipswich when summoned before the High Commission in 1634 was his conviction that ‘religion and the gospel stood on tiptoes ready to be gone’.157

IV. Conclusion Owen’s prophetic worldview enabled him to draw radical conclusions from the idolatry and tyranny which he believed he had witnessed in the 1630s. As he looked back to that time, it was his conviction that the English King and the Laudian Bishops had been part of an Antichristian conspiracy which had attempted to bring England to the very gates of Rome. As a student in Laudian Oxford, Owen had witnessed what he considered to be this idolatrous agenda in worship and theology first-hand. He believed that the emphasis placed on ceremonies and the authority of the episcopacy, coupled with doctrinal anti-Calvinism and the means of their enforcement, threatened to return the English church to its corrupted, pre-Reformation condition. Within the English Protestant apocalyptic tradition, King and Bishop had once occupied vital roles in the war against Antichrist.158 In marked contrast, for Owen and the Congregationalists, King and Bishop were instead agents of Antichrist at the heart of England’s Protestant government and Protestant church. Observing the situation from the supposed vantage point of the late 1630s, Owen contended that God had a ‘controversy’ with the nation and that the outlook was bleak. Within Owen’s prophetic worldview, such an interpretation of specific events in England was based on the eschatological framework laid out in this chapter. In this scheme, Western history was dominated by the rise of the Papal Antichrist and its reign marked by idolatry and tyranny. Owen believed that the time was approaching for the coming destruction of Antichrist in all its manifestations. Particularly pertinent to his situation was the fifth vial of wrath described in the book of Revelation which, he believed, would destroy episcopacy, something he considered a form of Papal tyranny. When it came to dating subsequent events within the apocalyptic chronology, there is no evidence that Owen attempted to predict a timeframe for the complete effusion of the final two vials of wrath. Owen’s prophetic worldview also embraced the prospect of a coming golden age of latter day glory. Far from abandoning millenarianism in 1653, Owen’s eschatological convictions about the nature of this period are well represented in the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658).

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Despite some of the similarities in terminology, there were important theological differences between Owen’s millenarianism and that of the emerging Fifth Monarchist movement. Owen deliberately distinguished his position from that of Fifth Monarchists by explaining how they differed in their estimation of the prophetic chronology. Thus, Owen’s opposition should be understood as a rejection of their perceived errors, rather than as a rejection of millenarianism per se, because it was identified with the increasingly radical demands of the Fifth Monarchists. Owen believed that England was inextricably part of this divine drama because of England’s identification as one of the ten Western nations of the apocalypse and this eschatology provided the foundation for his interpretation of events. An ‘Israelite paradigm’ enabled him to draw multiple analogies between England and Old Testament Israel. Intertextual links between Owen’s apocalyptic chronology, the wider biblical narrative and the writings of the prophets provided a wide variety of examples to expand his prophetic vision of contemporary events. This means that a text need not necessarily be drawn from an apocalyptic passage of Scripture in order for the exposition of it to contain significant eschatological content. This methodology had a number of rhetorical functions. First, it enabled the events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis to be woven into the eschatological story, thus charging them with apocalyptic significance. Secondly, the well-known plot-lines of biblical events such as the Exodus and return from Babylonian captivity provided an explanatory narrative of the nature of the deliverance from Antichrist. Finally, the material drawn from the writings of the prophets had the power to capture the imagination, not least about the prospect of the latter day glory. Having surveyed the 1630s from his supposed vantage point, Owen’s outlook was to change dramatically as he considered some of the events of the Civil War and Interregnum. In 1646, he proclaimed that ‘this is the day of Englands visitation’, opining that because of God’s ‘unchangeable free mercy’, the ‘house of England’ was under ‘as full a dispensation of mercy and grace, as ever Nation in the world enjoyed’. He believed that God had broken the Laudian ‘snare’, and he claimed that God had set the gospel ‘at liberty in England’ in an unprecedented manner. He reasoned that many English cities had ‘since the beginning of our troubles’, (a reference to the First Civil War), ‘enjoied the Gospel, in a more free and plentifull manner then heretofore’. In this regard, compared to other nations, ‘many parts of this Island, do enjoy’, he insisted, ‘great priviledge and preeminence’.159 Such was Owen’s prophetic worldview as he reviewed his immediate past. In Chapter 2, Owen will be seen turning to look forward, watching for the fulfilment of prophecy. For him, this involved seeking to identify the providentially significant events associated with such a divine visitation and explaining their significance by incorporating them into this eschatological narrative.

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Notes 1 On the development of the English Protestant apocalyptic tradition, see: Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millenarianism and the English Reformation from John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Oxford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978); Katharine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Peter Lake, ‘The Significance of the Elizabethan Identification of the Pope as Antichrist’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 161–78. For English apocalyptic thought in Owen’s time see: Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); Bernard S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 1972); Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); William M. Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–60 (London: Macmillan, 1969); William M. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium: Protestant Imperialism and the English Revolution (London: Croom Helm, 1979); Peter Toon, ed., Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology, 1600 to 1660 (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1970); Kevin Sharpe, ‘Reading Revelations: Prophecy, Hermeneutics and Politics in Early Modern Britain’, in Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds., Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 123–6. For the Dutch dimension, see: Willem J. van Asselt, ‘Chiliasm and Reformed Eschatology in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Aart van Egmond and Dirk van Keulen, eds., Christian Hope in Context (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), i, 11–29; Willem J. van Asselt, ‘Structural Elements in the Eschatology of Johannes Cocceius’, Calvin Theological Journal 34 (1999): 76–104. 2 Owen, ‘Animadversions on a Treatise Entitled Fiat Lux’ (1662), in Works, xiv.166. 3 A number of others, including Thomas Brightman, John Cotton and Nathaniel Homes, integrated the book of Canticles (the Song of Songs) into this chronology, but there is no evidence that Owen did so. 4 Owen, A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646), 10, 23–25 [viii.12, 24–5]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649), 24–5 [viii.265–6]; A Sermon Preached to the Parliament, Octob. 13. 1652 . . . Concerning the Kingdome of Christ, and the Power of the Civile Magistrate (Oxford, 1652), 10 [viii.372]; ‘The Sin and Judgment of Spiritual Barrenness’, in A Complete Collection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 99 [ix.191]. 5 Timothy P. Weber, ‘Millennialism’, in Jerry L. Walls, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 366; G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 46. 6 Thomas Goodwin, ‘An Exposition of the Book of Revelation’, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), iii.81, 122. 7 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 17–21, 23–4 [viii.260–2, 265]. 8 Owen, ‘An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews’ (1668–84), in Works, xxiv.196. 9 Kenneth G.C. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium: Studies in Biblical Eisegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 15, 71; Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 119.

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10 Johannes van der Berg, ‘Grotius’ Views on Antichrist and Apocalyptic Thought in England’, in Henk J.M. Nellen and Edwin Rabbie, eds., Hugo Grotius, Theologian (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 169–83. 11 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 17–18 [viii.260]. 12 Thomas Hayne, Christ’s Kingdom on Earth Opened According to the Scriptures (1645), 5; Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 145, 151. Hayne was arguing against the millenarianism propounded by, inter alia, The Glimpse of Sions Glory (1641). 13 Owen, ‘Hebrews’, xviii.246. 14 Thomas Brightman’s commentary on ‘Revelation’, in his Works (1644), 612– 746, contains a refutation of Bellarmine’s futurist interpretations. 15 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 9–10 [viii.12]; ‘Θεολογούμενα παντοδαπὰ. Sive De Natura, Ortu, Progressu, et Studio Veræ theologiæ’ (1661), in Works, xvii.241–2; ‘Sermon XII’ (7 May 1680), in Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. By the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1756), 219–22 [ix.506–7]. 16 Owen, ‘Faith’s Answer to Divine Reproofs’ (5 January 1672), in Works, xvii.508–9. 17 Owen, ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.242; ‘Animadversions’, xiv.95–8. For Foxe’s understanding of church history see Jane Facey, ‘John Foxe and the Defence of the English Church’, in Peter Lake and Maria Dowling, eds., Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 169–70. 18 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26–7 [viii.26]; ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.213, 235; ‘Of Schism: The True Nature of it Discovered and Considered, with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’ (1657), in Works, xiii.167. For context see: The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain Vulgarly Called StoneHeng on Salisbury Plain Restored (1655); John Spurr, ‘“A Special Kindness for Dead Bishops”: The Church, History and Testimony in Protestantism’, in Pauline Kewes, ed., The Uses of History in Early Modern England (San Marino: Huntington Library, 2006), 318. For Owen’s references to human sacrifice see: ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.105; ‘Dissertation on Divine Justice’ (1653), in Works, x.527; ‘Of Walking Humbly with God’, in Complete Collection of Sermons, 21 [ix.86]. 19 Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos, vii.4. 20 Origen, Homily 4 on Ezekiel. 21 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 34 [viii.32]. The fifth-century writer Salvian was another important source for Owen: see ‘Animadversions’, xiv.70, 100. Edward A. Thompson, ‘Gildas and the History of Britain,’ Britannia 10 (1979), 203; Glanmor Williams, ‘Some Protestant Views of Early Church History’, in Glanmor Williams, ed., Welsh Reformation Essays (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1967), 207–19; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom (London: Phillimore, 1978), 24–6. 22 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 34 [viii.107]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 13, 18–19, 23–4 [viii.256, 261, 265]; ‘Beauty and Strength of Zion’ (22 April 1675), in Complete Collection of Sermons, 133 [ix.311]; ‘Sermon XII’, 219–21 [ix.506–07]; ‘Truth and Innocence Vindicated’ (1669), in Works, xiii.381; ‘Providential Changes, an Argument for Universal Holiness’, in Complete Collection of the Sermons, 51, 53–4 [ix.134, 139]; ‘Faith’s Answer to Divine Reproofs’, in Works, xvii.508– 09; The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms

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23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38

39

40

41 42 43 44

Owen’s prophetic worldview of the World: or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), 10–11 [viii.321–2]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 24, [viii.265]; Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 27, 33 [viii.26, 31]. Owen, ‘Beauty and Strength’, 133 [ix.311]; ‘A Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux’ (1664), in Works, xiv.407. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 20, 24 [viii.262, 265]; Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.120; Thomas Goodwin, Great Interest of States & Kingdomes (1646), 37–9, 47–9. John Cotton, An Exposition upon the Thirteenth Chapter of the Revelation (1656), 36; Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.67–9. Owen, ‘Vindiciæ Evangelicæ, or The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated, and Socinianism Examined’ (1655), in Works, xii.15; ‘Vindication of the Animadversions’, xiv.305. Owen, ‘Concern of Christians in Public and National Sin’ (short discourse c. 1673–74), in Works, ix.367. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 23–4 [viii.264–5]. Mattias Becher, Charlemagne (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 83–94. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 20 [viii.262]. Lists of the ten kings varied but always included England and France and usually Sweden. Brightman, ‘Revelation’, 394–5; Cotton, Thirteenth Chapter, 81. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 24 [viii.265]; Jim Bradbury, The Capetians: Kings of France, 987–1328 (London: Continuum, 2007), 72. For William I (1027/8–1087) see ODNB, s.v. Owen, ‘An Inquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches’ (1681), in Works, xv.241; ‘A Vindication of the Animadversions’, xiv.407. Owen cited the sixteenth-century church historian Cardinal Baronius as he contended that the popes of the tenth century were ‘monsters’ for their ignorance, lust, pride and luxury. Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 116–20. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 28 [viii.268]; Duffy, Saints & Sinners, 125–6. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 23–4 [viii.265]. For Bellarmine’s views on the Pope’s indirect power see Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought: The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 350. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 13–14, 19–22 [viii.257, 261–3]; A Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate About Religion (1649), 55, 61–2 [viii.175, 180]; ‘Sermon XII’, 223–4 [ix.508]; Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.67–8; Cotton, Thirteenth Chapter, 81–2. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 23 [viii.97]; Toleration, 53, 58 [viii.174, 178]; Of Communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost (1657), 77 [ii.70]; ‘A Review of the True Nature of Schism, with a Vindication of the Congregational Churches in England’ (1657), in Works, xiii.219. Owen, Toleration, 60–1 [viii.179–80]; ‘An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealings with Sinful Churches and Nations, or, The Only Way to Deliver a Sinful Nation from Utter Ruine by Impendent Judgments’ (1681), in Works, viii.598. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 22 [viii.263]. Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 7 [viii.137–8]. Owen, Communion with God, 170 [ii.151]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 22 [viii.263]; Toleration, 63 [viii.181]; ‘Country Essay’ (1646), in Works, viii.66; Θεομαχία αυτεξουσιαστικη: Or, a Display of Arminianisme (1643), ‘Dedicatory Epistle’ [x.6]; Alexandra Kess, Johann Sleidan and the Protestant Vision of History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 83.

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45 Owen, Toleration, 61–3 [viii.180–2]; ‘Country Essay’, viii, 65; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 22 [viii.263]; ‘Schism’, xiii.172; ‘Sermon XII’, 220 [ix.507]; John Foxe, Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days (1563), 42–4; Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 213, 237–8; Frederick G. Heymann, Jan Žižka and the Hussite Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955). 46 Owen, Toleration, 59 [viii.178]; ‘Review of the True Nature of Schism’, xiii.265; Henry Kamen, The Duke of Alba (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 47 Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.66; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 22 [viii.263]; ‘Sermon XII’, 220 [ix.507]. 48 Owen, ‘Sermon IX [Excellency of Christ]’ (21 June 1674), in Thirteen Sermons, [ix.488]; ‘Christ’s Pastoral Care’ (16 October 1673), in Sermons, 127 [ix.278]; Toleration, 61 [viii.180]; ‘Schism’, xiii.172; Beauty and Strength, [ix.311]; ‘An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations; or, The Only Way to Deliver a Sinful Nation from Utter Ruin by Impendent Judgments’ (1681), in Works, viii.618; ‘Eshcol, A Cluster of the Fruit of Canaan’ (1647), in Works, xiii.66; ‘Sermon XII’, 222–5 [ix.508–9]. 49 Cotton, Thirteenth Chapter, 83. 50 Owen, ‘Hebrews’, xxi.173; vi.34; ‘Schism’, xiii.172; ‘Providential Changes’, 59 [ix.148]; Cotton, Thirteenth Chapter, 83; Rodney L. Petersen, Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of ‘Two Witnesses’ in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 207–16. 51 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 30 [viii.270]. 52 Owen, Communion with God, 165 [ii.146]. 53 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 13 [viii.373]. 54 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 32 [viii.30]. 55 Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 262; for William Prynne (1600–69) see ODNB, s.v. 56 Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.108, 191; cf. Thomas Goodwin, “A Discourse of Christ the Mediator” (1692), in Works (Edinburgh, 1861–66), v.209. 57 John Cotton, The Powring Out of the Seven Vials (1642), ‘Fift Viall’, 4–5; John Cotton, The Churches Resurrection (1642), 9, 19. 58 Cotton, Powring Out, ‘Fift Viall’, 5. 59 Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.97; William Greenhill, The Exposition Continued upon the Nineteen Last Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1662), 18. 60 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 18 [viii.376]. 61 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 26 [viii.266–7]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 18 [viii.375–6]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 38 [viii.110]. 62 Cotton, Powring Out, title page. Cotton differs from Goodwin who represented the belief that the sixth vial fell upon ‘the Turk’, see: Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.28, 62–3, 93, 97. 63 Cotton, Powring Out, ‘Sixth Viall’, 14–20; John Cotton, The Correspondence of John Cotton, ed. Sargent Bush (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 461–2; James Robertson, ‘Cromwell and the Conquest of Jamaica’, History Today 55 (2005): 15–22; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘Errand to the Indies: Puritan Colonization from Providence Island Through the Western Design’, WMQ 45 (1988), 91. Roger Williams reported that Cromwell’s military expedition against the Spanish West Indies was influenced by Cotton’s belief that such a campaign would lead to the drying up of the Euphrates. Roger Williams, The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, ed. John Russell Bartlett (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), vi.285. Cf. Joseph Caryl, That Great Duty of Praising God (1657), 13, 16, 31.

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64 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.129]. 65 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 35 [viii.107]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]. 66 Owen, The Branch of the Lord, the Beauty of Sion: Or, the Glory of the Church (1650), 41 [viii.308]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 14, 21 [viii.257, 263]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 10–11, 17, 19–20 [viii.322, 326, 328]; ‘Providential Changes’, 53 [ix.138]. 67 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 1 [viii.5]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 15, 17 [viii.258, 260]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 5, 27 [viii.318, 334]. 68 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 13, 19 [viii.257, 261]. 69 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.129]. 70 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16, 21 [viii.259, 263]. 71 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 8, 14, 18 [viii. 371, 373, 376]; Joseph Caryl, The Twenty-Seventh, the Twenty-Eighth, and TwentyNinth Chapters of the Book of Job (1657), 474; James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1991), 123–38. 72 Correspondence, 66. There can be no doubt that the Fifth Monarchists latched onto the millenarianism of the Congregationalists, see: Bernard S. Capp, ‘Extreme Millenarianism’, in Peter Toon, ed., Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology, 1600 to 1660 (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1970), 71. 73 Howard B. Hotson, Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordtrecht: Kluwer, 2000), 1–32; Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 36. 74 Owen, Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished (1644), ‘Preface’ [xiii.5]. 75 John L. Farthing, ‘Christ and the Eschaton: The Reformed Eschatology of Jerome Zanchi’, in W. Fred Graham, ed., Later Calvinism: International Perspectives (Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), 333–54. Zanchi makes frequent references to 2 Peter 3, which, as we shall see, Owen would come to interpret very differently. 76 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 22 [viii.264]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15–16, 39–40, 43–6 [viii.374, 387, 389–90]. 77 Many Protestants were actively opposed to the doctrine of a future millennium, for example: Alexander Petrie, Chiliasto-Mastix (Rotterdam, 1644); Robert Baillie, A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time (1645); Thomas Edwards, Gangræna (1646); John Seagar, A Discoverie of the World to Come (1650); Christopher Love, The Penitent Pardoned (1657); Joseph Hall, The Revelation Unrevealed (1650); Thomas Hall, Chiliasto-Mastix Redivus (1657). 78 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 28 [viii.101]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16 [viii.259]. Owen cites Isa. 11: 6, 7; 49: 18–22; 54: 1–3, 13, 20–21; 55: 11–12; 60: 16–17; Ezek. 48: 35. William Strong gave a similar list in his sermon to the Commons in April 1647, published as The Trust and the Account of a Steward (1647), 29. 79 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16 [viii.259]. Owen cites Isa. 35: 8; 44: 11–13; 49: 22–23; 65: 25; 66: 20–21; Ezek. 43: 9–11; Amos 9: 11; Zech. 14: 9–11, 16, 20; Mal. 3: 3–4. 80 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 6 [viii.318]. Owen cites Isa. 60: 3, 7–8; 66: 8; 49: 18–22; Dan. 2: 44; 7: 26–27; Isa. 60: 3, 6–8, 11, 16–17. 81 Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 43 [viii.235]. 82 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 25 [viii.266]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 28 [viii.101]. Owen cites Isa. 37: 31; Jer. 30: 9; Ezek. 34: 23; 37: 34–35; Hos. 3:5; Amos 9:11.

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83 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 25–6 [viii.266–7]; ‘God the Saint’s Rock’ (11 November 1670), in Works, ix.251; William Strong, The Doctrine of the Jews Vocation in XXXI Select Sermons (1656), 267ff.; Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 69–72; Avihu Zakai, ‘From Judgment to Salvation: The Image of the Jews in the English Renaissance’, Westminster Theological Journal 59 (1997): 223. 84 Robert W. Dale, History of English Congregationalism (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), 383; Hunter Powell, ‘The Last Confession: A Background Study of The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order’, MPhil Thesis, University of Cambridge (2008), 3. 85 Savoy Declaration, XXVI.v: ‘Of the Church’. 86 Owen, ‘Seasonable Words for English Protestants’ (22 December 1681), in Works, ix.4; ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.184. 87 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 13, 17, 48 [viii.373, 375, 391]; ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.263. 88 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy, 29 [viii.28]; Toleration, 61 [viii.180]. 89 Owen, ‘Seasonable Words’, ix.4; ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), in Works, vii.204. 90 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy, 25 [viii.25]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 38 [viii.386]. 91 Owen, ‘The Testimony of the Church Is Not the Only Nor the Chief Reason of Our Believing the Scripture to Be the Word of God’ (1675) in Works, viii.540. 92 Owen, ‘Seasonable Words’, ix.5. 93 Owen, ‘A Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God’, viii.600, 618. 94 Owen, ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii, 269. 95 Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.64; God’s Work in Founding Zion, and His Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 22 [viii.411]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 23–4 [viii.150–1]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 5, 17 [viii.318, 326]. 96 Jeremiah Burroughes, The Excellency of Holy Courage in Evil Times (1661), 185, 199; Jeremiah Burroughes, Eleventh, Twelfth, & Thirteenth Chapters of Hosea (1651), 13. 97 Michael McGiffert, ‘God’s Controversy with Jacobean England’, American Historical Review 88 (1993): 1152–3. 98 Patrick Collinson, ‘Biblical Rhetoric: The English Nation and National Sentiment in the Prophetic Mode’, in Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger, eds., Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 281–325; Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching’, in Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, eds., The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43–58. 99 John Coffey, ‘Quentin Skinner and the Religious Dimension of Early Modern Political Thought’, in Alister Chapman et al., eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame, 2009), 61–3; John Coffey, ‘England’s Exodus: The Civil War as a War of Deliverance’, in Charles W.A. Prior and Glenn Burgess, eds., England’s Wars of Religion Revisited (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 261–8. 100 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 17 [viii.326]. 101 Owen, ‘Public and National Sin’, ix.366. 102 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 11 [viii.322]. 103 Peter Lake, ‘The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness in the 1630s’, in Kenneth Fincham, ed., The Early Stuart Church,

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104 105

106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113

114

115

116 117 118

119 120 121

Owen’s prophetic worldview 1603–1642 (London: Macmillan, 1993), 161–85; Nicholas Tyacke, ‘The Rise of Arminianism Reconsidered’, Past and Present 115 (1987): 202–3. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 29 [viii.28]. Peter Lake, ‘Lancelot Andrewes, John Buckeridge, and Avant-Garde Conformity at the Court of James I’, in Linda Levy Peck, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 113–33; Julia F. Merritt, ‘The Cradle of Laudianism? Westminster Abbey, 1558–1630’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001): 623–46; Julian Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism, 1625– 1641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 275–6. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 29 [viii.28]; Robert Baillie, Laudensium Autokatakrisis (Edinburgh, 1640). London and Amsterdam editions quickly followed. Owen, Duty of Pastors and People, 27 [xiii.27]. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 31 [viii.30]; for Christopher Davenport see ODNB, s.v. John B. Dockery, Christopher Davenport, Friar and Diplomat (London: Burnes and Oates, 1960); Robert I. Bradley, ‘Christopher Davenport and the ThirtyNine Articles’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 52 (1961): 205–28; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 239, 250–1. John Rushworth, ‘Historical Collections: The Trial of William Laud’, in John Rushworth, ed., Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, Vol. 3: 1639–40 (London, 1692), 1365–81. John S. Morrill, ed., Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–49 (London: Macmillan, 1982), 15. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 29–30 [viii.28–9]. It is unlikely that this is a reference to Samuel Collins the conformist vicar of Braintree, Essex, who was friendly with both Laud and Puritan leaders: Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c.1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 198. Kenneth Fincham, ‘The Restoration of Altars in the 1630s’, Historical Journal 44 (2001): 920; David Cressy, ‘The Battle of the Altars: Turning the Tables and Breaking the Rails’, in David Cressy, ed., Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissension (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 186–212. Anthony Milton, ‘The Creation of Laudianism: A New Approach’, in Thomas Cogswell et al., eds., Politics, Religion, and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain: Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 179; Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers, 80. John Pocklington, Altare Christianum (1637), 60–5, 94–5, 109; for John Pocklington see ODNB, s.v.; David Hoyle, Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590–1644 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 207–8. LJ, iv.173. Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 76; Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547-c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 152. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 30 [viii.29]. Peter Heylyn, A Coale from the Altar (1636), 26–7, 51–2, 58–66; Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 162. For Francis Dee see ODNB, s.v.

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122 Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 202. 123 Webster, Godly Clergy, 216. 124 William Laud, ‘Accounts of Province’, in J.H. Parker, ed., The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1853), v.349. 125 For Samuel Collins see ODNB, s.v.; Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 256; Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c.1590– 1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 44, 254; Hoyle, Cambridge, 214. 126 John le Neve, ‘Bishops: Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough Dioceses’, in J.M. Horn, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541–1857 (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1996), viii.9–15. 127 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 30 [viii.29]. 128 Martin Luther, ‘A Letter Concerning Secret Masses (1534)’, in Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell, eds., Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 88; Patrick Collinson, ‘John Foxe and National Consciousness’, in Christopher Highley and John N. King, eds., John Foxe and His World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 129 Cotton, Correspondence, 98–103. 130 Francis J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the AngloAmerican Puritan Community, 1610–1692 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), 60; Goodwin, Great Interest, 57. 131 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 244–5; Davies, Caroline Captivity; Sharpe, Personal Rule. For a critique of Tyacke see Peter White, ‘The Via Media in the Early Stuart Church’, in Kenneth Fincham, ed., The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (London: Macmillan, 1993), 211–30. 132 Owen, Duty of Pastors and People, 27 [xiii.27–8]. 133 Owen, Display of Arminianism, ‘Dedicatory Epistle’, 1–3, 34 [x.8–9, 11–12, 40]; Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 10 [viii.12–13]; ‘Walking Humbly’, 38 [ix.113]. 134 Owen, Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu; or, the Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1648), ‘To the Reader’ [x.150]. 135 Thomas Jackson, A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes (1628), 127; Sarah Hutton, ‘Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse, Aristotelian’, Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 635–52. The extent of Jackson’s Anti-Calvinism is the subject of much debate: Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 78; Peter White, Predestination, Policy, and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 261–3. 136 Peter Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen, Pastor, Educator, Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1971), 7–8; Kenneth Fincham, ‘Oxford and the Early Stuart Polity’, in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 4: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 206; Kevin Sharpe, ‘Archbishop Laud and the University of Oxford’, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones et al., eds., History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H.R. Trevor-Roper (London: Duckworth, 1981), 146–64. 137 David R. Como, ‘Predestination and Political Conflict in Laud’s London’, Historical Journal 46 (2003): 264–5. 138 Fincham, ‘Oxford’, 206. 139 Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 231. 140 Nicholas Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, c.1530–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 277–81; Fincham, ‘Oxford’, 209. 141 Fincham, ‘Oxford’, 205.

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142 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 11 [viii.323]. 143 Owen, Duty of Pastors and People, 45 [xiii.42]. 144 Owen, Duty of Pastors and People, 28 [xiii.28]. Parliament abolished the High Commission in August 1641. Some revisionist historians have challenged the importance of the Court of High Commission. For example, Kevin Sharpe attempts to dispel what he believes to be the myth of its tyranny in his Personal Rule, 374–83. 145 Roland G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission, 2nd edition with introduction by Philip Tyler (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 344; Cyndia S. Clegg, Press Censorship in Caroline England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 103. 146 Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, 190–4. 147 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 22 [viii.411]. 148 Owen, Communion with God, 171 [ii.151]; George Vernon, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 7–8, quotes Owen speaking of those who left their native soil and went into a howling wilderness and claims that Owen was referring to those who travelled to Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New England. 149 Cotton, Correspondence, 183. 150 Jeremiah Burroughes, A Vindication of Mr Burroughes, against Mr Edwards (1646), 18, 21; Webster, Godly Clergy, 236, 270, 276, 307. 151 Robert Zaller, ‘The Figure of the Tyrant in English Revolutionary Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1993): 585–610. 152 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 12 [viii.323]. 153 Owen, Communion with God, 171 [ii.151]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 22 [viii.411]; Lake, ‘Laudian Style’, 161–86; Andrew Foster, ‘Church Policies of the 1630s’, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England (Harlow: Longman, 1989), 193–223. 154 Owen, ‘Public and National Sin’, ix.366. 155 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 7 [viii.137]. 156 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 33 [viii.31–2]. 157 William Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), 361; Thomas Hooker, The Danger of Desertion (1641), 15. 158 Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, 174–80; Gribben, Puritan Millennium, 61, 71–2. 159 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, frontispiece, 2, 31, 41, 43 [viii.1, 6, 30, 38, 40].

2

The identification and interpretation of providentially significant events

During the Civil War and Interregnum, Owen believed that, on many occasions, the nation had witnessed providential signs of divine favour in which ‘digitus Dei’ was clearly discernible.1 His Restoration critic Samuel Parker accused him of having ascribed more than 20 specific events of this period to the workings of providence.2 The antiquary Anthony Wood also spoke scathingly of Owen in this regard: He had a wonderful knack of entitling all the proceedings of his own party, however villainous and inhuman, nay any the least revolutions or turn of affairs, which hapned to be in favour of his own cause, to an especial Providence, to the peculiar and plainly legible conduct of heaven; which he zealously preached up . . . He could easily make the transactions of the three kingdoms to be the fulfilling of many old prophetical predictions and to be a clear edifying comment on the Revelations.3 This chapter will explore some of the defining marks which Owen identified in what he believed to be such special appearances of the hand of God. A number of these providential signs occurred on the battlefield, but Owen also pointed to what he believed to be other significant providences in the spheres of politics and religion. Owen’s prophetic preaching offered an interpretation of such events by placing them within his particular eschatological framework. Several biblical images and motifs loom large in his explanation of what he held to be a divine visitation: the ‘vengeance of the temple’ (Jer. 50–51); the measuring of the temple and the restoration of true worship (Rev. 11 and 22); a period of transitional shaking (Heb. 12); and dissolutions that usher in a new heaven and earth (2 Pet. 3). The chapter will also explore some of the rhetorical functions of these motifs in identifying and interpreting providentially significant events. Comparison throughout with examples from other likeminded ministers will illustrate the fact that Owen’s approach was part of a wider tradition.

38 The identification and interpretation

I. Identifying providentially significant events The military realm is an appropriate starting point since it provides the context for quite a number of Owen’s pre-Restoration sermons. Jeremiah Burroughes demonstrated the importance which the Congregationalists assigned to the battlefield when he proclaimed, ‘I do not know any one thing wherein the providence of God is more fully set out in scripture than in the workings of it about wars . . . God seems to glory much in his workings about warlike affairs’.4 One assumption which lay behind this confident reading of divine providence on the battlefield was the belief that the continuation of God’s ‘special presence’ with England was ‘purely conditional’. Just as had been the case with Israel, England could expect the blessing of military success for obedience and the curse of defeat for disobedience. For Owen, this was the ‘rule’ of ‘the outward dispensation of [God’s] providence’. This he based on texts such as: ‘those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed’ (1 Sam. 2:30); ‘when the righteous turn to injustice they shall die’ (Ezek. 33:18); and ‘The Lord is with you while you are with him, if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you’ (2 Chron. 15:2).5 Within this paradigm, ‘extraordinary success’ was assumed to justify the cause: as Jeremiah Burroughes put it, ‘All the successe in battels is from the Lord of Hosts’.6 The Scottish politician Archibald Johnston recorded an account of Owen articulating this principle in the weeks leading up to the battle of Dunbar in 1650: ‘I heard Mr. Owen, ther minister, in Bervik sayd God would bring doun Cromwell and his airmy, who was so proud as to say at the sight of his face wee would al flye, and wrytt that he would mett us, and al that wee could bring with us without exception’.7 For Owen, victories that were providentially significant were marked by discernible characteristics. These included: unfavourable odds against a formidable enemy; divine overruling in affairs in the lead up to the battle; a reversal appropriately tailored to the nature of the foe; and, finally, a victory witnessed to by trophies, spoils and other ‘monuments’. As Owen describes what he believes to be episodes of providential deliverance he often heightens the sense of danger and threat by presenting a strong enemy, almost certain to prevail. As such, the first hallmark of providentially significant events in warfare was unfavourable odds against a great or terrible enemy. Owen preached after the 11-week siege of Colchester (1648), which, according to Ian Gentles, was ‘the bitterest episode of the civil wars in England’ and in which Parliament’s victory was ‘a near thing’.8 Owen records a similar assessment of the situation: the ‘kingdom was in uproar: the North invaded, insurrections in the South, Wales unsubdued and rebellion in the great city’. Believing those loyal to Parliament to be outnumbered ten to one, ‘near as many thousands, as we had hundreds’, Owen portrays the enemy as a ‘tumultuous multitude’ of the ungodly: ‘An enraged, headles, lawles, godles multitude, gathered out of Innes, Taverns, Alehouses, Stables,

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Highways, and the like nurseries of piety and pitty’. He graphically envisages them kitted out with ‘rich Booty from their Enemies’, which may refer to the plundering of the Earl of Warwick’s house and armoury en route from Chelmsford.9 In his June 1649 sermon celebrating the recent suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford, Owen underlines his point by describing how providence had decreed that the enemy would not be ‘a poor, effeminate Sardanapalus, a poor sensual, hypocritical wretch, as some have been’ (surely a jibe at the late king).10 Rather, they faced an enemy comprised of strong, courageous and experienced soldiers. This was indeed the case – historians believe that in the lead-up to the Leveller rising, at least 2,500 men were in active mutiny or on the brink of it.11 Another representation of a formidable enemy can be found in Owen’s description from February 1650 of the enemies in Ireland after he returned from chaplaincy duties there. He depicted them as a strong ‘Fivefold Cord’ of ill-matched associates in an unholy alliance: (1) the Scottish Covenanters in Ulster; (2) the Ormond party united in its desire to maintain prelacy and the Book of Common Prayer; (3) the Roman Catholic Irish Confederates; (4) the ‘self-interested’ in the southern ports of Munster who had, temporarily, abandoned the parliamentary cause in April 1648; and (5) the native Irish rebels. These five groups now had joined forces after having spent the last seven years fighting one another in various combinations. For Owen, their union was reminiscent of the pact between the northern kingdom of Israel and Syria. This Syro-Ephramite bloc had aimed to force Judah into alignment with them (Isa. 7–9), just as the enemies of the Commonwealth had been intent on doing. Owen cast their role in the drama as that of a monstrous ‘hydra’ of ‘Covenant’, ‘Prelacy, Popery’, ‘Treachery’, and ‘Bloud’.12 In these examples, Owen’s portrayal of the enemy served to emphasise their strength and almost inevitable victory, which in turn highlighted the providential nature of their defeat. A second mark of a providentially significant victory was God overruling affairs, particularly in the run up to the battle, in order to demonstrate that the victory should be regarded as God-given. In the Second Civil War, Owen places great store on the uncoordinated nature of the various risings. He claimed that the Essex rebellion was only allowed to grow in number after the Royalists were ‘broken in Kent’ and after Pembroke castle had surrendered on 11 June. This meant that apart from the ongoing sieges at Colchester, Pontefract, Scarborough, Carlisle and Berwick, the New Model Army was ready to counter the Scots when they crossed the Tweed on 8 July.13 This invasion, several weeks too late, was doomed from the start. After the battle of Preston and the subsequent rout of the Duke of Hamilton’s forces at Winwick Pass, several thousand of the Engager army had been slaughtered and almost 10,000 captured. Cromwell, having lost fewer than 100 men, called Parliament to reflect on ‘the disparity of forces on both sides; that so you may see, and all the world acknowledge, the great hand of God in this business’.14

40 The identification and interpretation During the initial preparations for the Irish campaign in the summer of 1649, Owen believed providence to have overruled in a similar way. He referred to the ‘the choycest and most rational Advises of the army’ which ‘had they not been overswayed by the Providence of God’, would have left affairs ‘more than ten degrees backward to the Condition wherein they are’.15 According to Patrick Little, the commanders of the expeditionary force initially planned that the main assault would land in Munster, but events took a different course, and the entire force eventually disembarked at Dublin.16 This change of plan, which Owen attributed to the hand of God, had significant bearings on the outcome of the invasion because of three events. First, the Marquess of Ormond took the fateful decision to divide his army, sending his most able commander, Murrough O’Brien, the Earl of Inchiquin, south in the belief that Cromwell would land in Munster.17 Secondly, Colonel Michael Jones won a remarkable victory at Rathmines, outside Dublin, over Lieutenant General Purcell’s Royalists, killing up to 4,000, capturing 2,500 and seizing Ormond’s artillery, ciphers and supplies. This was ‘a stupendous reversal of royalist fortunes, with incalculable psychological and strategic consequences’.18 The invasion force heard of this ‘astonishing mercy’ just before embarkation, and believed it to provide clear evidence of God’s favour.19 Third, although Henry Ireton set sail with a smaller force to the original target of Kinsale, unable to land, he diverted to Dublin. Thus, with no field army to face them, Cromwell’s full army assembled with its large train of siege artillery at Dublin. Once Drogheda had been taken, and the area north of Dublin secured, the main army marched south and met Lord Broghill, who had by this stage managed the successful mutiny of the garrisons in Munster against Lord Inchiquin.20 It is likely that these are the unplanned events in which Owen saw the hand of providence advancing the cause of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. A third hallmark was a turning of the tables on the enemy in designing judgments commensurate to the provocation, so that the punishment fitted the crime. In such circumstances, Owen expounded the principle that ‘God suits the workings and actings of providence for deliverance to the qualifications of the opposers’. When the providential reversal is suitably tailored to fit the apparent strength and particular dimensions of the opponent, Owen sees ‘digitus Dei’.21 In the following examples, Owen describes the suitability of the providential victory. For instance, just prior to the siege of Colchester, on the night of 11 June, the trained bands from Owen’s own ‘little Village’ of Coggeshall blocked the road ahead of the advancing Royalists. Historians suggest that there were 5,000 Royalists and that at least 24 of their officers had seen active service in the First Civil War. Compared to their enemy, these Coggeshall men were inexperienced (Owen said there were ‘not three men, that had ever seene any fighting’), and yet they forced the Royalists to make a detour in order to reach their destination.22 Owen thinks it fitting that God would allow such a small, inexperienced band to prevail over a great army of seasoned campaigners. Owen’s mind would have been informed by ample

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biblical precedent, e.g., Gideon’s small army of 300 men surprised the vast Midianite army by night and caused them to flee (Judg. 7).23 If the enemy has been marked out by plotting and scheming rebellion, then Owen could highlight how he believed God to have thwarted and confused his plans. Examples abound of how he deploys this trope in order to illustrate the divine source of these providential deliverances. For instance, Owen offered the example of the Colchester Royalists refusing Fairfax’s offer of peace because of their hope of seaborne relief by the Prince of Wales. Unaware that the parliamentary navy had blockaded the mouth of the River Colne, their optimism was misplaced. Owen believed that providence had confused their plans and caused them to refuse the treaty by ‘mixing a spirit of giddiness and error’ for them to drink (Isa. 19:14; 2 Thess. 2:11). By doing this he had ‘shut up men’ who had come ‘to ruine others, in a City with Gates and Walls for their own ruine’.24 When it came to the soldiers from the New Model Army who took part in the Leveller-inspired mutiny at Burford, we have already seen Owen describe them as strong and courageous. Consequently, he believed it to be appropriate that ‘their strength departed from them’, and that, their minds being filled with ‘foolish, vain fancies’, they became weak and were filled with fear.25 Owen opined that ‘never did any providence speak plain in any latter age’ than in the surrender of those 900 men of ‘stout heart’ without much fighting.26 He proclaimed that such a fitting reversal ‘exceedingly heightens the mighty working of the Lord against them’.27 In Owen’s post-Dunbar sermons, printed in November 1650, he selected an episode from the life of Elisha where the perplexed king of Syria could not comprehend how his Israelite enemies had prior knowledge of all his military manoeuvres, knowledge that extended to ‘the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber’ (2 Kings 6:8–12).28 This enabled him to speak of an apt reversal, because Cromwell had initially been ‘out-generalled’ by Leslie, finding himself trapped between the sea on one side and the Covenanters on the other.29 Owen attributed the intelligence which enabled Cromwell to outsmart Leslie with a targeted preemptive strike to the hand of providence. As he saw it, if a general’s renown came from outmanoeuvring his opponent, then a fitting act of judgment was for he himself to be outmanoeuvred. A fourth distinguishing mark of a providentially significant victory lay in the witness of trophies, spoils and other ‘monuments’ to the triumph. For instance, preaching in Scotland after Dunbar, Owen depicted the true church of the saints as ‘a House, a Pallace hanged round about with Ensignes, Spoyles, and banners taken from the Enemy’.30 This is especially poignant given that in the rout, all the Scottish artillery and baggage were captured along with over 200 regimental colours emblazoned with such slogans as ‘Covenant: for Religion, King and Kingdomes’ and ‘Covenant: for Religion, Croune and Countrie’. Parliament ordered them to be hung in Westminster Hall alongside those taken at Marston Moor, Naseby and Preston.31 Ian Gentles has analysed banners from the Civil Wars to demonstrate how they

42 The identification and interpretation were often ‘wrought from expensive materials’, regularly with religious or political slogans and thus had ‘high symbolic importance’.32 Owen placed such monuments and trophies of war alongside the following biblical examples: the Egyptian corpses washed up by the Red Sea (Exod. 15); the arms from Sennacherib’s routed army (Isa. 37:35–36); Nebuchadnezzar’s robe and crown (Dan. 4:33–34); Haman on the gallows (Esth. 7:10); and Herod eaten by worms (Acts 12:23). To these he added examples from Western history: the death of Diocletian (244–311), whose persecution had failed to destroy the empire’s Christian community; the dying words of Julian the Apostate (331–363), ‘Vicisti Galilaee’, ‘thou hast overcome me, Galilean’; the ‘Rochets of the Prelates of this land, hung up of late with other Garments of their adherents rolled in blood’; and ‘the crowns, and glory, and thrones of the kings of the earth’.33 The spoils of war could include riches, and on a number of occasions, Owen quoted Psalm 68:12: ‘Kings of Armyes did flee apace, and shee that caried at home, devided the spoyle’.34 In October 1656, several weeks after news was announced of the capture of part of the cargo of the Spanish treasure ships, Owen preached to Parliament the sermon published as God’s Presence With a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity (1656). He mentioned the great victory of Asa and the people of Judah against a vast army of Cushites (2 Chron. 14). As he summarised in a later sermon, ‘Zera and the Ethiopians came with an army against Jerusalem of ten hundred thousand men’.35 Owen draws an explicit parallel between his preaching of the sermon and the prophet going out to meet those returning to Jerusalem in triumph carrying the spoils.36 These four broad defining marks of a special appearance of providence on the battlefield were, for Owen, testimonies to God’s favour being upon his cause. The presence of any of these marks singled out a victory as providentially significant. For Owen, a sermon was an appropriate memorial to a God-given victory. His post-Colchester sermon was entitled Eben-ezer: A Memorial for the Deliverance of Essex County and Committee. This recalls the language of the prophet Samuel setting up a stone to memorialise a great victory in which captured cities were recovered, resulting in peace from both external enemies (the Philistines) and internal enemies (the Amorites) (1 Sam. 7:10–14).37 However, for Owen, providential signs were not confined to the battlefield and extended into other realms. As we have seen, in identifying the trophies of victory, Owen included in his list crowns and clerical vestments, spoils belonging to the civil and ecclesiastical spheres respectively. His preaching similarly highlighted other providentially significant events in both politics and religion. Owen saw great triumphs occurring at the beginning of the Long Parliament in 1641–42 that were of particular note. Others concurred: those for whom 1641 became identified as the ‘golden year’ and annus mirabilis, wherein ‘God’s mercies to England’ were revealed.38 In stark contrast

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to what he believed to have been the dark days of the 1630s, he claimed that anyone ‘with half an eye’ could see ‘the providentiall alterations of the late times’ and the ‘many glorious Appearances’ which had brought about a ‘revolution’. First, the people of God who once were ‘despised’ were now ‘esteemed’; secondly, their consciences were now free, no longer ‘enthrall’d’ (enslaved) or imposed upon by the Laudian regime; thirdly, those who had been imprisoned by cruel masters were at liberty; and, finally, those who had been banished were now free to return to England.39 Owen had in mind events from 1641 which included: the move to suppress Arminian innovations (February); Parliament being made secure by the Triennial act and the act for parliamentary continuance (May); and the abolition of the prerogative courts of Star Chamber and the ecclesiastical courts of High Commission (July). In November, the Commons passed its controversial Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom, a scathing account of the people’s grievances (amongst other things it proposed that bishops be deprived of their votes in the House of Lords and that innovative religious ceremonies be removed).40 The way had been opened up for the return of ministers who in the 1630s had emigrated to the Continent or New England.41 Among those exiles who returned from the Netherlands were Jeremiah Burroughes, Thomas Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, William Bridge and Philip Nye, and these men, now free to minister in England, were to have a profound impact on Owen. In January 1649, lamenting the backsliding he observed around him, Owen looked back to early 1642 (‘seven yeares agoe’) as the time when the difference was most obvious between the saints and the ungodly.42 This sense was no doubt heightened by Owen’s own profound religious experience when he heard an otherwise unknown preacher at St Mary’s Aldermanbury during the winter of 1641–42, at which time he appears to have gained assurance of salvation and therefore the conviction that he was among the saints.43 Civil and ecclesiastical changes were of course not limited to the beginning of the 1640s. In Kingdome of Christ (1652), we learn that Owen believed God’s work to have involved the ‘blood and banishment of Kings’, namely, the execution of Charles and now, post-Worcester, the exile of his son.44 Perhaps a more unexpected place for Owen to claim to see the hand of providence is in the realm of spiritual zeal and experience. He explicitly detected Digitus Dei in the experience of spiritual communion that all the saints enjoyed in the 1630s and 1640s.45 For Owen, the critical thing was that this experience extended to include all the ‘godly’. He was convinced that God would not lead all the godly faithful into a situation where their spiritual experience was based on a delusion. For Owen these military, civil and ecclesiastical providences were evidence of ‘Englands visitation’. He suggested that no one could not have failed to observe the gospel’s work in ‘overthrowing armies, putting aliens to flight, and at length taking firm root like the Cedars of God’. His conclusion was that the ‘house of England’ was enjoying ‘as full a dispensation of mercy and grace as ever Nation in the world enjoyed’. Previously, he suggested England

44 The identification and interpretation had been the Pope’s ‘good Asse’, an Italian description of England’s blind and slavish obedience to the See of Rome. Now, in sovereign grace, God had broken the snare and brought the liberty of the gospel. The previous two generations (‘our fathers’ and ‘our fathers’ fathers’) had never enjoyed such ‘free and plentiful’ proclamation of the gospel in the ‘streets’ and ‘villages’ as has occurred during the ‘troubles’.46 In 1651, after victory at the battle of Worcester, he told the Rump Parliament that ‘from the dayes of old’, there had never been a time when God’s ‘presence, power and providence’ had been seen as clearly.47

II. The necessity of interpreting providence Owen’s prophetic preaching offered an interpretation of the providentially significant events which he identified in the spheres of war, religion and politics. For him, it was insufficient simply to determine that an event was providentially significant because it was the true interpretation of such events that was of utmost importance. Owen’s first step towards interpretation was often to note resonances between these alleged providences and episodes of biblical history. Preaching after Colchester, Owen could hardly have made a stronger parallel between the acts of salvation that Habakkuk remembered in his prayer and the contemporary parliamentary victories. In the following comparison, we can reasonably infer that the geographic references included the decisive battle of Naseby (June 1645), the siege of Pembroke (May–July 1648), victories in Lancashire at Preston and Winwick Pass (August 1648) and the siege of Colchester. In his sermon he rhapsodised on the works of Habakkuk: God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. (Hab. 3:3) God came from Naseby, and the holy one from the West [Pembroke]: Selah: his glory covered the Heavens, and the earth was full of his prayse. He went forth in the North [Lancashire], and in the East [Colchester] he did not withhold his hand. Habakkuk had called his hearers to remember the events associated with Israel’s exodus from Egypt (Num. 13:3, 26; Deut. 33:2). In a similar way, Owen urged his hearers and readers to keep before them ‘the God of MarstoneMoore, and the God of Naseby’ and not to forget these ‘past mercies’ as they contemplated the nature of the settlement which would follow the Second Civil War.48 At the same public thanksgiving in Romford, Essex, the other preacher was the rector of Kedington, Suffolk, Samuel Fairclough (1594–1677).49 His sermon was later published as The Prisoners Praises.50 When compared to

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Owen’s sermon from that day, there are marked similarities in hermeneutical method and rhetoric. Fairclough’s text was ‘Let the high Praises of God be in their mouthes, and a two edged sword in their hands; to execute vengeance upon the heathen; and punishment upon the people. To binde their Kings with Chains, and their Nobles with Fetters of Iron’ (Ps. 149:6–8). Fairclough attributed the relief of Colchester and the release of the county committee to ‘the glorious passages of divine providence’. Weaving the capture of the committee members into the biblical narrative, he described how ‘Amalekites at Chelmsford took you’, and they were then sold into slavery ‘by these Midianites and Egyptians’ before finding themselves like Daniel in the lion’s den.51 In a remarkable adaptation of Psalm 136, Fairclough rhapsodised about this latter-day deliverance in a manner every bit as shocking to the modern ear as Owen’s adaptation of Habakkuk: it is no wonder that he was referred to as ‘Boanerges’, a ‘son of thunder’:52 That rescued us from anger and rage of the multitude, when they first apprehended us at Chelmsford, For his mercy endureth, &c. That preserved us in the long march from Brantree to Colchester, For his mercy endureth, &c. That suffered not our Enemies to do us any harm, For his mercy, &c. That turned their hearts to be civil to us, For his mercy, &c. That secured us from the bullets that were shot through our chambers, for his mercy, &c .  .  . That caused our Enemies to give us life, when they yielded themselves to death, For his mercy, &c. That after so many weeks imprisonment brought us home with Honer, Safety, and Freedom, For his mercy endureth for ever. Fairclough told his hearers: ‘Raise the actual expression of your praise with the two-edged Sword of God in your hand, by improving your liberty by way of Vindication in executing vengeance upon the Heathen, punishments upon the People; by binding their Kings in chains, and Princes in fetters of iron’. The chains with which Fairclough wished the king to be bound were none other than ‘our solemn League and Covenant’.53 This comparison of Owen and Fairclough demonstrates that the same event, recognised as providentially significant, could be incorporated into the biblical narrative using similar rhetorical techniques, and yet the wider religio-political conclusions drawn could be very different. For Owen, providential acts could only be correctly interpreted by locating them within their proper eschatological framework. The particular eschatological perspective adopted was determinative for the interpretation. A good example comes from the disagreements that existed between some Presbyterians and Congregationalists about the significance of the proliferation of the sects and the spread of heresies. Owen believed that in his days there was ‘the breaking forth of much glorious gospel light’ (Mal. 4:1–2). He reasoned that when the true light comes, immediately false lights break out, just as Arianism arose during the spread of

46 The identification and interpretation the gospel across the Roman Empire. Owen believed that he was witnessing similar counterfeiting in his days, appealing for support to the biblical reference of Satan pouring out a flood of false teaching in an endeavour to destroy the people of God (Rev. 12:15).54 However, the use of apocalyptic language to account for the rise of the sects was not the preserve of the Congregationalists. In the first instalment of the Presbyterian minister Thomas Edwards’s massive Gangraena (1646), the sects were portrayed as Satan’s latest challenge to Christ’s kingdom.55 Another Presbyterian, Edmund Calamy, boldly asserted that the toleration advocated by some threatened to release ‘beastly errours’ from ‘their dens of obscurity and oblivion’ at a time when the ‘bright Sun of Christs kingly government’ was about to be established.56 Preaching alongside Owen at the parliamentary fast of April 1646, the leading London Presbyterian James Nalton used apocalyptic language to urge Parliament to take action: that errours and heresies be discountenanced and suppressed; stop the spreading of this Gangrene, before it over-run the whole body of the Kingdom: O that I might make it my request to this honourable Senate on my bended knees, that ye would take some speedy course to stop this Flood-gate least we be drowned; for the Lord Jesus sake, shew us that favour that the earth did to the woman, when the Serpent cast water out of his mouth as a Flood, to drown her, the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood.57 Such comparisons between Owen and these Presbyterians show that the same events, located in different eschatological frameworks, could be understood in conflicting ways. Owen believed that those who refused to adopt his particular perspective would completely misunderstand what they were observing. Thus, Owen’s vision was at odds with some Presbyterians in 1646: where they were pessimistic, he was optimistic. Although Owen believed Satan to be active in the sects and in heresies, his assessment of affairs was far from the almost uniformly bleak picture that some of them painted. Owen thought that those who believed they were living in dark days in which establishing church government was the only solution were simply not seeing clearly: they were ‘disturbed in their optics, or have gotten false glasses’.58 Owen singled out Presbyterian heresiographers like Thomas Edwards and Ephraim Pagitt, who made ‘Catalogues of the errours still amongst us’: ‘Which way soever they look, they can see nothing but errours, errours of all sizes, sorts, sects, and sexes. Errours and Heresies from the beginning to the end’.59 Startlingly, Owen believed that they were actually as great a threat to reformation as the Laudians had been because both were ready to ‘extenuate’ the present mercies and lessen the contrast to the ‘superstition and popish tyranny’ of the 1630s.60 Inverting the imagery of the parable of the tares, he parodied the heresiographers as those who saw only a field of weeds without any wheat (Matt. 13:24–30). That Owen should allude to this parable is significant, as

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it had been used by the prominent religious controversialist Roger Williams to argue for a more wide-ranging toleration in his dispute with John Cotton. Owen implied that these Presbyterians were as confused in their understanding as their arch-opponent Williams.61 What sets Owen’s interpretation apart is the way in which he places providential events within his very particular eschatological framework. This is best illustrated by a detailed examination of some of the quite distinctive categories he relied on in order to describe the divine visitation he believed he was witnessing.

III. The particular eschatological framework Owen used to interpret providence For Owen, this divine visitation involved both judgment and mercy, ‘Affliction and deliverance, desertion and recovery, darknesse and light’. Owen was awaiting ‘the ruin of Babylon and the restoration of [God’s] church’. The ‘darke side’ of God’s work was ‘Terror and Judgment’; the ‘light side of [God’s] work’ was the deliverance and transformation of the saints. Owen believed that once the divine decree went forth for the destruction of Babylon and the restoration of Zion, it would ‘overturne Empires, destroy Nations, ruine Armies, open Prisons, break Chaines and Fetters’. Asking rhetorically, ‘Have we seene nothing of this in our days?’, he claimed that the days of the church’s ‘humiliation’ and ‘sorrows’ were numbered: her enemies would be destroyed, and the church would be delivered.62 Inevitably, as Babylon was falling, the Saints would be raised. These twin aspects of the ‘darke’ and ‘light’ side of the divine visitation, together with his vision of consequent restoration, are the means whereby Owen assigned interpretations to alleged providentially significant events. i. The ‘vengeance of the temple’ and the ‘recompenses for the controversy of Zion’ A key motif for understanding Owen’s interpretation of events as divine judgment is ‘the vengeance of the Temple’, in which Babylon is destroyed for Israel’s sake (Jer. 50:1–51:64).63 This alludes to Jeremiah’s prophecy of the Medes destroying Babylon in retribution for Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem’s temple. The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, the vengeance of his temple. (Jer. 50:28) Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon,

48 The identification and interpretation to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple. (Jer. 51:11) Another related text which Owen used to describe this ‘darke side’ of God’s work in his day was Isaiah’s description of ‘the controversy of Sion’. [I]t is the day of the Lords vengeance, the year of Recompenses for the controversy of Sion. (Isa. 34:8) This controversy which issued in vengeance was an important idea for Owen and other Congregationalists, such as Goodwin and Strong.64 The idea is expounded, in Owen’s hands, with reference to Belshazzar’s feast described in the book of Daniel. He attributed the ruin of ancient Babylon to Belshazzar touching ‘forbidden things’, i.e. abusing the holy vessels taken from the temple of Jerusalem at his drunken feast (Dan. 5:2–5). In what Owen regarded as divine retribution for the destruction of Jerusalem, Daniel recorded ‘that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain’ as the Medes and Persians entered Babylon (Dan. 5:30–31). Owen drew a parallel between Old Testament Babylon and the spiritual Babylon of the Roman Catholic Church and argued that at present, the ‘Western nations’ were ‘wasting’ under judgment, because they had abused or taken away the liberties, ordinances, privileges and the lives of God’s people and given these as ‘spoyles’ to the ‘whore’ of Babylon.65 Another trope which similarly captures the idea of retribution falling on those who are enemies of the saints is ‘Touch not mine anointed’ (Ps. 105:15 cf. 1 Chron. 16:22).66 This command is found in a section of a Psalm which recalls God’s providential care for his people whilst they waited to inherit the promise. For Owen, the implication was that those who treated the saints inappropriately as they left spiritual Babylon to journey to the promised land would, similarly, fall under the judgment of God. For Owen, a prime example of those who had disobeyed the injunction ‘touch not mine anointed’ was the Laudians. For Owen, they had interfered with preaching, the Lord’s Supper and the observance of the Sabbath in their endeavours to set up ‘an outside, formal worship, in opposition unto the spiritual worship of the Gospel’. In their eclipse, he believed he had witnessed ‘the vengeance [Christ] takes for Zion’.67 Preaching at the end of the Second Civil War, Owen took this a step further, believing those willing to countenance a rigid Presbyterian settlement to be guilty of seeking to rob the godly of their privileges. Here he parted company from Fairclough, his fellow preacher at the post-Colchester thanksgiving, who had interpreted the siege to be divine discipline for Parliament’s failure to implement the Solemn League and Covenant. In complete contrast, Owen went so far as to claim the episode to be a warning to those who were endeavouring to impose such

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a Presbyterian settlement. Owen claimed that such grasping enemies had been sent away ‘with bloudy fingers’ (in an aggressive Restoration attack on nonconformity, Samuel Parker claimed that by this Owen was specifically referring to the ‘hands of the Cavaliers’).68 Owen believed that the saints were being liberated from their Babylonian captivity and that any who continued to hinder or oppose them would face this ‘vengeance of the temple’. The motif of ‘the vengeance of the temple’ is particularly important for Owen’s interpretation of the Irish campaign. He believed Parliament’s enemies in Ireland to be ‘Vassals of the man of Sin’ and ‘followers after the Beast’, and justice required that they be given ‘a Cup of Blood’ to drink. Referring to the Irish Rebellion of 1641, he likened Irish rebels to the Amalekites, the first of the nations that attacked God’s People who were seeking to enter their promised rest (Exod. 17). In doing so, they disobeyed the command ‘touch not mine anointed’ and invited God’s pronouncement that all Amalekites would ‘perish forever’ (Num. 24:20).69 The same rationale is evident after victory at Worcester. Owen was convinced that the Scots had been defeated because God had promised to deliver his saints from ‘bloody, revengeful persecutors’. The reason was ‘the fixedness of [Christ’s] eye on those who are as the apple of it’; the ‘Vengeance of the temple’ had finally come on ‘those who would not have the King of Saints’.70 ii. The ‘measuring of the temple’ and the restoration of worship If ‘the vengeance of the temple’ is the ‘dark’ side of God’s work, the corresponding ‘light’ side is the motif of the measuring of the temple and the restoration of worship. This concept has its origins in the book of Ezekiel, when in the lengthy vision of the restored temple, the prophet is accompanied by a guide with a measuring reed (Ezek. 40:3). The particular imagery is drawn from the book of Revelation where, in the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets, John is given a similar reed and told what he must and must not measure: And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. (Rev. 11:1–2) The motif contains the ideas of purity of religion, separation and the singular place of the godly within the restored church. Owen believed that in his day ‘the outward court of the Temple’ was being trampled on by ‘unsanctified persons’ causing ‘the defilement of [Christ’s] ordinances’.71 He stated that this trampling of the outer court had been going on since the fourth and fifth

50 The identification and interpretation centuries. Owen confidently predicted that when the ‘temple of God and the altar’ would be ‘measured anew’, the outward court would be entirely ‘left out’.72 His interpretation of this prophecy was that ‘Rome and her adherents’ and also all ‘Oppressors and hypocrites’ (whom he believed at present ‘enjoy many rites of the church’) would ‘not have so much left as the Name or title, appearance or shew of a Church’.73 This restoration of true worship was ‘clearly promised’, and Owen expected that it would result in ‘Purity and beauty of ordinances and gospel worship’, which for him meant ‘The full casting out and rejecting of all will worship, and their attendant abominations’.74 ‘Will worship’ meant any human inventions in religion and was applied by the godly to controversial religious practices within the English Church. Amongst Congregationalists, this particular interpretation of the measuring of the temple finds lengthy exposition in Thomas Goodwin’s commentary on Revelation.75 Michael Lawrence has shown that this text was part of the exegetical basis of Goodwin’s Congregationalism.76 Goodwin explained that the ‘holy city’ in question was ‘these kingdoms of Europe’, which for over a millennium had been ‘the metropolis and chief seat of Christian profession’. It was ‘tread under foot’ by ‘the Pope of Rome, with his idolatrous crew’ until near the end of Antichrist’s reign when, in the Reformation, a Protestant ‘temple’ was built in ‘the northern parts of Europe’. Goodwin believed that this temple had an outward court of ‘carnal and unregenerate professors’; ‘indeed these reformed churches are outward courts more than inward temples’, being corrupt in ‘church-fellowship’ and ‘worship’. He speculated that ‘of Protestants not one of a hundred are true worshippers’. Goodwin believed that the ‘outward court’ of the English church was trodden down by those wishing them ‘again to submit to their superstitions and idolatries’. He claimed that a ‘new reformation’ was required in which the ‘reed, the light of the word’ would distinguish the ‘true worshippers’ of the temple from ‘carnal professors’. In this ‘second reformation’, every aspect of the inner court would be measured according to ‘the rules of the word’ in the ‘erection of more pure churches’.77 The motif is also used by William Strong who makes explicit the link between the outer court being left out of the measuring and the necessity of separation: ‘let our Congregations be purged, let the outward Court be cast out, and let not those ordinances which are only the Priviledges of the Saints, be prostituted to the lusts of every prophane man’.78 Furthermore, Strong stated that when the temple itself would be measured the Ordinances of Christian worship would be pure ‘without all humane mixtures and contributions’. This purity would come from every aspect of the temple being ‘measured by the golden reede of the word’. Strong predicted that, just as Ezekiel was shown the pattern of the new temple (Ezek. 40:1ff.) so ‘the Lord will shew his people the Paterne of his House, and all the formes of it’.79 Owen elaborated on the link to Ezekiel by drawing on the imagery of living water flowing from Ezekiel’s temple bringing life to all the nations. Owen looked for the fulfilment of this at the time when the bitter streams of false teaching would be turned

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back and, in the preaching of the gospel, new life-giving water would flow out across the nations to bring about their conversion (Ezek. 47).80 Nicholas Lockyer also expounds the measuring of the temple, eagerly awaiting the time when the church would be ‘raised from its corruptions, intrusions and ruine made by unsound men’.81 Apart from Owen’s Branch of the Lord, Lockyer’s A Litle Stone of the Mountain: Church-Order Briefly Opened (1652) is the only other published sermon by a Cromwellian chaplain in Scotland.82 Lockyer’s polemical description of the Scottish church shows remarkable similarities to what Owen had preached during the Scottish campaign.83 Both contrasted gathered churches comprised of ‘living stones’ with the churches of the Kirk which they believed to be comprised of ‘dead, rotten stones’. For Owen, there was no comparison between the ‘Towers of Zion’ and the ‘Pinnacles of Babel’, since the beauty of a gathered church could not be compared to ‘a sty of swine, a den of unclean Beasts, a ruinous Heap, whereof the far greatest part are dead stones’.84 Lockyer declared the Kirk to be beyond hope of regeneration and rejected the idea that a national church could be purged. For Lockyer, the remeasuring of the temple involved gathering ‘Gospell Churches out of a Legall Nationall Church’.85 Presbyterians also made use of Revelation 11, but there were important differences in their respective interpretations which can be observed in London Provincial Assembly’s Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici (1654). The Presbyterians believed that the measuring was ‘to shew, that the building was of God . . . kept pure from Antichrist’s Idolatry, walking exactly according to the Rule of the Word’, and they believed that the measuring was to demonstrate the identity of those who were the true worshippers of God.86 In contrast, Congregationalists like Owen and his colleagues believed that this measuring was to inaugurate a new era of purity in worship. Although Owen does not explicitly say that his interpretation required the gathering of churches, his frequent allusion to this text as a prophecy of worship being purified, coupled with the fuller expositions available from other Congregationalists, suggest that this was a foundational text for his Congregationalism. iii. The establishment of a glorious ‘new heaven and earth’ The third scriptural motif that Owen found particularly apt for expressing the new dispensation he anticipated was that of a ‘new heaven and earth’. Owen expected ‘the Restauration of God’s people into a glorious condition after all their sufferings’ something ‘perpetually in the Scripture held out under the same terms’ namely a new heaven and a new earth.87 This was drawn from three biblical passages: For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. (Isa. 65:17; 66:22)

52 The identification and interpretation Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Pet. 3:13) And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. (Rev. 21:3) Owen and some of his Congregationalist associates interpreted the ‘new heaven and earth’ as a description of a future state of the church on earth. Jeremiah Burroughes claimed that it was a description ‘of an estate of the Church here in this world’ when, in ‘the Churches restoration’, ‘there shall be such glorious things done by God, as shall manifest a creating power’.88 In 1646, Burroughes told the House of Commons: ‘You have a full and large opportunitie of doing great things in your Generation towards the fulfilling of the promise of the New Heavens and the new earth, wherein righteousness shall dwell’.89 Owen draws upon the wider context of these three passages describing a new heaven and earth to fill out the details of glorious condition of the restored church. He looked forward to the time when the church on earth would increasingly match Isaiah’s idealised vision of restored Jerusalem (Isa. 65:17–66:24) and John’s portrait of the holy city, new Jerusalem (Rev. 21). For instance, Owen spoke about how ‘God hath promised, that in these days he will have his Tabernacle with men’. This is a reference to John’s vision of a new heaven and earth in the book of Revelation and Owen explicitly viewed it as the consequences of the measuring of the temple when churches enjoyed the privileges of ‘pure ordinances’.90 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. (Rev. 21:3) He believed that this promise was finding fulfilment in gathered churches of visible saints which he spoke of as ‘Tabernacles’.91 The Congregationalist divines shared this interpretation. For example, William Greenhill in his fivevolume magnum opus on Ezekiel cited Revelation 21:3 and asserted: ‘There is an estate of the Church to come, wherein it shall be very glorious . . . This is the glory which the Saints look for, and shall see in due time’.92 Similarly, Burroughes described this verse as a ‘prophesie that is to be fulfilled in that glorious Church-estate’.93 For Owen, Revelation 21 was a promise of the coming prosperity of the church.94 In John’s vision, it was said that ‘there was no more sea’ (Rev. 21:1). Owen linked this to the punishment of the whore who sat on ‘many waters’ (Rev. 17:1), and inferred this to mean that in the restored church there would be no more gatherings of ‘pretended

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clergymen from all nations into general councils’ (perhaps also implying presbyteries and synods).95 He also interpreted the gold, glass and precious stones of which the city was comprised to be a description of the vigour and purity of gospel ordinances.96 Turning to the final chapters of Isaiah, Owen similarly saw fulfilment of the prophet’s vision of restored Jerusalem in a future glorious state of the church (Isa. 65–66).97 This hermeneutical approach was applied to many parts of Isaiah. Of particular significance for Owen was the description of the future glory of Israel in Isaiah 60 (there are 26 references to this chapter, spread across nine of his sermons).98 Using language drawn from earlier in the book of Isaiah, Owen described churches as ‘dwelling places of mount Zion’ or ‘assemblies of mount Zion’, a motif drawn from a description of how, after a purging judgment, ‘the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence’ (Isa. 4:5).99 According to the prophet, at this time, ‘he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem’ (Isa. 4:3). Owen interpreted this as corresponding to what would happen after the remeasuring of the Temple from which the outer court was excluded. He believed that, through the mid-seventeenth-century crisis, God had ‘founded Zion’, by which he meant that God had destroyed those who sought ‘to overthrow Zion’ and had given the peace, liberty and freedom to gather gospel churches of ‘secret covenanted ones’.100 Thus, every ‘particular Church of his Saints’ could be described as a ‘holy Assembly of mount Sion’ and a ‘little Sanctuary’.101 Each ‘dwelling place of Sion’ was not identical with the others, acknowledging that the beauty and glory of each church depended on the light that they had, at present, received (Isa. 4:5).102 In 1659, Owen told Parliament that ‘there are now many dwelling places, many Assemblies of mount Sion’ with each of these congregations enjoying a pledge of God’s presence and favour.103 This hermeneutical method was deployed to locate the fulfilment of other prophecies of the restoration of Israel in the coming golden age of the church. Examples used by Owen include the following: in Amos 9:11–15, after the thresholds were shaken in divine judgment, the fortunes of Israel would be abundantly restored. Similarly, Hosea 3:5 was understood to be a prophecy of the church’s latter day restoration.104 Owen was able to use the wider context of prophecies like these to describe the prelude to the church’s restoration. For example, he interpreted Zechariah’s final vision to be a prophecy of how ‘our day’ was a time of some ‘uncertainty and suspense’, (‘a day whose light is neither clear nor dark’).105 However, he sought to reassure his hearers and readers with his confidence that, despite present circumstances, the church (‘Jerusalem’) would be exalted, with a perpetual supply of lifegiving water emanating from her. Burroughes explained, ‘We have had some drops of living waters in this our day, but there is a day comming wherein living waters shall even flow out of Jerusalem’.106 At that future time, Owen

54 The identification and interpretation claimed that godly ministers would serve the nations as they gathered for a perfect observance of the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14:6–20). This in turn enabled Owen to integrate other parts of the Old Testament into his prophetic worldview. For example, pointing to how Nehemiah’s reformation had restored the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles (Neh. 8:14–18), Owen interpreted the reintroduction of this feast as symbolising a return to the primitive purity of worship instituted by God, that is worship ‘in and by the ways of his own appointment’.107 Owen believed that the remarkable events that he was witnessing in the mid-seventeenth-century crisis were evidence of a divine visitation of England in which ‘the vengeance of the temple’ fell on the enemies of the church and the church itself was ‘remeasured’ and its worship and discipline restored to their primitive purity. It was also his conviction that such ‘providential alterations’, which he likened to a great shaking of all things, would continue until the establishment of the latter-day glory on earth.

IV. Two descriptions of this turbulent transitional period For Owen, two particularly important Scriptural tropes anticipated the turbulent period of transition which made way for the glorious manifestation of the kingdom of Christ.108 The first was the motif of the shaking of Heaven and Earth, and the second was that of providential dissolutions and alterations. Together, they helped him explain how turbulent years of violence, constitutional crisis, sects and heresy could be part of the prelude or transition into latter-day glory for the church. i. The ‘shaking’ of heaven and earth I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come. (Hag. 2:6–7) [B]ut now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. (Heb. 12:26–27)

Owen frequently employed this motif, and indeed, these verses from Hebrews can be found on the opening pages of his very first work A Display of Arminianisme (1643). Like Goodwin and Cotton, he believed them to be an interpretation of Haggai’s prophecy explaining how the Kingdom of Christ would be brought in.109 Owen attributed ‘the great shaking of the earth’ that was occurring in the First Civil War as the consequence of the conflict that occurs when, in a ‘hieron polemon’ (a holy war), the ‘sword’ of the preaching of

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the gospel comes against ‘the strong holds of Satan’ and ‘the whole troope’ of those who introduced ‘Popish Arminian errors’.110 The idea received particular attention in his parliamentary fast sermon from April 1649 published as Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth. Another preacher that day was John Warren of Hatfield, who, taking Jeremiah 18 as his text, preached The Potent Potter, a sermon emphasising divine sovereignty in the ‘breaking down, and building up of Nations’. Warren was aware of the ‘blustring storms that rage amongst us at these present alterations’ and argued that in matters of government, God had authority ‘when he hath removed one forme, to introduce another’. For Warren, England had not had such a change of government for ‘five or six hundred yeeres’, and he likened it to ‘an old house translated into a new form’.111 Owen’s exposition expressed sentiments complementary to those of Warren’s about the breaking down and translation of government. He sought to persuade MPs that in contemporary events, ‘heaven and earth’ were being shaken to make way for the things which were unshakeable, namely the prosperous estate of the kingdom of Christ. He believed that this prophetic idiom included the transformation of a nation’s ‘Politicall heights and glory’ (its heavens) and ‘The Nations Earth’ which he understood to be ‘the multitudes of their people, their strength and power, whereby their Heavens, or politicall heights, are supported’.112 Owen assumed that MPs would agree that in recent days, they had witnessed a ‘civill shaking’ earthquake of the nation’s political ‘heavens’ and believed that this shaking would bring down ‘the pillars’ of Babylon.113 These ‘props’, which upheld the spiritual city of Babylon and which appeared ‘to reach to heaven’, were the governing powers of the world in their present form.114 In the process, God was planting new heavens and laying the foundations of a new earth (Isa. 51), that is, establishing governments which would allow ‘the Nations, as Nations,’ to serve the kingdom of Christ (Rev. 11:15). Owen was confident that this shaking would continue until all ‘Babylonish rubbish’ was removed.115 This meant that, as his sermon’s title of 1651 put it, Providential Alterations were to be considered in their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation. Owen was fully cognisant that the consequences of this shaking were startling and unexpected. In these revolutionary days, ‘a mighty monarchy, a triumphing prelacy, a thriving conformity’ had all been brought down. A king (Charles II) had been banished, government changed and the nation altered and, most strikingly, a 100-year-old monarchy (the House of Stuart) which had ‘degenerated into tyranny’ had been pulled down with ‘its potentate being brought to punishment for blood’.116 One year later, he explained to MPs that such shaking would continue to rock civil government until it was established in a manner conducive to the establishment of Christ’s glorious kingdom: That the civill powers of the World, after fearfull shakings and desolations, shall be disposed of, into an usefull subserviency to the Interest,

56 The identification and interpretation Power, and Kingdome of Jesus Christ: hence they are said to be his Kingdoms. Rev. 11.15. That is, to be disposed of, for the behoofe of his interest, rule, and Dominion: of this you have plentifull promises, Isai 60. and elsewhere.117 At the opening of the second Protectorate Parliament, Owen told MPs that ‘All the shakings of the Nations are, that the unshaken interest of the Saints may be established’.118 Then, surveying the Interregnum in 1659, Owen remembered ‘what shakings, what revolutions, with new wars, bloodshed, and desolation, over the three Nations’ had taken place.119 The trope of shaking from Hebrews 12:27 was also employed by others close to Owen.120 Thomas Goodwin’s Supereminence of Christ above Moses expounded this text to speak of the ‘unparalleled changes, alterations, and abolitions of things which were already begun . . . and are to go on till they are to be consummated in the latter day’. Like Owen, Goodwin contended that ‘States and kingdoms, and the governments, and powers, and ranks in them, are as ordinarily set forth by this metaphor of heaven and earth’. For Goodwin, the scope of this shaking was comprehensive, and included: the establishment of the ‘ordinances, institutions, and administrations . . . of gospel worship’; ‘all other alterations of religions, false and suppositious’; and ‘all the alterations, shakings and removals civil that have been in states’.121 Thus, Owen and his colleagues portrayed the Civil Wars and Interregnum as a turbulent period of transitional shaking after which new lasting government would be established which would rule to the honour of God, for the good of the saints and be instrumental in the destruction of Antichrist. ii. Providential ‘dissolutions’ and ‘alterations’ But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Pet. 3:11–14)

Owen argued that these verses related primarily ‘not to the last and final judgment of the world, but to that utter desolation and destruction that was to be made of the Judaical church and state’.122 Believing the prophetic idiom ‘heaven and earth’ to refer to ‘the civil and religious state’, he asserted that ‘in every such providential alteration or dissolution .  .  . there is a peculiar coming of Christ’ and that there is nothing that is not potentially ‘obnoxious’ to dissolution in the sense of being subject or liable

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to destruction.123 For Owen, there were two paradigmatic comings of Christ to bring dissolution and alteration. First, there was what he believed to be in view in 2 Peter 3, namely the destruction of Jerusalem ending the Judaical church and state in 70AD (for which Owen also cited Luke 21:27, 36; Jam. 5:7–8).124 Secondly, there was another coming that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire through the instrument of the Goths and Vandals.125 Critically, he also believed that there was a coming of Christ in the military, civil and ecclesiastical alterations of mid-seventeenth-century England. In 1657, he spoke of the ‘dissolutions’ that had occurred ‘in these revolutions’, believing that all of Europe knew how ‘Our heavens and our earth’ had not only been shaken ‘but removed’, by ‘fire and sword, and the fervent heat of God’s displeasure’.126 Owen sought to persuade by acknowledging the ‘astonishableness’ of what he believed to be these providential dissolutions and alterations: ‘the blood and banishment of Kings, change of Government, Alteration of Nations, such shakings of Heaven and Earth as have insued’.127 Citing the historian Sleiden, Owen observed that even Luther had initially been ‘bewildered’ when at Smalkalde, the German Princes entered a confederacy against the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Luther being ‘in doubt for a time whether they might take arms against their supreme magistrate or no; but afterwards, seeing the extremity of things, and that religion could not otherwise be defended nor themselves, he made no conscience of the matter but either Caesar, or any waging wars in his name, might be resisted’.128 Luther was only persuaded when ‘instructed in the fundamental laws of the empire’; eventually he came to see that when the Word of God was made known there would be tumults.129 Owen interpreted the events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis as being part of a turbulent transitional period of shaking and providential alterations of both church and state. Within his eschatological framework, the period leading up to the restoration of a new heavens and earth would be unsettling and tumultuous. It was the era in which the vengeance of the temple fell on those who opposed the saints and in which the measuring of the inner court of the temple resulted in transformation of the church and, its corollary, the exclusion of many who professed Christian faith from the true churches of the saints.

V. The application of this interpretation of providence Owen’s preaching was employed to articulate the cause of the English Parliament and the New Model Army. By way of approbation, the providential signs which he identified, and the interpretation which he ascribed to them, vindicated the Cromwellian regime. From his very first sermon in 1646, Owen was exhorting discontented ‘repiners’ to adopt his perspective and rightly to understand what God was doing.130 As Blair Worden has noted, on the battlefield, a providential victory was understood to be a ‘significant

58 The identification and interpretation declaration of God’s favour’.131 Similarly, John Coffey explains how such victories were believed to have declared God’s verdict and therefore gave a providential mandate to the godly victors.132 Simultaneously, Owen’s preaching strengthened hostility and resentment towards those whom the godly believed had ignored the verdict of God’s earlier judgments by wilfully renewing the shedding of blood. This applied to King Charles, who, after the Second Civil War, was believed to be the man against whom God had testified.133 A similar attitude was also apparent towards those who participated in the royalist cause in Ireland and Scotland. For instance, after Dunbar, with Owen serving as one of his army chaplains, Cromwell challenged the ministers of Scotland to accept the verdict of providence, maintaining that ‘he must be a very Atheist’ who, in his ‘blindness’, could think of ‘all those marvellous dispensations which God hath wrought’ as ‘bare events’.134 However, that is exactly what some had done. In marked contrast to Owen’s providentialist account of the siege of Colchester in Eben-ezer, the royalist poet Henry King attributed the deaths of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle to chance and contingency: ‘Through Warr’s stern chance in heat of Battle Dy’d’.135 There are a number of examples of Owen using his preaching and writing in support of the regime. During the tense negotiations of December 1648, Worden claims that Owen was sent ‘as Cromwell’s mouthpiece’ in order to persuade Bulstrode Whitelocke to return to Westminster.136 Owen met with him on 31 December at Harding Court, Bartholomew Hall’s home, near Henley. Owen set about his task of persuasion by preaching before Whitelocke ‘two excellent sermons’ and, ‘after dinner, in discourse, [Owen] seemed much to favour the Army, & disliked the absence of those Parlem[ent] men who had no force uppon them perticularly’.137 During this time, as Kevin Sharpe has recently noted, Owen’s preaching ‘legitimized the regime’.138 This was a particularly useful function for a government with few genuine supporters. Owen’s preaching was intended to persuade his hearers and listeners of his particular interpretation of providence. In January 1649, he held out some of the ministers from the Kirk as an example of those who had been persuaded to repent by the weight of providential arguments. He spoke of how in defeat at the battle of Preston, God ‘stained the pride’ of the Scots (a reference to one of Owen’s favourite texts, Isa. 23:9). He reasoned that some of their ministers accepted the verdict of providence and, in repentance, were ‘brought home again’. The ‘recovered’ Scottish ministry included such ministers as Robert Blair, Patrick Gillespie, Samuel Rutherford, James Guthrie and James Durham. At that time, Owen was optimistic about what ‘will happen ere long to the ministry of another nation’, which the context would suggest refers to Ireland, where he assumed the some of the clergy would be persuaded to adopt his interpretation of providence.139 At least amongst the Presbyterians in Ulster, this looked increasingly unlikely, since a fortnight later, the Belfast Presbytery condemned the actions of the English

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Parliament in A Necessary Representation of the Present Evills, a document of significant enough importance for Milton to be commissioned to answer this in his Observations.140 The London Presbyterians were similarly unpersuaded by such arguments, warning that providence ‘is no safe rule to walke by’ because God did not necessarily approve of what ‘his Providence doth permit’.141 During the so-called Engagement Controversy, arguments from providence were frequently deployed and challenged. Edward Gee dismissed pro-Engagement interpretations of providence, parodying them as an appeal to ‘chances or contingent events’, and refused to see any ‘speciall concurrence or appearing’ by God ‘for the cause he ownes’.142 Despite this, Owen did enjoy some success in persuading a number of people to adopt his particular understanding of the times. In early January 1651, during the English Parliament’s Scottish campaign, the officer and regicide Robert Lilburne wrote to Cromwell, asking ‘that some able minister were here to speake in publique, and that I had some of Mr Owen’s sermons, and other books to disperse’. Many of the Scots had apparently told Lilburne that ‘they would gladly see and reade them’, particularly because ‘they have been keptt from them, and have not beene truely informed concerning our proceedings’.143 This was not least so because, since 1647, the Kirk had enforced strict censorship on the writings of the English Congregationalists.144 Cromwell would presumably have been delighted to receive Lilburne’s request since it was in line with the existing policy of disseminating preaching which supported the regime. When the New Model Army had crossed the Tweed the previous July, they were accompanied not just by Owen and other Cromwellian chaplains, but they also had a printing press in tow. When the Cromwellians had entered the capital in September they quickly seized control of Edinburgh’s presses.145 Cromwell’s press in Leith printed a sermon by Owen and another by fellow English Congregationalist minister Nicholas Lockyer. The goal of these sermons was the same – to help define the purpose behind the Commonwealth invasion and persuade the Scots to accept it.146 One of Owen’s perhaps most paradigmatic ‘conversions’ occurred during this time, namely that of the Scottish politician Alexander Jaffray (1614–73).147 In his diary, Jaffray describes being seriously wounded in the fighting at Dunbar and his subsequent imprisonment by the English, during which months he ‘had good opportunity of frequent conference’ with both Cromwell and Owen. Through these encounters he came to understand the ‘dreadful appearance of God against us at Dunbar’ in which the Covenanters were ‘visibly forsaken’. Previously, Jaffray had been ‘zealous for presbytery’, but he came to abandon it, instead adopting Congregationalism. Significantly, Jaffray even appealed to the text which was foundational for Owen’s particular eschatological framework, Revelation 11:1–2.148 As a convinced Cromwellian, Jaffray would sit for Scotland in the Barebones Parliament of 1653. Jaffray’s response was a model one. He accepted the witness of providence in the military defeat itself – that much was inescapable – but he was also

60 The identification and interpretation persuaded to accept a particular interpretation of providence, particularly in regard to its civil and ecclesiastical implications.

VI. Conclusion This chapter has explained how Owen used his particular eschatological framework to interpret what he believed to be providentially significant events during the Civil War and Interregnum. It explored a number of defining marks whereby Owen identified an appearance of Digitus Dei, be they on the battlefield, or within the spheres of politics and religion. Establishing parallels between contemporary events and biblical events was part of an intertextual process which enabled him to interpret providence by integrating it into his eschatological chronology. His initial conclusion was that, in the wake of the 1630s, England was enjoying days of unprecedented mercy, particularly because the gospel had been set at liberty within the nation. What sets Owen’s interpretation of providentially significant events apart is the particular eschatological narrative in which he located them. This was illustrated by different eschatological accounts which were given of the rise of the sects and the spread of heresy. We observed some of the quite distinct biblical motifs upon which Owen relied to interpret this divine visitation. He believed that retributive justice, the ‘vengeance of the temple’, was falling on those who had opposed the saints. At the same time, a new era was dawning in which the church itself was being transformed, or, in prophetic idiom, ‘remeasured’, and returned to its primitive purity. These were the prelude to a complete transformation of church and state, conceived of as the restoration of a ‘new heavens and earth’. Owen’s prophetic worldview was well able to adapt to the changing circumstances of a period marked by conflict and constitutional crisis because he constantly insisted that his generation was living in a turbulent and unsettling transitional period, full of startling ‘shaking’ and unexpected ‘alterations’. Owen’s preaching was employed to articulate the cause of the English Parliament and the New Model Army because this application of the rhetoric of providence did much to vindicate its cause. As we have seen, Owen apparently enjoyed some success in persuading a number of people to adopt his particular understanding of the times. Such an interpretation of providence had both civil and ecclesiastical implications for the nation. It is this to which we now turn, namely to examine what Owen believed to be the appropriate response demanded from those who had witnessed such a divine visitation.

Notes 1 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 31 [viii.104]; ‘Providential Changes, an Argument for Universal Holiness’, in A Complete Selection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 63 [ix.153]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, in Complete Selection of Sermons, 82 [ix.203]. For seventeenth-century

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2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20

21

61

providentialism see: Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); John Spurr, ‘“Virtue, Religion and Government”: The Anglican Uses of Providence’, in Tim Harris et al., eds., The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 29–47; Blair Worden, ‘Providence and Politics’, in Blair Worden, ed., God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 33–62; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Penguin, 1991), 90–132. Samuel Parker, A Defence and Continuation of the Ecclesiastical Politie (1671), 585–97, 610. Anthony à Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford: To Which Are Added the Fasti, Or Annals of the Said University (1692), ii.557. Jeremiah Burroughes, The Glorious Name of God (1643), 25–6. Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 22 [viii.150]; God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; With Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 1, 4–5, 9–12 [viii.431, 433, 436–7]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 87 [ix.210]; ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), in Works, vii.141. Burroughes, Glorious Name, 19. Archibald Johnston, Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, ed., J.D. Ogilvie (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1919–40), ii.16. Ian Gentles, The English Revolution and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1652 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007), 340–3. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 19, 31–2, 54 [viii.93, 104, 124]. Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 84 [ix.206]. Sardanapalus was the legendary last emperor of the Assyrian monarchy in the seventh century BC. For a contemporary description see Thomas Beard’s Theatre of Gods Judgments (1642), 280. Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645– 1653 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 331–49. Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 16, 37–8 [viii.220, 232–3]. For a description of Ormond’s uneasy coalition see: Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 60–1. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 46 [viii.117]. Gentles, English Revolution, 347; Abbott, i.637–8. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 37 [viii.232]. Patrick Little, ‘Cromwell and Ireland before 1649’, in Patrick Little, ed., Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 134. Micheál Ó Siochrú, God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland (London: Faber, 2008), 72. Gentles, English Revolution, 391; Pádraig Lenihan, Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1603–1727 (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2008), ‘Map Five’, 127–8; William Strong’s Thanksgiving sermon for this victory, entitled ‘Babylons Ruine, the Saints Triumph’ is found in his XXXI Select Sermons (1656), 55. Abbott, ii.103. Little, ‘Cromwell and Ireland’, 135; John S. Morrill, ‘The Drogheda Massacre in Cromwellian Context’, in David Edwards et al., eds., Age of Atrocity: Violence and Political Conflict in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 251–9. Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, in A Complete Selection of Sermons (1721), 82, 85 [ix.203, 208].

62 The identification and interpretation 22 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 31, 48 [viii.104, 117]; Gentles, English Revolution, 338–40. 23 The Souldiers Pocket Bible (1643), 10. 24 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 31–2, 44 [viii.104, 115]; Barbara Donagan, War in England 1642–1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 320–9. 25 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 83, 88–9 [ix.204, 213–14]. 26 Gentles, English Revolution, 387. 27 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 82 [ix.203]. 28 Owen, The Branch of the Lord, the Beauty of Sion: Or, the Glory of the Church (1650), 32 [viii.303]. 29 Gentles, English Revolution, 419–21; Austin H. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 483–6. 30 Owen, Branch of the Lord, 10 [viii.290]. 31 C.H. Firth, ‘The Battle of Dunbar’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 14 (1900): 19–52. 32 Ian Gentles, ‘The Iconography of Revolution: England 1642–9’, in Ian Gentles et al., eds., Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 95, 97. 33 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 81 [ix.202]; The Branch of the Lord, 10–11 [viii.290–1]. 34 Owen, The Branch of the Lord, 10 [viii.290]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 38 [viii.110]. Owen quotes Psalm 68 on six occasions in Eben-ezer. 35 Owen, ‘Beauty and Strength of Zion’ (22 April 1675), in Complete Collection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 131 [ix.308]. 36 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 3–4 [viii.432]. 37 Owen also spoke of raising an Ebenezer for the victories in Ireland: Stedfastness of Promises, 34 [viii.230]. 38 For example, Jeremiah Burroughes’s parliamentary sermon, Sions Joy (1641), 40, 45–6. David Cressy, England on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 173–5. 39 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, and His Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 21 [viii.411]. 40 CDPR, 202–32. 41 Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 23. 42 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 18 [viii.146]. 43 John Asty, ‘Memoirs of the Life of John Owen’, in John Asty, ed., A Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (London, 1721), v. 44 Owen, Concerning the Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God (Oxford, 1652), 25 [viii.379]. 45 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 62–3 [ix.152–3]. 46 Owen, A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646), 13, 23, 31, 43 [viii.15, 24, 30, 40]. 47 Owen, The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World: Or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.313]. 48 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 13 [viii.88]. 49 Early English Books Online incorrectly attributes this to Richard Fairclough. 50 Samuel Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in This Later Age (1683), 172–3. 51 Samuel Fairclough, The Prisoners Praises (1650), 26–9. 52 Webster, Godly Clergy, 101.

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53 Fairclough, Prisoners, 37–40. 54 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 59–60, 64–5 [ix.147–8, 155–6]. A similar argument is used by Nicholas Lockyer, Litle Stone, Out of the Mountain (Leith, 1652), 53. 55 Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 340. 56 Edmund Calamy, The Great Danger of Covenant-Refusing (1646), sig.A3v. 57 James Nalton, Delay of Reformation Provoking Gods Further Indignation (1646), 41. The frontispiece text was Leviticus 26: 23–4, but the sermon (contra ODNB) was an exposition of Jeremiah 13: 27. 58 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 28 [viii.27]. 59 For examples of the works against toleration of heterodox opinions see the following: Thomas Edwards, Gangræna (1646); Robert Baillie, Dissuasive from the Errors of the Times (1646); Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography: Or, a Description of the Heretickes and Sectaries of These Latter Times (1645); John Bastwick, The Utter Routing of the Whole Army of Independents and Sectaries (1646); James Cranford, Hæreseao-Machia: Or, the Mischiefe which Heresies Doe, and the Means to Prevent It (1646). 60 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 25, 28 [viii.25, 27]. 61 Williams opposed Cotton’s belief that the weeds closely resembled wheat thereby representing hidden hypocrites. Instead, he held that the weeds (ζιζάνιον) referred to cockle and darnel, which farmers could easily distinguish from wheat, thus representing the allowance of open heresy. Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), 40–53; John Cotton, Bloudy Tenent, Washed (1647), 39–40. 62 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 4, 10, 16–17, 31, 39 [viii.79, 85, 91, 104, 111]. 63 Thomas Goodwin, Great Interest of States & Kingdomes (1646), 15, 39–41. 64 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 35 [viii.107]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649), 21 [viii.263]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 16 [viii.325]; The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest: A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable Henry Ireton Lord Deputy of Ireland (1652), 9 [viii.351]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 27 [viii.414]; ‘Seasonable Words for English Protestants’ (22 December 1681), in Works, ix.4; ‘Providential Changes’, 61, 64 [ix.151, 155–6]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 80 [ix.200]; Thomas Goodwin, ‘An Exposition of the Book of Revelation’, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861), iii.89; William Strong, The Vengeance of the Temple (1648), 5, 12; William Strong, Ananeosis, or, Two Sticks Made One (1658), 137. 65 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 21 [viii.95]. 66 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 21 [viii.95]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 40 [viii.277]; The Branch of the Lord, 25 [viii.299]. Goodwin’s parliamentary sermon from February 1646, Great Interest, was an exposition of Ps. 105: 14–15. 67 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 64 [ix.155]. 68 Parker, Defence and Continuation, 588; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 21 [viii, 95]. 69 Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 35–6, 43 [viii, 231, 235]; Ethan H. Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Response to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, Journal of British Studies 36 (1997): 4–34. 70 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 16 [viii.325]. 71 Owen, Of Temptation, the Nature and Power of It: The Danger of Entring into It: And the Meanes of Preventing the Danger (1658), 176 [vi.149]. 72 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16 [viii.259]; ‘An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealings with Sinful Churches and Nations, or, The Only Way to Deliver a Sinful Nation from Utter Ruine by Impendent Judgments’ (1681), in Works, viii.656; ‘A Letter Concerning the

64 The identification and interpretation

73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Matter of the Present Excommunications’, in Works, xvi.221; ‘True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government’ (1689), in Works, xvi.19; ‘Beauty and Strength’, ix.311. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 35 [viii.107]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]; ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), vii.226, 228. Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.119–41. A similar interpretation is found in William Bridge’s ‘The Two Witnesses, Their Testimony and A Vindication of Ordinances’ (July 1649), in The Works of the Rev. William Bridge (1845), iii.343, iv.149. Michael Lawrence, ‘Transmission and Transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project, 1600–1704’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2002), 95–141, esp. 113. Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.124, 127–8, 130–2. Goodwin appealed to Revelation 11 in his parliamentary sermon, Zerubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple (1642), 16, 56. William Bridge also used similar arguments in his parliamentary Sermon on Zechariah 1 (November 1643), in Works, iv.314ff. William Strong, Higay’on Selah (1646), 27; William Strong, A Voice from Heaven, Calling the People of God to a Perfect Separation from Mystical Babylon (1654). Strong, Trust and the Account, 28–9. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 19, 32 [viii.327–8, 337]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 91 [ix.179]; ‘An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews’ (1668–84), in Works, xx.565. Lockyer, Litle Stone, 13–14. R. Scott Spurlock, Cromwell in Scotland: Conquest and Religion, 1650–1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007), 46. Lockyer, Litle Stone, 16, 33. Owen, The Branch of the Lord, 26 [viii.300]; Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.129; William Greenhill, The Exposition Continued upon the Nineteen Last Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1662), 368. Lockyer, Litle Stone, 47. Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici, or, The Divine Right of the Gospel-Ministry (1654), 36. A similar interpretation in found in Scottish Presbyterian James Durham’s A Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation (Edinburgh, 1658), 333–34. See also the work of Massachusetts Presbyterian James Noyes, The Temple Measured (1646), 68. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 11 [viii.255]. Jeremiah Burroughes, An Exposition of the Prophesie of Hosea . . . First Three Chapters (1643), 185; Jeremiah Burroughes, ‘Rules and Helps to Christian Meeknesse’, in The Saints Happinesse (1660), 233. Jeremiah Burroughes, Sermon Preached Before the Honourable House of Commons . . . August 25 1646 (1646), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 23. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 26–7 [viii.333–4]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 35 [viii.107]; ‘Schism’, xiii.191, 203. Owen, The Branch of the Lord, 27 [viii.300]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16 [viii.259]. Greenhill, Last Chapters, 346. Burroughes, Hosea First Three Chapters, 599. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 40 [viii.387]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 12 [viii.255–6]; John Cotton, The Powring Out of the Seven Vials (1642), ‘Seventh Viall’ 9, speaks of ‘The Sea is the corruption of Religion, upon which the second Viall was poured’. Owen, Branch of the Lord, 9–10 [viii.290].

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97 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 32–3 [viii.105]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 12, 16, 32 [viii.255–6, 259, 271]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 16–17, 32 [viii.326, 337]; ‘Providential Changes’, 51 [ix.135]. 98 Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 11 [viii.217]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 19 [viii.261], 264; Branch of the Lord, 21 [viii.296]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 6, 27–9 [viii.318, 334–5]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 17, 39, 43, 47–9 [viii.375, 387, 389, 391–2]; Glory and Interest of Nations Professing the Gospel Preached at a Private Fast to the Commons Assembled in Parliament (1659), 16 [viii.467]; ‘Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God’, viii.647; ‘Sermon XII’ (7 May 1680), in Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. By the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1756), 219 [ix.506]; Jeremiah Burroughes, Irenicum, to the Lovers of Truth and Peace (1645), 25, 106; Burroughes, Hosea First Three Chapters, 187. 99 Owen, Branch of the Lord, 4, 13, 27, 35 [viii.286, 292, 300, 305]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 39 [viii.420]; Glory and Interest, 4 [viii.459]. 100 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 8 [viii.404]. 101 Owen, Branch of the Lord, 4, 13, 27 [viii.286, 292, 300]; Goodwin, ‘Revelation’, iii.129. 102 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 39 [viii.420]. 103 Owen, The Glory and Interest, 4 [viii.459]. 104 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16, 19, 25 [viii.259, 261, 266]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 4 [viii.317]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 20 [viii.377]. 105 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 16 [viii.18]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 5 [viii.81]. 106 Burroughes, Hosea First Three Chapters, 189, 193. 107 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 23 [viii.264]; Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 16 [viii.17–18]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 26–7, [viii.333–4]; ‘Θεολογούμενα παντοδαπὰ. Sive De Natura, Ortu, Progressu, et Studio Veræ theologiæ’ (1661), in Works, xvii.347–8; ‘A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God’ (1667), in Works, xv.447, 460. 108 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 33 [viii.338] connects them as ‘like dispensations’. The terms ‘shaking’ and ‘alteration’ are similarly connected in God’s Presence with a People, 33 [viii.450]. 109 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 39 [viii.76, 111]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 9 [viii.253]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 6, 9 [viii.318, 321]; Cotton, Powring Out, ‘Seventh Viall’ 7. Thomas Goodwin’s treatise, ‘Supereminence of Christ Above Moses’, is an exposition of these two texts, see: Works, v.439–62. 110 Owen, Θεομαχία αυτεξουσιαστικη: or, A Display of Arminianisme (1643), ‘Dedicatory Epistle’ [x.6–7]. 111 John Warren, The Potent Potter (1649), 9–10, 12–13. 112 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 9 [viii.253]; ‘Hebrews’, xxiv.366–8. 113 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 12, 26–7 [viii.256, 267–8]. 114 Cromwell described Spain as ‘the great underpropper’ of Babylon. See Abbott, iii.859–60. 115 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 23, 40, 42 [viii.264, 277, 279]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 5–6 [viii.318, 334]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15 [viii.374]; ‘Two Questions Concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate’, in Works, xiii.512. 116 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 6–8, 15 [viii, 318–19, 325]. 117 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15–16 [viii.374]. 118 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 26 [viii, 413]. 119 Owen, Glory and Interest, 15 [viii.466].

66 The identification and interpretation 120 Strong, Vengeance, 44; Strong, Two Sticks Made One, 139; Matthew Barker, A Christian Standing & Moving upon the True Foundation (1648), 47; Cotton, Powring Out, ‘The Seventh Viall’, 7; Thomas Brooks, Heaven on Earth (1654), ‘Epistle to the Saints’. 121 Goodwin, ‘Supereminence of Christ’, v.439–40, 457–9. 122 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 51 [ix.134]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 10–12, 18, [viii.254–5, 260]; ‘Spiritual Strength: Its Reality, Decay and Renovation’ (9 January 1672), in Works, xvii.518; Goodwin, ‘Supereminence of Christ’, v.462. 123 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 54 [ix.138–9]. 124 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 36 [viii.274]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 10 [viii.321]; ‘Providential Changes’, 54 [ix.138]; ‘Holiness Urged from the Liability of All Things to Dissolution’ (11 July 1673), in Works, xvii.524. 125 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 11 [viii.255]; The Branch of the Lord, 41 [viii.308]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 48 [viii.392]. 126 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 54, 60–1 [ix.138–9, 149–50]. 127 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 24–5 [viii.379]. 128 John Sleidanus, A Famouse Cronicle of Oure Time (1560) viii.fol.100v. 129 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 13 [viii.129, 142]. Owen cites Luther, De Servo Arbitrio (1525), 80. 130 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, frontispiece [viii.1]. 131 Worden, ‘Providence and Politics’, 51. 132 John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 192–3. 133 John S. Morrill and Philip Baker, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the Regicide and the Sons of Zeruiah’, in Jason Peacey, ed., The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 14–35. 134 Abbott, ii.339. 135 James Loxley, Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: The Drawn Sword (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 194. 136 Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 69. This challenges the conventional account of Owen’s first meeting with Cromwell several months later in April. Assuming this is correct, then the story that they first encountered one another in Fairfax’s house that Spring might have arisen from an attempt to distance Owen from the Regicide. 137 Bulstrode Whitelocke, The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605–1675, ed. Ruth Spalding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 227. 138 Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 418–19. 139 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 27 [viii.153]; David Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644–51 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), 130. 140 Toby C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in Ireland, 1649–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 122; Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 240; Joad Raymond, ‘Complications of Interest: Milton, Scotland, Ireland, and National Identity in 1649’, Review of English Studies 55 (2004): 315–45. 141 Serious and Faithful Representation of the Judgements of the Ministers of the Gospell within the Province of London (1649), 12–13. 142 Edward Gee, A Plea for Non-Scribers (1650), Appendix, 7, 14; Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, 237.

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143 Nickolls, 48. 144 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842 (Edinburgh, 1843), 75–6. 145 J.D. Ogilvie, ‘Papers from an Army Press, 1650’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 2 (1938–45): 420. 146 Spurlock, Cromwell in Scotland, 45. 147 Woolrych, Revolution, 492; G.D. Henderson, ‘Some Early Scottish Independents’, in G.D. Henderson, ed., Religious Life in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 107–16; Spurlock, Cromwell in Scotland, 107–8. 148 Alexander Jaffray, Diary of Alexander Jaffray, ed. J.M.G. Barclay (Aberdeen: G&R King, 1856), 45–8, 60.

3

The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies

Owen called his hearers to understand the times by realising that they were living in a dispensation in which God was showing undeserved favour to the nation. He urged upon his auditors the obligation to ‘improve’ these mercies by a comprehensive godly reformation suitable for such a season. Generally, he described the appropriate response to such a special divine visitation as ‘universal holiness’. More specifically, his sermons were a call to engage in reformation, an important part of which required a visible separation between the true and the false church. This chapter will trace out how he emphasised this by repeatedly making the distinction between two different types of religion in the areas of church polity, worship, and doctrine. It will show how Owen’s own response to these obligations can be seen in microcosm in the programme of godly reform that he sought to implement in Cromwellian Oxford.

I. Understanding the times Owen believed that the appropriate response to the providentially significant events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis began by understanding the times in order to serve God ‘in the season and generation wherein we live’. He cited the biblical examples of the men of Issachar who ‘had understanding of the times’ (1 Chron. 12:32) as well as Noah and David, both of whom were described as having served God in their respective generations (Gen. 6:9; Acts 13:36). By way of warning, he contrasted these men with the Pharisees who, although able to read many signs, were unable to discern the times in which they lived (Luke 12:54–56).1 Owen advised his hearers and readers to ‘look both ways’ – backward to ‘past mercies’ of judgment and salvation and forward to the promises made to the church: ‘the calling of the Jews, the coming in of the fulness of the Gentiles, the breaking out of light, beauty, and glory upon the churches and saints’.2 Looking back, Owen counselled them to remember God’s works stretching across both biblical and ecclesiastical history, not least the providentially significant events of the Civil Wars. He insisted that the next generation be taught about what God had done in England, Scotland and Ireland since

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they did not have the privilege of first-hand experience of the ‘praying, fasting, fighting’, ‘the cry’s teares, trembling, and feares’ or ‘the Communion we have had with God in this buisnesse all along’.3 In his first parliamentary sermon, at the end of the First Civil War, he told MPs that it would be the height of rebellion to despise the mercies England now enjoyed by being barren and unfruitful in their response. The English ‘vineyard’ had received such care, culture and watering that great fruit was to be expected.4 Five years later, after another bloody war, expeditions to Ireland and Scotland and the climatic battle at Worcester, Owen wrote a preface to a sermon from his study at Christ Church, Oxford. He contended that the need for a fruitful response had increased because the nation was now under the greatest ‘outward dispensation’ of mercy as had been heard of for 2,000 years. Here, as on other occasions, he spoke of the ‘obligations from the Lord’ which were upon the nation by way of ‘returnal and improvement’ for ‘late transactions’ which were ‘eminently of undeserved grace’.5 As he would later explain, the providential ‘alterations and dissolutions’ they looked back on were to be improved by listening to their ‘special call’.6 Owen likened himself to an Old Testament prophet advising the people how to answer that call and make such a fitting improvement. The context for the sermon in which Owen made this particular analogy was what was believed to be the providential capture of two ships of the Spanish plate fleet off Cadiz in September 1656.7 Thus, as Owen surveyed the past, his prophetic voice called his generation to respond appropriately by fruitfully improving all such mercies. Turning to look to the future, Owen exhorted those seeking to serve God in their generation to focus on the promises of God. This was a major theme of the sermon The Stedfastness of the Promises (1650). Owen called the saints to follow Abraham, setting out with trustworthy promises, even if they were unsure of exactly where their journey might lead. Their ideas of the future could be shaped by taking account of the expectations that God, by his Spirit, had placed in the hearts of his people. Owen argued this by way of analogy from what happened prior to the first coming of Christ (Mal. 3:1; Luke 3:15).8 Above all, he explained, study and prayer would help the saints understand what had been promised.9 In this regard, Owen’s prime example was the prophet Daniel who engaged in ‘great study’ and ‘earnest supplication’ about what was promised concerning ‘the ruin of Babylon and the restoration of his church’ (Dan. 9:2, 21–25).10 Owen challenged his hearers and readers to approach this inquiry with even greater zeal, since for them, unlike Daniel, ‘the season of the accomplishment’ of these things was ‘nigh at hand, even at the doors!’ Aware that such apocalyptic visions of the future would be unsettling, Owen reminded those inquiring about the future to follow Daniel in drawing near to God in order to be ‘quieted’.11 Inquiry was to be followed by prayer for the accomplishment of the decree. If the saints ceased praying there would be silence in heaven (Rev. 8:1); instead, the restored church was instructed to ‘give him no rest’, till he establish and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isa. 62:7).12 Owen

70 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies believed that those praying for the accomplishment of the promises formed the conquering army following behind the Lamb (Rev. 19:14). Their great work was to ‘believe the beast unto destruction, antichrist into the pit, and Magog to ruin’, and they were to continue praying for this ‘until the enemies of the Lord be all destroyed’.13 The perspective thus gained from the double vantage of the past and the future was Owen’s method of knowing the times. He believed that it enabled the godly to determine the work that God was doing in their days. Once discovered, the divine work of a generation functioned as the foundation, polestar and shield – in other words, such an understanding would establish, guide and protect. Knowing exactly what God was doing was of paramount importance for knowing how to respond. He told the Second Protectorate Parliament in 1656 that they needed to understand the divine work they were witnessing with enough clarity to be able to articulate it to the representatives of foreign nations living among them be they ‘Embassadors, Agents, Spies, [or] Messengers’.14 Owen feared, however, that many failed to grasp the significance of the times. He spoke of living in days of ‘practical atheism’ in which men were blind to what the hand of God had done. He likened such misunderstanding to the Philistines, who attributed the work of God’s hand to mere ‘chance’ (1 Sam. 6:9). Such ignorance, he claimed, led to lack of awareness of how God was in his days leading the saints through the Red Sea to the Promised Land (Ps. 77:19).15 Not knowing the nature of the divine work, Owen believed it to be patently obvious that such proud and ambitious people were unable to serve God in their generation. He believed that their alternative strategies for understanding the times were doomed to fail. Owen lamented how, in the consideration of providence, these practical atheists ascribed all things ‘to blind, uncertain chance and contingency’.16 This led some to be ‘swallowed up’ following a ‘concatenation of secondary causes’.17 Such error, he argued, resembled pigs eating acorns without ever looking at the tree.18 Or, in an illustration he used in two different sermons, ‘the idol of freewill’ and the ‘goddess of contingency’ represented the folly of the fly sitting on the chariot wheel believing itself to have raised the dust.19 In a rare autobiographical note, Owen confessed that at times he himself had been tempted to believe that the events of recent days belonged to the category of ‘common’ rather than ‘special’ providence.20 Within this conventional distinction, ‘common’ providence was a broad category describing general divine sovereignty, whilst ‘special’ providence was God’s rule ‘towards some in particular’, namely the elect.21 As Burroughes explained, ‘special providence’ did not operate according to the ordinary common course’. Or, as Caryl proclaimed, special providence towards a nation would ‘open the doore and bring us out of the grave of our corporall dissolution’.22 For Owen, ‘the most discriminating evidence of speciall Providence’ was when a people witnessed ‘Glorious appearances in great streights’.23 The example he gave of a ‘common’ providence was the struggle for the crown

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of Israel between those who supported Tibni and others who supported Omri: ‘Tibni died, and Omri reigned’ (1 Kings 16:21–22). In other words, for dynasties that come and go without any special significance, ‘there is no new thing under the Sun’, only division, conflict and conquest.24 Having realised the error of his thinking, Owen became convinced that the events of the Civil Wars were acts of special providence. Such divine works had profound significance and called for, indeed obligated, his generation to make a particular response. For Owen, astrology was another way in which people misunderstood the events they were witnessing. He warned members of the University of Oxford against the interpretations of providence offered by popular astrology and almanacs in July 1654.25 On another occasion, Owen could not even bring himself to elaborate on what he and his Congregationalist associates had earlier spoken of as ‘that abominable Cheat of Judiciall Astrology’.26 Instead, he simply quoted the prophet Isaiah’s denunciation of Babylon’s ‘astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly pronosticators’ (Isa. 47:13). By doing so, he located astrology in the conflict between the true church of Christ and the false church of Babylon. As a kind of false prophecy, he thought it was part of an endeavour ‘to divert the thoughts of unbelieving, foolish men, from a due consideration of the author of all our revolutions’.27 Owen was speaking out against the judicial astrology practiced by the likes of William Lilly and Nicholas Culpeper.28 According to Caryl, at this time there was ‘a great itch’ to hear the ‘propheticall conclusions’ of astrologers.29 Lilly’s Christian Astrology was first published in 1647, and by the time Owen made these comments in the late 1650s, Lilly was selling 30,000 almanacs per annum with extracts of his work appearing in several newspapers and pamphlets.30 Owen had the opportunity to highlight a role model of someone who listened to God’s ‘providentiall voice’ and who served God ‘in his Generation’ when he preached at the funeral of his friend Henry Ireton.31 This major state occasion took place on 6 February 1652 after Ireton’s death at the siege of Limerick and, according to one hostile detractor, Owen preached ‘not without some blasphemy’.32 Owen presented Ireton as one fully aware that he was living during the period of ‘the vengeance of the Lord and his Temple’ before Christ would ‘reign in Righteousness and Peace’. Owen spoke of how even in the ‘most dismall and black engagements’, Ireton remained confident that, in ‘the appointed season’, there would be ‘the comming in of the promised glory’. Unlike those ‘swallowed up’ in ‘applying secondary causes’, Owen was able to hold up as an example Ireton’s pattern of ‘receiving from God, and holding out to others, cleer and expresse Visions concerning Gods wonderfull providential Alterations in Kingdoms, and Nations, which were to be accomplished, from the dayes wherein he lived’.33 Owen believed that those who followed his method and Ireton’s example would realise that in their generation, they were witnessing a merciful divine

72 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies visitation. He argued that the appropriate response was to ‘meet God’, a crucial part of which involved the commitment to ‘meet God in the way of his providence’.34 As argued in Chapter 2, this involved an acknowledgment that God was engaged in three important works in the mid-century crisis: first, the vengeance of the temple and the recompenses for the controversy of Zion; secondly, the measuring of the temple and the restoration of worship; and thirdly, the restoration of a glorious new heaven and earth.

II. Improving the times by reformation and separation The general response required from all professors of religion could be summed up as ‘universall holiness’.35 For Owen, ‘universal’ is a shorthand for the totality of a person’s various faculties.36 In this call to ‘universal holiness’, Owen was drawing out the application from the literary context of two of his important texts for interpreting providence (2 Pet. 3:13; Heb. 12:26–27): Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness? (2 Pet. 3:11) Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire. (Heb. 12:28–29) Developing the motif of ‘meeting God’, Owen described this response as going out to ‘Meet him in the way of his holiness’ or to ‘meet him’ in ‘all holy conversation and godliness’. Owen made clear that this is far beyond the general call to ordinary holiness: this was to be a holiness suitable for those who lived in the dispensation during which Christ came to destroy his antichristian enemies (Rev. 19:11–12).37 Owen argued that those who understood the nature of God’s work among them would appreciate that such holiness entailed reformation and separation. In 1658, he explained that one of the works in which Christ was ‘peculiarly engaged in our days and seasons’ was the ‘owning’ of his people ‘in a distinguishing manner, putting a difference between the precious and the vile’.38 The motifs that Owen used to describe God’s providential work emphasised this distinction and so had a polarising effect. They sharply distinguished between the following: the temporary things which were shaken away and what remained unshaken to which they stood in ‘plain opposition’; the old heavens and earth which would dissolve and the new heavens and earth which would be established; and the outer court which was excluded and the temple and altar of pure worship which alone were remeasured.39 Owen described how in these providential alterations and dissolutions

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Christ pleaded with his people about the need for separation. Given that worship was to be remeasured, Christ pleaded with his people about their attitude towards ‘superstitious and false worship’. Similarly, given the great shaking that accompanied the establishment of a new heaven and earth, he claimed that Christ was warning people about the danger of ‘cleaving unto the shaking, passing things of the world’.40 In light of this, Owen issued the warning: ‘Be loose from all shaken things’ until Christ ‘hath finished his whole work’.41 This had a very specific application to religion. In the 1640s, this emphasis on separation began to bear significantly upon Owen’s understanding of the Christian church. On 31 March 1648, Owen was present at a meeting of ministers in Colchester which was discussing how the recent parliamentary ordinance ‘for the speedy and effectual settling of the presbyterian government’ in Essex could be achieved.42 The clergyman diarist Ralph Josselin was present and wrote: wee had much discourse concerning falling into practice; and in the first place, seeing that elders are to bee chosen; by when it shall be done; the Parliament proposeth by the people that have (c.o. chosen) taken the Covenant. others as Mr Owen conceived this too broad, and would have first a separacion to bee made in our parishes; and that by the minister, and those godly that joyne unto him, and then proceed to choosing.43 Owen did not follow Josselin and the other ministers who, a few days later, signed a manifesto calling for the enforcement of the Solemn League and Covenant and the implementation of the recommendations of the Westminster Assembly.44 Owen believed that the idea that reformation involved separation from apostate religion ran through the whole Bible. He claimed that the first reformation occurred when Enosh and the children of God separated themselves from the wicked posterity of Cain and reestablished pure worship (Gen: 4:26).45 Similarly, after Noah’s flood one of his sons, ‘scoffing Ham’, father of the Canaanites, was expelled as an apostate (Gen. 9:25–27). Owen argued that after the church again fell into sin at Babel, God eventually set up a new phase of the church through a visible separation of Abraham from corrupt worship.46 He saw the same pattern of reformation and separation as having taken place under Ezra and Nehemiah during the prophetic ministries of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. This took place after the church had been in captivity in Babylon and required the preaching ministries of Ezra the priest and the prophets in order to instruct the church in the true knowledge of God and his worship.47 Near the end of his life, in an unpublished sermon on Ezra, he summarised reformation as the process by which God ‘hath separated us from things and persons’.48 Owen’s panorama of reformation in biblical history finished with his identifying the same pattern

74 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies in the apostolic period with the separation of the godly from the apostate Jewish church.49 Owen had charted the history of two churches, the apostate and the true, through ecclesiastical history. In his own day, he believed that thoroughgoing reformation required an analogous conscientious separation in order to re-establish the pure worship of God. He understood the Civil Wars to have been a great conflict analogous to that of the biblical struggle between the twins Jacob and Esau as to which one of them would inherit the birthright of the divinely promised future (Gen. 25–27). This was clearly a memorable trope: looking back in 1670, George Vernon criticised how Owen made ‘King Charles the first Esau, and the Long Parliament Jacob or Israel’.50 According to Owen, both brothers had the same ‘outward advantages’, but Esau was a ‘profane person’ without an ‘interest’ in the gospel.51 He was full of ‘murderous revenge’ and ‘had long conceived his brother’s death’.52 Owen described how in the Civil Wars these ‘two sorts of people struggled in the womb of this kingdom’ and the providential outcome saw the godly inherit the promise that, contrary to established norms, ‘the elder shall serve the younger’ (Gen. 25:23).53 For him, the true church was to consist of none but the regenerate; it was comprised only of living stones (1 Pet. 2:5).54 Owen believed that the true church of the saints, the church of the heavenly temple, was something distinct from the broader church that existed during the period in which the outer court of the temple was trodden underfoot by the adherents of Antichrist. Owen believed that the ‘heavenly call’ to ‘Come out’ of Babylon had sounded clearly (Rev. 18:4).55 He was grieved at this disorder of the churches and he looked forward to the time when he would see ‘the precious distinguished from the vile’ and ‘churches rightly established’.56 Those who did not adopt this view were guilty of ‘slighting’ God’s people by ‘casting them into the same considerations with the men of the world’ and defiling Christ’s ordinances ‘by giving the outward court of the Temple to be trod upon by unsanctified persons’.57 i. Reformation and separation in church polity In 1646, Owen obtained the living of St Peter’s, Coggeshall, Essex, and there he gathered a church whilst continuing to serve as the local parish minister. He set forth his views on this in his Eshcol . . . or Rules of Direction for the Walking of the Saints in Fellowship (1648). The title was significant, since the Valley of Eshcol had been the place where the Israelite spies had cut down a cluster of grapes in Canaan to bring back to those waiting on the border. This short work ‘collected’ for Owen’s church at Coggeshall was now presented to those standing, as the subtitle put it, with Their Faces Towards Syon. The implication was that recently gathered churches were the first clusters of fruit from the Promised Land. The fifth rule asserted the necessity of ‘Separation and sequestration from the world and men of the world, with alwayes of false worship, until we be apparently a people dwelling alone,

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not reckoned among the nations’. He explained that part of the separation enjoined upon them was ‘in way of worship and ordinances of fellowship’ and in the short section twice referenced the call to come out of Babylon (Rev. 18:4).58 In 1651, Owen agreed to publish the sermons which would become Of Communion with God (1657).59 According to Bryan Dale’s The Annals of Coggeshall (1863), these sermons were probably preached during Owen’s ministry in Coggeshall.60 However, it seems more reasonable to follow Crawford Gribben’s suggestion that they were preached from the pulpit of St Mary’s, Oxford.61 One of the main purposes of these sermons was to demonstrate the differences between on the one hand ‘the Saints’ and on the other ‘hypocrites’, ‘empty .  .  . fruitlesse Professors’ and those ‘that would be called Christians’.62 The sermons on which Communion with God was based would have served to justify Owen’s actions of gathering a true church of saints who enjoyed genuine communion with God from out of the larger parish congregation, many of whom he regarded as mere professors. The principle of reformation by separation also applied to the systems of church government. Owen distinguished between two types of church polity. One was built upon ‘parochial’ and ‘diocesan’ church structures, a constitution that Owen regarded as ‘human’ and ‘arbitrary’.63 The other followed the pattern of Christ and was based upon a congregation’s church covenant, a ‘mutual confederation’ of visible saints.64 Owen insisted upon the right of the godly to separate from an unreformed parish church.65 Again, with such a sharp distinction between only two types of government, one true and the other false, there was no middle ground. In the first apocalyptic ‘shaking’ of church government, Owen spoke of those who ‘pretended to be church stars’ (bishops) who were shaken from the heavens. In 1649, he warned that further shakings would follow which would see other ecclesiastical stars shaken to earth.66 Owen’s prophetic warning was vindicated when after the victory at Worcester, he proclaimed that the Scots were ‘shaken and broken with unparalleled destruction’ for championing what they at first had opposed, ‘the iron yoke, pretended to be that of Christ’.67 Blair Worden has shown how the execution of the Presbyterian minister Christopher Love in August and the defeat of the Scottish army at Worcester in September meant that the ‘back of the clerical opposition’ to the regime had been broken.68 In Owen’s prophetic worldview, such Presbyterians had misunderstood the times and, in holding tightly onto the things that were to be shaken, were themselves shaken away. The primitivist dimension of this separation in church government is reflected in the title of William Bartlet’s A Model of the Primitive Congregational Way (1647). Owen believed that his polity replicated the concern of the ‘primitive church’ by being ‘carefully watchful about the holiness and upright walking of all that were admitted into the society and fellowship of it’.69 He thought that there was no comparison between the ‘fraternal church admonitions and censures’ of the primitive church and the counterfeit ‘courts, powers, and jurisdictions set up in pretence and colour of them’.70

76 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies ii. Reformation and separation in worship Owen applied the principle of reformation by separation in great detail to the worship of the church. This was another of the areas in which the godly were to respond to the divine visitation by meeting God ‘in the way of his worship’. Owen argued that given the promises of the restoration of worship, the appropriate response was the ‘full casting out and rejecting of all will-worship, and their attendant abominations’ and their replacement by a worship marked by ‘the beauty and power of the spirit’ (Rev. 11:2; 21:3; Zech. 14:16–20).71 He asserted that God was ‘recovering’ his worship by shaking out idolatrous practices such as ‘Iconolatry, Artolatry, Hagiolatry, Staurolatry, and Masse abominations’, ‘macerations, superstitions, beads, and vainly-repeated prayers’ and all ‘monasticall life’.72 What would remain were ‘the things which cannot be shaken’; in prophetic idiom, the remeasured temple and altar, and in other words, the ‘administration of Gospel ordinances, in power, and puritie, according to the appointment, and unto the acceptation of the Lord Jesus’.73 Owen stipulated that churches should follow a strict regulative principle of worship, namely the saints ‘will receive nothings, practice nothing, owne nothing in [Christ’s] worship, but what is of his Appointment’.74 To do otherwise, he warned ominously, would be to commit ‘fornication’ by following the false worship of the ‘Mother of Harlots’ (Rev. 17:5). For Owen, there were only two types of worship in the world.75 On the one hand there was the ‘spiritual worship of the gospel’, marked by ‘power and simplicity’.76 On the other, there was ‘will-worship’ which was man-made, carnal, without ‘efficacy’, and associated with ‘outward pomp’, ‘outward solemnity’, and ‘outward ceremonies’.77 Similarly, for Owen, there were only two types of ministry. One was Spirit-filled, enabling men to pray, so that ‘the souls of the saints may be drawn forth thereby unto communion with God’ and equipping them to preach powerfully as those speaking ‘the oracles of God’.78 Owen associated the other type of ministry with dumb, ‘beggarly Readers in every Parish’, polished orations, ‘finely spoken’ with ‘fopperies’ by those ‘ignorant of God and themselves’.79 With this absolute antithesis, there was, of course, no middle ground. Those who thought that there was any place in gospel worship for ‘vestments’, choirs with ‘the best singers’ and ‘images and pictures’ were deceiving themselves. Owen unmasked advocates of such practices as ‘underling pretenders’ of the Roman Catholic Church.80 In the 1650s, Owen’s opposition to set forms of liturgy aroused controversy.81 He went as far as rejecting the use of the Lord’s Prayer in worship and described the Litany, with its ‘way of praying to the Trinity, by the repetition of the same Petition to the severall persons’, as ‘groundlesse, if not impious’.82 Owen thought that ‘innumerable poor souls’ were ‘deluded, and hardened, by satisfying their Consciences’ through the use of set forms of prayer.83 Thomas Long (1621–1707) challenged Owen directly in his An Exercitation Concerning the Frequent Use of our Lords Prayer in the

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Publick Worship of God and a View of what hath been said by Mr. Owen Concerning that Subject (1658). Long described Owen and others like him as being ‘busie casting out the rubbish of the Sanctuary’ but rejected their strict regulative principle as being without ‘express or sufficient warrant in Scripture’.84 Long remained unpersuaded of the reasoning that led Owen to conclude that ‘forms and non-forms were as irreconcilable as light and darkness, or Christ and Belial’.85 Owen was well aware that many despised the form of worship he advocated. Such saw ‘no beauty in the assembly of the saints’, believing it to be ‘mean and contemptible’ and ‘unmeet for the majesty of God’.86 He knew that voices were calling for a worship which was ‘adorned’ with ‘rites and ceremonies’ and with ‘beauty and splendour in the fabric and building wherein they convene’.87 He was most troubled by those who claimed that extempore prayer was ‘the vaine babling repetitions and folly of men’.88 Owen’s Communion with God (1657) was published during an ongoing liturgical debate. John Prideaux had left notes for his daughters on the use of the Prayer Book which were posthumously published as Euchologia: Or, The Doctrine of Prayer (1655). Anthony Sparrow anonymously brought out his Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer (1655). Méric Casaubon wrote against those who claimed to have a special gift in prayer in A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme, As It is a Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolical Possession (1655). Henry Hammond, ejected from Christ Church where Owen was now head of house, again defended the Prayer Book liturgy in his Paraenesis or Seasonable Exhortatory to all True Sons of the Church of England (1656).89 In the year Communion was published, the Laudian apologist Peter Heylyn defended set liturgies in his Ecclesia Vindicata, or the Church of England Justified (1657). Owen summarised the arguments which works such as these put forward in defence of the traditional liturgy as: ‘its Antiquity, its composure or approbation by Martyrs, [and] the beauty of Uniformity in the worship of God’.90 In 1659, John Gauden, future Bishop of Exeter, but who according to Spinks was ‘chameleon-like’ during the Commonwealth, used such arguments in his Ecclesiae Anglicanae Suspiria, The Tears, Sighs, Complaints and Prayers of the Church of England.91 Although it is not possible to establish firm dating of Owen’s posthumouslypublished sermons Gospel Worship, they undoubtedly resonate with the liturgical debates of the 1650s.92 Rather starkly, Owen claimed that ‘rites and ceremonies’ to which some wished the church to return actually ‘defiled’ worship. He claimed that there was great beauty and glory in the ‘broken prayers and supplications’ of ‘the meanest believer’ in ‘the most despised church of the saints on the earth’. To think otherwise, he claimed, was to despise ‘the assistance of the Spirit’.93 During this liturgical debate, Jeremy Taylor, a Prayer Book apologist who decried extempore prayer, published his Golden Grove (1655) which included prayers, hymns and devotional guidance. That year also saw the reissue of John Cosin’s

78 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies Collection of Private Devotions (1627). Owen dismissed all such endeavours, claiming that: If all the men in the world should lay their heads together to compose one prayer for the use of any one saint but for one day, they were not able to do it so as that it should answer his wants and conditions; nor can any man do it for himself, without the help and assistance of the Spirit, whose proper work this is.94 In 1657, Taylor lamented the decline of the Laudian church: ‘the order of her services, the beauty of her buildings, the sweetness of her songs, the decency of her Ministrations’.95 To counter those who desired the beautification of church buildings, Owen argued that ‘worship is performed in heaven’, and therefore, there was no need for ‘paint and varnish’ or ‘gaudy preparation’ since the ‘hearts and souls’ of the saints were Christ’s beautiful temple’.96 Ultimately, Owen thought that those who disagreed with him were ‘unacquainted’ with ‘the glory of gospel worship’ and so their worship was a human invention.97 For instance, in January 1649, Owen preached against the ‘late solemn superstition’, namely Christmas.98 Weeks before, some had lamented how, due to parliamentary suppression, ‘Gone are those golden days of yore, When Christmas was an high day’, nevertheless others in London had just ‘celebrated according to the old custom’.99 As Owen made his comment, Edward Fisher’s classic defence of Christmas, The Feast of Feasts (Oxford, 1644) had reappeared as A Christian Caveat to the Old and New Sabbatarians (1649).100 Owen regarded such false worship to be a form of counterfeiting.101 Those who did not experience true communion with God had to ‘invent outward, visible pledges and signs of God’s presence’. Owen thought such pledges to include ‘images and pictures, altars and the east’.102 Similarly, he argued that those ‘ignorant of the righteousness of God’, and hence the doctrine of justification, by faith alone, invented the ‘drudgery’ of a worship system in which they would attempt to ‘perform, work out, and establish a righteousness of their own’.103 He ridiculed how according to their ‘mass-book and the rubric of it’ they would ‘bow and bend . . . some sometimes kneel, sometimes stand’ as they approached their ‘breaden god’, mocking their description of this as ‘order, and beauty and glory’.104 For Owen, this was all a poor counterfeit, and he asserted that the gospel was ‘the great rubric’ and ‘the great canon’ of worship. Similarly he proclaimed: ‘our altar is in heaven: other men may appoint theirs elsewhere’.105 The controversialist, and future bishop of Chester, Henry Ferne lamented the ‘Want of Uniformity in the publique Worship’ caused by those who despise the ‘Churches Prayers’, including the Lord’s Prayer ‘because a Set form’.106 Henry Hammond claimed in his Grounds of Uniformity (1657) that some ceremony and uniformity was essential to avoid chaos.107 Owen dismissed all such arguments, claiming that ‘the uniformity of gospel worship’ was the ‘catholic uniformity’ and the only

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‘uniformity which God requires’ – whatever was invented by men would only serve for ‘deformity and disorder’.108 Owen argued that the supposed Protestants who were seeking to implement human rites and ceremonies were simply borrowing them from ‘the Papists’ who in turn had incorporated both Jewish and pagan practice into their worship. For instance, Owen claimed that those who ‘frame much of their worship in a ceremonious access to an altar or an image’ had much in ‘common to all idolaters, of what sort soever, from the foundation of the world’. Similarly, he saw pagan roots in the act of bowing to the east, linking it to the practice of ancient temples.109 Owen called his hearers and readers to separate from all forms of this ‘carnal’ worship since it would soon be shaken out of the church in the restoration of gospel worship. Owen believed that this separation would see worship restored to its ‘primitive purity’ and ‘native simplicity’.110 By this he meant restoration to the practice of the early church when ‘gospel institutions’ were ‘more clear and pure from human mixtures’.111 Claiming that he knew of ‘no other reformation’ he went as far as to say: ‘I pay as great a respect and reverence unto the primitive churches of the first, second, and third centuries, as I think any man living can justly do’.112 He summed up his vision in 1657: ‘our late attempt for reformation’ had as its aim the ‘reducing of the church of Christ to its primitive institution’ but concluded that they were ‘far, as yet’ from achieving this.113 Bozeman says that such ‘biblical primitivism’ was ‘integral in manifold ways to the very meaning of the Puritan vision’.114 iii. Reformation and separation in doctrine A final area to which the separatist principle was applied was that of doctrine. Again Owen drew an absolute distinction between two types of theology: one which was false and philosophical and the other which was true and apostolic. He believed such ideas to be only the latest phase of a type of theology that the godly had battled against throughout church history. The marginal notes of the sermon A Vision are replete with references to debates pertaining to the Augustinian understanding of grace.115 When mapped in chronological order, they exemplify the theological conflict which Owen believed had occurred down the centuries between the true and false churches. There are, as would be expected, a number of citations of the works of Augustine (354–430): The Confession; On the Predestination of the Saints; Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love; The Gift of Perseverance; On Rebuke and Grace. Owen sets these against Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium Against Heresies (c.434), which is often classed as a semi-Pelagian, even anti-Augustinian work.116 There are many references to Prosper of Aquitaine’s Augustinian Letter to Rufinus Against the Semi-Pelagians (c.426–8) and also to his Calling of All Nations (c.450). Owen also refers to Fulgentius of Ruspe (468–533) whose three books Ad

80 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies Monimum made an important contribution to the Semi-Pelagian debates of the sixth century.117 From the medieval period, he mentions Thomas Bradwardine (c.1290–1359), Archbishop of Canterbury and author of De Causa Dei contra Pelagium, elsewhere described by Owen as a ‘profoundly learned doctor’.118 Bradwardine was one of the theologians who contributed to a resurgence of Augustinianism in the middle ages. Oberman and Leff demonstrate how Bradwardine wrote against the ‘new pelagianism’ of Petrus Aureoli, Durandus de Santo Porciano, William of Ockham, Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham.119 From the reformation period, Owen himself takes on the mantle, setting himself against the Spanish Jesuits Gaspar Sánchez (1554–1628), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and Gabriel Vasquez (c.1550–1604). Having established the distinction between true and false worship, Owen deploys the same polarising rhetorical technique about theology. He speaks of how the saints in his day would be set apart from others by not having ‘adulterous thoughts’ such as ‘the janglings of men about the place of their own workes and obedience, in the business of their acceptation with God’.120 In another place, he warned of those who insinuate that there is an inherent righteousness from which we should expect acceptation with God.121 Here Owen has Richard Baxter in mind, whose first publication, Aphorismes of Justification (1649), brought the two theologians into conflict. Baxter’s fifteenth thesis stated: ‘Though Christ hath sufficiently satisfied the Law, yet it is not his Will, or the Will of the Father, that any man should be justified or saved thereby, who hath not some ground in himself of personal and particular right thereto’. To Owen, this sounded Arminian, if not almost Pelagian.122 There is an interesting primitivist element to the separation of true and false doctrine. Owen believed that for over a thousand years, Satan’s main assault on the church was through his ‘masterpiece’ the ‘Roman Antichrist’. Now with the Reformation, ‘light from above’ had exposed the ‘mystery of Iniquity’, and Owen contended that Satan had now returned to ‘his first designe’ which he had used so powerfully in the first 300 years of the church. Now Satan ‘sets on those men, who had been instrumental to reduce the Christian Religion into its primitive state and Condition, with those very errors and abominations, wherewith he opposed and assailed the primitive professors thereof’. In that period, before the rise of the Papacy, the ‘errors and heresies’ faced by the church were ‘principally against the person of Christ himself; and, consequently, the nature and being of the holy and blessed Trinity’. In other words, ‘old enemy . . . returned again to his old work of attacking the foundation’.123 In Owen’s university oration of July 1654, his assessment was that ‘never since the Christian name arose in the world’ has there been such ‘a vile conflux of heretics, fanatics and bigots’.124 This accords with Sarah Mortimer’s research which argues that in the 1650s, Owen attempted ‘to link all versions of Remonstrant-style theology to Socinianism and to anti-Trinitarian heresy’. For instance, Owen’s monumental

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700-page Vindiciæ Evangelicæ (1655), ostensibly a critique of John Biddle and the Racovian Catechism, is a highly detailed history of anti-Trinitarian heresy in its various manifestations. Mortimer has argued that Socinianism was ‘a convenient and suitably unpopular target’ that Owen used ‘to counter certain native forms of heterodoxy’, in particular Grotian and Remonstrant views.125 As Tim Cooper has pointed out, Vindiciæ was published with two other shorter works: Owen’s Review of the Annotations of Hugo Grotius (a work also responding to Henry Hammond), and ‘sandwiched’ between them his reply to Richard Baxter Of the Death of Christ and of Justification. As Cooper puts it, by such placement, Owen was implying that ‘Baxter was an almost-Socinian’.126 Owen believed that the battle between true and false theology was raging in his day and that Baxter, Hammond, and Grotius represented various dimensions of the same Socinian threat.127

III. Reformation and separation in Owen’s Oxford In the 1650s, one very important area in which Owen was urging the godly to respond appropriately to the divine visitation was in the arena of the university. Owen was made Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in March 1651 and appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University in September 1652.128 He was also an influential member of the Congregationalist contingent which dominated the successive Boards of Visitors, and he had high hopes of using his positions to implement a programme of reformation.129 The Cromwellians were aware of the importance of the Universities, and Owen also had a role as a trustee and advisor to Trinity College, Dublin.130 The period between Owen’s departure as a student and his return as Dean had been a turbulent one. During the First Civil War, education had ground to a halt as the city became the royalist headquarters. When the 1647 Parliamentary Visitation arrived, according to Owen, they found the place ‘lying almost deserted’. Christ Church had been the house on which the Visitors initially concentrated and this saw the removal of Henry Hammond. More recently, the former Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor, the Presbyterian Edward Reynolds, had been ejected for refusing to take the Commonwealth’s Engagement. Owen placed all this within a providential framework, attributing to providence the victories of Chancellor Cromwell, the survival of Oxford and his own elevation to the position of Vice-Chancellor.131 Owen’s ‘chiefe designe’ for Oxford, ‘the station wherein the good providence of God hath placed me’, was the promotion of ‘Mortification and universall Holines’.132 Such reformation was the goal of his fortnightly Sunday sermons at St Mary’s, the University Church, some of which went to press as Of Mortification of Sin (1656). On Christmas Day 1655, Owen and his allies attempted to implement a comprehensive programme of reforms which would give more power to the Vice-Chancellor, increase centralised control over teaching, provide for godly worship in the colleges, and ensure the election of godly fellows.133 (This complemented a nationwide

82 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies programme instigated by the Cromwellian Major-Generals against such things as alehouses, maypoles, swearing, fornication and Sabbath breaking.134) In this, Owen clashed with John Wilkins, Warden of Wadham, and those in his circle who wished to maintain the University’s ancient principles of self-government.135 There were two particularly controversial aspects of Owen’s programme. First was Owen’s determination to crack down on the licentiousness he observed in the festivities associated with the Comitia at the close of the academic year which were required by the University’s Laudian Statutes.136 For Owen this was unacceptable, particularly in a providential dispensation in which ‘universal holiness’ was essential. On one occasion, Owen personally dragged the licensed jester from the stage and had him sent to the Oxford gaol for engaging in ‘profaneness’, ‘obscenity’ and ‘personal reflections’ on Owen himself. The second unpopular demand called for the abolition of ‘habits’, the gowns, hoods and caps which Owen judged ‘reliques of popery’ and ‘totally superstitious’. For Owen, reformation required separation from such things and, apparently, Owen himself dressed ‘in opposition to the prelaticall cut’.137 Attempts to impose this were very controversial, as is evidenced by the comments made by Josselin on hearing news of this in July 1656: Dr Owen endeavoured to lay down all the badges of schollers distinction in the universities: Hoods, caps, gowns, degrees, lay by all studdie of philosophy he is become a great scorne, the Lord keepe him from Temptacons, least his great heart turne up into the wind of error, and endeavuour some great matter against the truth, I feare about him.138 This antagonised the university and led to those previously indifferent to caps and hoods having procured them so that it was said ‘caps were never more in fashion than now’.139 Nevertheless, reflecting on his tenure in office, in October 1657, Owen claimed that the ‘reformation of manners’ had been ‘diligently undertaken’ despite the grumbling of some.140 Owen was acutely aware of the obligation that he believed was upon him to see a reformation of worship. At Christ Church, he established a Thursday lecture, open to the University, and he also instructed tutors to lead students in daily worship. Owen clearly believed that thorough reform involved the rejection of objects and practices, and he had the stained-glass windows removed from Christ Church. In July 1655, he called members of the University to ‘repel’ with ‘the utmost speed’, ‘empty, naked and fruitless expressions of religion’ which were ‘in no way superior’ to Laudian or Roman Catholic worship.141 Owen’s preaching in Oxford utilised the same strategies already identified in this chapter, in particular drawing an absolute distinction between what he believed to represent two types of religious thinking and practice, admitting of no middle ground. Owen’s treatise Of Mortification (1656) grew out of sermons preached in Cromwellian Oxford. He published them

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because of ‘the present State and condition of the Generality of Professours’; in particular, he was exercised about their sinful lives and the divisions that existed among them.142 As we might expect, Owen contrasted his position with that of the ‘Popish Religion . . . [which] consists in mistaken wayes and means of mortification’. Its priests, through ‘their rough garments . . . vowes, orders, fastings, penances . . . Preachings, Sermons, and books of devotion’ had deceived many. Alluding to the apocalyptic imagery of the scorpionlocusts coming out of the bottomless pit (Rev. 9:3–6), Owen portrayed the ‘Friers of the Romish Church’ as those who torment men with ‘their stinging Sermons’, leaving their hearers in a state of ‘perpetuall anguish and terrour’.143 As might now be expected, this rehearsal of anti-Popery was setting the stage for an attack on a more immediate domestic threat. Thus, while Owen warned that ‘Roman Mortification’ was ‘grievously peccant’, he took the opportunity to alert his hearers to a related threat. He contended that in ‘late dayes’, some had endeavoured to address the subject of mortification. These men were ‘the choicest Formalists’, but like the priests of ‘the Roman Synagogue’ before them, they ‘imposed the yoke of a selfe-wroughtout Mortification on the neckes of their Disciples’. He assumed his readers were aware of how professing ‘Protestants’ were all but becoming ‘Popish devotionists’ by prescribing ‘Wayes and Means’ of mortification ‘invented’ by the Roman Catholic Church which were merely ‘outside endeavours’ and ‘meerly legall dutyes’. In particular, he singled out ‘Some Casuists among our selves’ who overlook ‘the necessity of Regeneration’ and advocate vows of abstinence ‘for a season, a moneth or so’ (perhaps a reference to Lenten observance). Owen’s conclusion was that such casuists were unacquainted with ‘the power of God, and the Mystery of the Gospel’.144 Casuistry may be defined as the branch of moral theology devoted to resolving particular ethical dilemmas. In Owen’s day, a number of influential Protestant casuists acknowledged their indebtedness to Roman Catholic sources. Jeremy Taylor, who would shortly produce his massive tome of casuistry Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience (1660), lamented the fact that Protestants had no alternative but to consult Roman Catholic casuistry.145 Some time later, Baxter’s Christian Directory acknowledged the ‘necessity of going to the Romanists for our supplies’.146 English theologians also looked to other sources for moral theology. Henry Hammond praised Grotius as ‘an excellent Casuist’ and, according to Owen, Grotius’s works were readily available to students by 1656.147 In the lead up to the time when Owen’s Of Mortification was published, one of the most prominent contemporary casuists was Robert Sanderson (1587–1663). The English translation of Sanderson’s 1647 lectures was published in 1655 as de Juramento: Seven Lectures Concerning the Obligation of Promissory Oathes. Sanderson, a conforming Calvinist, had been deprived of his regius professorship of divinity at Oxford in 1648.148 Later, Baxter would praise ‘Bishop Sanderson’ who had ‘done excellently de Juramento’ and Owen’s former tutor, Thomas Barlow, would look back to describe Sanderson as ‘the best

84 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies Casuist of our Nation and may be of any Nation’.149 Given that Owen identified the casuists he had in mind as the ‘choicest formalists’, it is interesting that in November 1652, Sanderson had used casuistry in ‘The Case of the Liturgy’ to justify his decision to continue in his living by using a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer.150 These ideas had also been expressed by Bishop Joseph Hall (1574–1656) and his hugely popular Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience (1649). It went to five editions in ten years, with an expanded third edition being published in 1654.151 Hall’s fourth case of conscience was ‘Whether vowes bee not out of season now under the Gospel; of what things they may be made; how farre they oblige us; and whether and how far they may be capable of release’. Hall answered: ‘we doe willingly approve of them, as good helps and furtherances to us, for the avoiding of such sinnes as we are obnoxious unto; and for the better forwarding of our holy obedience’. Hall thought vows were for the ‘quickening’ of ‘that duty you are bound to doe’.152 Owen disagreed, and in his sermons on Mortification, set out to counsel ‘those who are Preachers of the word’ and the Oxford students among his hearers who ‘intend through the good hand of God, that imployment’ about ‘the true end of preaching the Gospell’. Believing that the ‘land is full’ of ‘ignorant unregenerate persons’, Owen urged preachers not to ‘work men’ to ‘sober formality’ without dealing with matters of the ‘heart’. Using an illustration reminiscent of his days as an Army chaplain, he cautioned that such an approach was spiritually dangerous, being analogous to ‘the beating of an enemy in an open field’ only to drive it ‘into an impregnable Castle’.153 Within Owen’s prophetic worldview, these divines, representing different theological positions, all misunderstood the times, and so they were unreliable guides for how to respond appropriately to the providential dispensation. Owen, fully persuaded that he was living in times when the godly were obligated to pursue reformation and separation, preached in such a way as to expose as false a spirituality which, in apocalyptic idiom, he believed ultimately, belonged to the outward court and would soon be shaken away. Owen’s sermons entitled Walking Humbly with God are undated, but they may tentatively be assigned to the period of his preaching in Oxford. This expository material from the prophet Micah was based on the text ‘And to walk humbly with thy God’ (Mic. 6:8). It was published posthumously in 1721 and, according to the editor, appeared to have ‘been transcribed from [Owen’s] own Copies’.154 An explicit reference to the Diatriba means that it was not preached before 1653.155 Owen is preaching to what he believes to be a very mixed (and potentially hostile) auditory of the godly, ‘empty professors’ and the ‘profligate’, ‘bitter scoffers, neglecters of ordinances, haters of the power of godliness and the purity of religion’. Befitting a possible university context, there are references to those who aspire after ‘greatness, high places, esteem in the world’ and also to those who have worn themselves out seeing ‘knowledge and learning’.156 It is preached in a setting where people were clearly unhappy ‘since this new-fangled preaching came

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up among you’. What was objectionable in this preaching was its reproof and the manner in which it ‘pressed’ about ‘this business of a new life’. Owen noted how his auditors were ‘running after sermons’ but, was in his estmination, they were concerned only with ‘novelty, or the ability of the preacher’ and honouring and imitating preachers who spoke fine ‘fopperies’.157 These points are circumstantial, but there is also an eyewitness account which helps build the case further. According to Walter Pope, the biographer of Seth Ward, in Cromwellian Oxford, Ward, John Wilkins and those in their circle (the likes of John Wallis and Jonathan Goddard) were spoken of as ‘Cavaliers in their hearts, meer Moral Men, without the Power of Godliness’.158 Pope accused the ‘peevish’ party who did this of having called these ‘Moral and unblameable’ people an ‘Abomination’. Pope claimed to have heard a sermon from ‘one of the chiefest of them out of St. Marys Pulpit’ who thundered: There’s more hope of a Whoremonger, a common Drunkard, a profane Swearer, than of these Moral Men; they justifie their selves; Do not we, say they, do our Exercises constantly, do we ever miss College Prayers? Are we out of the Town after Tom has Toll’d, and the College Gates shut? Do we Injure any body, do we not pay our Battles and Debts? Are we Drunkards, Swearers, or Whoremasters? . . . My Beloved, such are in a desperate Condition, Jesus Christ can take no hold upon such persons.159 Even allowing for Pope’s parody, what is recorded here sounds remarkably like Owen in Walking Humbly. Owen looks at the ‘praying and preaching of some men’ (in the 1650s multiple editions of Wilkins’s work on prayer and preaching appeared), who ‘rest in the discharge of duty’ and who are ‘destroyed by a self-righteousness’. Owen concludes that they are ‘utter strangers to a new spiritual life’ and ‘haters of the power of godliness’.160 He likens such to ‘a dead carcass’, lamenting ‘alas! How many dead souls have walking amongst us?’ Owen then offers a list of questions that he imagines might be spoken in defence of his challenge by these ‘Moral Men’: What then, is it they will yet plead for themselves? Why do they not walk with God? Is not their conversation good and blameless? Who can charge them with any thing? Do they not perform the duties required of them? But friend: Would it be acceptable to thee to have a dead man taken out of his grave, and carried along with thee in thy way? All thy services, thy company, is no other to God: he smells nothing but a noisome steam from thy presence with him: thy hearing, praying, duties, meditations, they are on this account all an abomination to him.161 These rhetorical questions are conceptually similar to those recorded by Pope once his satirical remarks about such things as making it back to

86 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies college before Christ Church’s bell had sounded have been removed (or perhaps they were extempore remarks not in Owen’s text). Owen even makes a reference to the abominable nature of those he is preaching against, a term which Pope particularly remembered.162 Owen concludes that such people do not enjoy union with Christ – again paralleling Pope’s memory of this incident. If Owen delivered such material at the University church, then there is little wonder that his relationship with John Wilkins and his circle was strained because this was an attempted exposé of their alleged hypocrisy: ‘Hypocrites may hear much, pray often, speak of God and the things of God, perform all of religion, excel in gifts and parts, be forward in profession to a great repute, and yet be hypocrites still’.163 These sermons preached at Oxford function rhetorically to call the godly away from what Owen believed to be a corrupt form of Protestant religion. Although much of this was controversial and unpopular, Owen was undeterred. Like an Old Testament prophet, he was concerned to expose what he thought of as hypocrisy and false religious practice. After all, Owen believed that he was living in a season in which God was peculiarly engaged in the work of putting a distinction between ‘the precious and the vile’. Owen ‘answered’ divine work by duly distinguishing between what he believed to be true and apostate religion. His purpose was to urge his auditors towards the conscientious separation he thought necessary in order to re-establish the pure worship of God. Thus, in Owen’s Oxford, we see the programme of godly reform which he felt obligated to implement. His understanding of the dispensation in which he was living required special holiness which had no place for the widespread immorality he witnessed. Traditional academic dress appeared to him to be one of the things which would soon be shaken away and so he would have no part in it. In worship and theology, he was committed to maintaining a visible separation between what he deemed to be that of the worship and doctrine of the true church and any other form of liturgical practice or system of theology.

IV. Conclusion In light of the divine favour shown to the nation in the works of providence, Owen laid great obligation upon his hearers and readers to respond appropriately. Such a process began with Owen’s prophetic call to the nation to understand the times by casting their minds back to former mercies and forward to consider the promises made to the church about the latter day glory. This would, he argued, enable the faithful to understand the particular works in which God was engaged among them. Owen self-identified as the prophet informing the faithful how they might make a fruitful response, or ‘improvement’, to what they were witnessing. He was concerned about those who failed to grasp the true significant of the times and who instead made recourse to alternative strategies for understanding the times, either by

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limiting their examination of providence to what he spoke of as ‘secondary causes’ or by turning to the explanations offered by judicial astrology. In marked contrast to these approaches, which Owen believed were doomed to fail, Henry Ireton was commended as offering an exemplary model of one who ‘served God in his generation’. For Owen, these obligations were informed by his understanding of the nature of the works in which he believed God to be particularly involved at that time, namely: executing the ‘vengeance of the temple’ and the recompense for the controversy of Zion; the measuring of the temple and the restoration of worship according to its primitive pattern; and, thirdly, the establishment of a glorious new heaven and earth in church and state. In such a dispensation, the primary response was to be what he termed as special or ‘universal’ holiness. This required a comprehensive godly reformation in which a visible separation was made between the true and false church, and more generally, between carnal, passing things in church and state which would be shaken away and those godly things which would remain. Owen’s preaching emphasised the need for such separation by repeatedly making the distinction between two opposing types of religious thought and practice, one true and the other false, in church discipline and polity, in worship and in theology. Such a polarising rhetorical technique allowed for no middle ground between what he commended as spiritual and dismissed as carnal. Owen’s own response to these obligations can be seen, in microcosm, in the programme of godly reform which he sought to introduce in Cromwellian Oxford. He understood the dispensation in which he was living to require a particular commitment to godliness and consequently there was no place for the widespread immorality he discerned around him. Furthermore, he would not tolerate some traditional practices because he understood them to be passing things, destined for removal. In the two areas of worship and theology, Owen believed in maintaining a visible separation between what he deemed to be that of the worship and doctrine of the true church and any other form of liturgical practice or system of theology which he deemed to be false and corrupt. For Owen, any other response would arise from a misunderstanding of the times and an ignorance of the specific work in which God was engaged at that time.

Notes 1 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 29 [viii.269]; The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest: A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable Henry Ireton Lord Deputy of Ireland (1652), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 6, 9, 14 [viii.343, 349, 351, 355]. 2 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 27–8 [viii.100–1]. 3 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, and His Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 44 [viii.423]; Joseph Caryl, The Arraignment of Unbelief (1645), 34; Greenhill, Final Chapters, 328–9.

88 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies 4 Owen, A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646), 27, 43 [viii.27, 39]. 5 Owen, The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World: Or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.313–14]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 44 [viii.423]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 6 [viii.81]. 6 Owen, ‘Providential Changes, an Argument for Universal Holiness’, in Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 53 [ix.137]. 7 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; With Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 3–4 [viii.432]. The sermons from the official thanksgiving three weeks earlier were published as Joseph Caryl’s Great Duty and John Rowe’s Mans Duty in Magnifying Gods Work (1656). The trope of improving mercies was often used by Cromwell, see Abbott, ii.130, 433, 463; ii.215, 325, 506, 588; iii.56; iv.25, 270. For details of the engagement under Captain Richard Stayner, see: Bernard S. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution, 1648–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 98–9. 8 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649), 37 [viii.275]. 9 Owen, Labouring Saint, 5 [viii.348]. 10 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 30 [viii.270]. 11 Owen, Concerning the Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God (Oxford, 1652), 32 [viii.383]. 12 Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 35 [viii.231]. 13 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 28 [viii.335]. 14 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 6 [viii.403]. 15 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 60–1 [ix.149–50]. For Owen, this was Philistine paganism attributing the work of the hand of God to ‘chance’. 16 Owen, ‘Of Walking Humbly with God’, in Complete Collection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 38 [ix.113]. 17 Barbara Donagan, ‘Providence, Chance and Explanation: Some Paradoxical Aspects of Puritan Views of Causation’, Journal of Religious History 11 (1981): 385–403. In the posthumously-published Powder Plot sermon of Jeremiah Burroughes entitled Jacobs Seed, or, The Generation of Seekers (1648), 89, there is a description of how, despite God magnifying his mercy to England in the First Civil War, ‘many carnall atheisticall spirits, say this was an accidentall thing, and the policie of such men brought it to passe, they attribute all to naturall causes, it is a sign of a wretched profane heart’. 18 Owen, Labouring Saint, 6 [viii.348]. 19 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 10 [viii.12]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, in A Complete Selection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 80 [ix.200]. 20 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 33 [viii.417]. 21 Owen, Θεομαχία αυτεξουσιαστικη: Or, a Display of Arminianisme (1643), 26 [x.33]; Blair Worden, ‘Providence and Politics’, in Blair Worden, ed., God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 60. 22 Jeremiah Burroughes, Eleventh, Twelfth, & Thirteenth Chapters of Hosea (1651), 418–19; Joseph Caryl, The Three First Chapters of the Book of Job (1643), 390. 23 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 22–3 [viii.444]. 24 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 32 [viii.417]. 25 Orations, 18.

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26 Owen et al., The Humble Proposals of Mr. Owen, Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson, and Other Ministers (1652), 6; CJ, vii.259. 27 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 61 [ix.150]. 28 Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (London: Polity Press, 1989); Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Derek Parker, Familiar to All: William Lilly and Astrology in the Seventeenth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), 183; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Penguin, 1991), 425–40. 29 Joseph Caryl, The Thirtieth and Thirty First Chapters of the Booke of Job (1659), 690. 30 Bernard S. Capp, England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 66; Bernard S. Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500– 1800 (London: Faber, 1979), 44, 48, 72–88; William Lilly, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris: Astrological Predictions for the Year 1657 (1656). 31 Owen, Labouring Saint, 5–6 [viii.348]. 32 Anthony à Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford: To which Are Added the Fasti, Or Annals of the Said University (1692), ii.82. 33 Owen, Labouring Saint, 3, 6, 9, 18 [viii.346, 349, 351, 359]. 34 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 26 [viii.333–4]. 35 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 32–3 [viii.338]; Of Communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost (1657), 214, 236, 309 [ii.187, 205, 266]; Of the Mortification of Sinne in Believers: The Necessity, Nature, and Meanes of It (1656), ‘Preface’ [vi.4]. 36 Owen, ‘The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ’, in Works, i.488. 37 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 55, 66–7 [ix.141, 159–60]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 33 [viii.338]. 38 Owen, Of Temptation, the Nature and Power of It: The Danger of Entring into It: And the Meanes of Preventing the Danger (1658), [vi.148]. 39 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 8 [vii.252]. 40 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 58 [ix.146]. 41 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 42 [viii.279]. 42 Brian Lyndon, ‘Essex and the King’s Cause in 1648’, Historical Journal 29 (1986): 17–39. 43 Ralph Josselin, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 121. In 1678, Owen looked back to this milestone when ‘churches were gathered thirty years ago’. See his The Mutual Care of Believers Over One another (6 September 1678), xvii.547. For similar ideas, see William Strong’s 1654 Powder Plot sermon to the Congregational church worshipping at Westminster Abbey, A Voice from Heaven. 44 A Testimony of the Ministers in the Province of Essex to the Trueth of Jesus Christ and to the Solemn League and Covenant (1648). 45 Owen, ‘Enoch’s Walk with God’ (8 October 1675), in Works, xvii.570; ‘Θεολογούμενα παντοδαπὰ. Sive De Natura, Ortu, Progressu, et Studio Veræ theologiæ’ (1661), in Works, xvii.389; ‘An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews’ (1668–84), in Works, xxiv.48. 46 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 25 [viii.98]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 2 [viii.401]; ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii, 262, 265. When Owen speaks of Christ ‘showing himself through the lattice’ (Cant. 2: 9), he follows Cotton’s interpretation of this picturing Christ coming to deliver a church that he had left because of

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47 48 49 50 51

52 53

54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

her sin by refreshing her with his presence: John Cotton, A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles (1642), 64, 75. Owen, ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.347, 374–5. Owen, ‘A Sermon on Ezra 9:13–14’ (23 December 1682), DWL, MSS L6/4 fol.40. Owen, ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.385–9. George Vernon, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 14. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 10 [viii.13]; ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), in Works, vii.97; ‘An Exposition upon Psalm CXXX’, in Works, vi.378. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 33 [viii.106]; ‘The Nature and Power of Indwelling Sin’, in Works, vi.271. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 18 [viii.19]; Stedfastness of Promises, 35 [viii.231]; Strength of Faith, ix.30; Francis Cheynell, Sions Memento, and Gods Alarum (1643), 1,20; Rosemary D. Bradley, ‘“Jacob and Esau Struggling in the Wombe”: A Study of Presbyterian and Independent Religious Conflicts, 1640–48’, PhD Thesis, University of Kent (1975). Owen, The Branch of the Lord, the Beauty of Sion: Or, the Glory of the Church (1650), 26–7 [viii.300]. Here, Owen is tacitly supporting Samuel Rutherford and the Protestors who came to realise that the visible and invisible churches did not coincide and virtually ‘seceded from the kirk’ in order to establish pure churches, separate from the ‘mass of the population’ which they regarded as ‘corrupt and unregenerate’. See: David Stevenson, ‘The Radical Party in the Kirk, 1637–45’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 25 (1974): 162–5. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 26–7 [viii.267]. Owen, A Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion (1649), 90 [viii.203]. Owen, Temptation [vi.148–9]. Owen, ‘Eshcol, A Cluster of the Fruit of Canaan’ (1647), in Works, xiii.68. For Congregational polity see: Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957); Joel Halcomb, ‘A Social History of Congregational Religious Practice during the Puritan Revolution’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2010). Owen, Communion with God, ‘Preface’ [ii.3]. Bryan Dale, The Annals of Coggeshall, Otherwise Sunnedon, in the County of Essex (London: John Russell Smith, 1863), 165. Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 172. Owen, Communion with God, 39, 110 [ii.38, 99]. Owen, ‘Of Schism: The True Nature of It Discovered and Considered, with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’ (1657), xiii.141. Owen, ‘The True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government’ (1689), in Works, xvi.25–7; Jeremiah Burroughes, Irenicum, to the Lovers of Truth and Peace (1645), 69–70. Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.199–200. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 41 [viii.278]; ‘Providential Changes’, 60 [ix.149]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 20 [viii, 328]. Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 243–8. Owen, ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), vii.13. Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.162.

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71 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]; Temptation, 176 [vi.148–9]. 72 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 26 [viii.267]; Mortification, 33 [vi.17]; Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26 [viii.26]. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, both opposed to fixed liturgies, were members of the sub-committee responsible for drafting the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for the Public Worship of God. Richard A. Muller and Rowland S. Ward, Scripture and Worship: Biblical Interpretation and the Directory for Public Worship (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2007), 90. 73 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 16 [viii.259]. 74 Owen, Communion with God, 170 [ii.150]. 75 For a general discussion of the Congregationalists’ views on worship, see Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), 65–73. 76 Owen, Communion with God, 297 [ii.255]; ‘The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship’, in A Complete Selection of Sermons (1721), 7 [ix.63]. 77 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26 [viii.26]; ‘Gospel Worship’, 6, 10, 13–14 [ix.61, 68, 73, 74]; ‘A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God and Discipline of the Churches of the New Testament’ (1667), in Works, xv.468–9. 78 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 15 [ix.75]; Communion with God, 298–9 [ii.257]. 79 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 37 [viii.452]; ‘Walking Humbly’, 25 [ix.93]. 80 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 18 [ix.81]. 81 Christopher Durston, ‘By the Book or with the Spirit: The Debate Over Liturgical Prayer during the English Revolution’, Historical Research 79 (2006): 50–73; Judith D. Maltby, ‘Suffering and Surviving: The Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Formation of “Anglicanism”, 1642–60’, in Christopher Durston and Judith D. Maltby, eds., Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 158–80; Bryan D. Spinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies and the Stuart Divines: Sacramental Theology and Liturgy in England and Scotland 1603–1662 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 82 Owen, Communion with God, 313 [ii.268]; ‘Gospel Worship’, 5–6 [ix.60]. 83 Owen, ‘Vindiciæ Evangelicæ, or the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated, and Socinianism Examined’ (1655), in Works, xii.577–9. 84 Thomas Long, An Exercitation Concerning the Frequent Use of Our Lords Prayer in the Publick Worship of God (1658), 14. 85 Long, Lords Prayer, 136. 86 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 9–10 [ix.67]. 87 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 8, 16 [ix.65, 79]. 88 Owen, Communion with God, 296 [ii.255]. 89 John W. Packer, The Transformation of Anglicanism, 1643–1660, with Special Reference to Henry Hammond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969). 90 Owen, Communion with God, 296 [ii.255]. For a summary of Puritan arguments against the Prayer Book, see Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans (London: Dacre, 1948), 57–76. 91 For Bryan D. Spinks’s comments on John Gauden, see ODNB, s.v. 92 Ryan M. McGraw discusses the theology of these sermons in A Heavenly Directory: Trinitarian Piety, Public Worship and a Reassessment of John Owen’s Theology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014), 69–80. 93 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 6, 8, 12 [ix.60, 65, 71]. 94 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 13 [ix.72]. 95 Jeremy Taylor, Collection of Offices, or Forms of Prayer in Cases Ordinary and Extraordinary (1657), sig.A4r. 96 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 10, 16 [ix.69, 77–8]. 97 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 9 [ix.67].

92 The obligation to ‘improve’ these providential mercies 98 Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 19 [viii.147]. 99 Mercurius Pragmaticus (19–26 December 1648); Mercurius Elencticus (19–26 December 1648). 100 Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘Episcopalian Conformity and Nonconformity, 1646–60’, in Jason McElligott and David L. Smith, eds., Royalists and Royalism During the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 18–43; Christopher Durston, ‘Lords of Misrule: The Puritan War on Christmas, 1642–1660’, History Today 35 (1985): 7–14; David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989); David Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 256–70. 101 Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 43 [ix.122]. 102 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 6 [ix.60–1]. 103 Owen, ‘The Doctrine of the Saints Perseverance, Explained and Confirmed’ (1654), in Works, xi.305–6. 104 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 7 [ix.63]. 105 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 3, 10 [ix.57, 68]. In Anthony Sparrow’s Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer (1655), 26–9, there are references to the altar, the litany and what is ‘appointed in the Rubricks’. 106 Henry Ferne, A Compendious Discourse upon the Case, as It Stands Between the Church of England and of Rome on the One Hand, and .  .  . Those Congregations Which Have Divided from it on the Other Hand (1655). 107 Henry Hammond, Grounds of Uniformity from 1 Cor. 14.40 (1657), 10, 20. 108 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 15 [ix.76–7]. 109 Owen, ‘Gospel Worship’, 4, 8, 19 [ix.58, 65, 83]; ‘Θεολογούμενα’, xvii.225, 257. 110 Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.119, 182. 111 Owen, ‘A Discourse Concerning Liturgies and Their Imposition’, in Works, xv.21; ‘Nature of Apostasy’, vii.195. 112 Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.202; ‘A Review of the True Nature of Schism, with a Vindication of the Congregational Churches in England’ (1657), in Works, xiii.267; ‘Answer to a Late Treatise of Mr Cawdrey’ (1658), in Works, xiii.301; ‘Nature of Apostasy’, vii.65. 113 Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.182, 191. 114 Theodore D. Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 19–22. See also his ‘Biblical Primitivism: An Approach to New England Puritanism’, in Richard T. Hughes, ed., The American Quest for the Primitive Church (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 19–32. 115 Sebastian Rehnman, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 42–3. 116 William O’Connor, ‘Saint Vincent of Lerins and Saint Augustine’, Doctor Communis 16 (1963): 123–257. 117 Francis X. Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God: The Development of a Sixth-Century North African Bishop’s Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 during the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2009). 118 Owen, ‘Saints Perseverance’, xi.69; Owen described how ‘our Renowned’ Bradwardine ‘with singular diligence and scholastic ability opposed the spreading of Pelagianism in and over the Roman Church’ in his ‘Preface’ to Theophilus Gale’s The True Idea of Jansenisme (1669). 119 Heiko A. Oberman, Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine: A Fourteenth Century Augustinian (Utrecht: Kemink and Zoon, 1957); Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and

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120 121

122 123 124 125 126 127

128 129

130 131 132 133 134

135 136

137

93

the Pelagians: A Study of His ‘De Causa Dei’ and Its Opponents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). Owen, Communion with God, 166 [ii.147]. Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 72 [ix.168]; Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 122–34; Hans Boersma, A Hot Peppercorn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine of Justification in its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy (Vancouver: Regent College, 2003), 41–57, 103–24. Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 55. Owen, ‘Vindiciæ Evangelicæ’, xii.15–16; ‘Of the Death of Christ, the Price He Paid, and the Purchase He Made’ (1650), in Works, x.431–3; ‘A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity’ (1669), in Works, ii.371. Orations, 16. Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 197, 220. Cooper, Owen and Baxter, 206, 211; Paul C.-H. Lim, In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in Its SeventeenthCentury Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 161–87. Nigel Smith, ‘“And If God Was One of Us”: Paul Best, John Biddle and AntiTrinitarian Heresy in Seventeenth-Century England’, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 172. Peter Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen, Pastor, Educator, Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1971), 42. Blair Worden, ‘Cromwellian Oxford’, in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 4: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 740–4; Richard L. Greaves, The Puritan Revolution and Educational Thought: Background for Reform (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 126–36. Peter Gaunt, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655–1659: From the British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 316–17. Orations, 5, 34. Owen, Mortification, ‘Preface’ [vi.4]; Orations, 12. Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, ii.668–75; Worden, ‘Cromwellian Oxford’, 744. Christopher Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals: Godly Government during the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Ivan Roots, ‘Swordsmen and Decimators: Cromwell’s Major-Generals’, in R.H. Parry, ed., The English Civil War and after, 1642–1658 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 78–92. Worden, ‘Cromwellian Oxford’, 738, 743, 747. For details of Comitia, see Oxford University Statutes: The Caroline Code, or Laudian Statutes, Promulgated AD 1636, trans., G.R.M. Ward (London, 1845), i.57; Kristine Haugen, ‘Imagined Universities: Public Insult and the Terrae Fillius in Early Modern Oxford’, History of Universities 16 (2000): 1–31. John Asty, ‘Memoirs of the Life of John Owen’, in John Asty, ed., A Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (London, 1721), xi–xii; Charles E. Mallet, A History of the University of Oxford (London: Longman, 1924–27), ii.394–5; Anthony Wood, The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford: Clarendon, 1891), i.300, 359. George Vernon, Letter, 12–13, records that a member of Thomas Goodwin’s church ‘made it a scruple of conscience to take his degree of Master of Arts, because he was to appear for it in that Popish Antichristian habit of Cap and

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138 139 140 141 142 143 144

145 146 147 148 149 150

151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158

159 160 161 162

163

Hood’. For some, Owen was not radical enough. John Rogers castigated Owen in his ‘Epistolary Word’ to John Canne’s The Time of the End (1657). Rogers accused him of being ‘in the thick of Popery’ with ‘Hoods, Caps, Robes, Rings, Hoy-dayes, Musicks, Commencements, and Divinity-Acts’ despite what Owen had done to ‘refine them a little outwardly!’ Josselin, Diary, 374. Worden, ‘Cromwellian Oxford’, 745. Orations, 45–6. Orations, 26. Owen, Mortification, ‘Preface’ [vi.3]. Owen, Mortification, 31–2 [vi.16–17]. Owen, Mortification, ‘Preface’, 32–3, 91–4 [vi.2, 17, 39–40]; Keith Thomas, ‘Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England’, in John S. Morrill et al., eds., Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 29–56. In 1650, in the Scottish context, Owen had spoken of those who ‘pare themselves with vows, promises, resolutions, and Engagements’; see The Branch of the Lord, 29 [viii.301]; Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ (1655), 173–4. Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or, the Rule of Conscience (1660), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’. Richard Baxter, The Christian Directory (1673), ‘Epistle to the Reader’. Henry Hammond, Of Resisting the Lawfull Magistrate under Colour of Religion (Oxford, 1644), 56; Review of the Annotations of Hugo Grotius (1655), xii.626. For Robert Sanderson, see ODNB, s.v. Thomas Barlow, ‘The Case of the Jews’, in Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Conscience (1692), 35. Robert Sanderson, Works (Oxford, 1854), v.37–59; Edward Vallance, ‘The Dangers of Prudence: Salus Populi Suprema Lex, Robert Sanderson, and the “Case of the Liturgy”’, in Harald E. Braun and Edward Vallance, eds., The Renaissance Conscience (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 100–17. For Joseph Hall see ODNB, s.v. Joseph Hall, Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience (1649), 192–3, 195. Owen, Mortification, 90–1 [vi.38–9]; Orations, 27. Owen, A Complete Collection of the Sermons (1721), preface. Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 21 [ix.86]. This is a reference to Diatriba de Justitia Divina (1653). Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 25, 46–7, 48 [ix.93, 127, 130]. Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 25, 30 [ix.93, 100]. For Seth Ward see ODNB, s.v.; Walter Pope, Life of Seth Ward, Lord Bishop of Salisbury (1697), 43; Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 30–137. Pope, Ward, 43–4. Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 24, 48 [ix.90–1, 130]; John Wilkins, A Discourse Concerning the Gift of Prayer . . . Whereunto May Be Added Ecclesiastes (1653, 1655, 1656). Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 24 [ix.91]. Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 62 [ix.152]: ‘men may be zealously engaged in ways and acts of worship, and that all their lives, wherein they think they do God good service; and yet both they and their service be abominated by him for ever’. Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 25, 47 [ix.92, 127].

4

The magistrate’s response to providentially significant events

The previous chapters have outlined Owen’s interpretation of providentially significant events and the resultant obligation which he believed to lie upon the nation to ‘improve’ these mercies by a reformation of religion. This chapter considers the particular obligations which Owen believed to have been placed upon the magistrates of the land to respond appropriately to the providential works they were witnessing. Owen contended that a proper understanding of the times, as laid out in his prophetic preaching, determined both the role of the magistrate and the specific priorities such magistrates were to pursue. In the political flux of the 1640s and 1650s, his preaching set forth a number of factors which he believed should guide the quest for a lasting settlement. His hope was that the magistracy could be a powerful force for national reformation in a programme which would include both comprehensive legal reform and provision for the poor.

I. The godly magistrate in Owen’s apocalyptic chronology There are a number of passages to which Owen referred as he discussed the obligations incumbent upon the magistrates of the nation. One such text to which he and the other Congregationalists frequently turned was Psalm 2.1 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. (Ps. 2:10–12) Owen explained that ‘Judges and Rulers, (as such) must Kisse the Sonne, and own his Scepter, and advance his waies’.2 In 1649, he claimed that in recent days ‘the rulers of the earth’ had witnessed the ‘spoiling’ of their kingdoms because they had failed to ‘yield unfeigned obedience’ to Jesus Christ the ‘King of kings’.3 Owen explained that Christ was ‘set to reign on his holy hill’ and that he was using his ‘Rod of Iron’ to break his enemies in pieces ‘as a Potters Vessel’.4 Given that the nations were to be Christ’s inheritance,

96 The magistrate’s response Owen held out the hope that the kings of the earth would serve Christ and his kingdom.5 Thus, in a text amended to remove the reference to ‘kings’ (reflecting the new post-regicide realities), Owen cautioned, ‘Be wise now therefore O yee Rulers, be Instructed, yee Judges of the earth, serve the Lord with feare, and rejoyce with trembling’.6 Owen explicitly located Psalm 2 within his eschatological framework by linking it to the book of Revelation’s description of the victorious rider of the white horse, namely Christ, ‘going forth in his mighty power for the subduing of all his adversaries’ (Rev. 19:11–21). For Owen, the Psalmist’s description of the Son’s ‘rod of iron’ corresponded to Revelation’s description of Christ coming to ‘smite the nations . . . with a rod of iron’ (Ps. 2:9; Rev.19:15).7 He also placed the fulfilment of the Psalm at the time in the future when it would be said that ‘The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ’ (Rev. 11:15). His conclusion was that ‘the issue of all these dispensations, [is] That the Kingdomes and Nations are at length to be possessed by the Lord Christ’.8 In his day, Owen believed that he was witnessing the beginning of the ‘Professed subjection of the Nations throughout the whole World unto the Lord Christ’.9 Using the language of apocalyptic shaking, he stated: ‘the civill powers of the World after fearfull shakings and desolations . . . are said to be his Kingdoms’.10 The ‘ten Horns’ of the Beast (the ten ‘Western Nations’) would come to ‘hate the whore’ and would be ‘instrumentall in the hand of Christ for the ruin of that Antichristian State, which before they served’.11 Owen addressed members of the recently-purged Parliament as those called to serve the Lamb ‘in the high places of Armageddon’, and he cautioned them to prepare for the inevitable storm of opposition (Rev. 16:16; cf. 14:4).12 Owen also drew from material from the book of Isaiah in order to describe the role of the magistrate within this apocalyptic scheme. As described in Chapter 1, Owen often turned to Isaiah for a description of the coming golden age of the church. In regards to the role of the magistrate, he highlighted Isaiah’s description of a time when the nations as nations would be converted as their kings and rulers brought their glory and honour to Zion (Isa. 60). He frequently employed Isaiah’s prophetic idiom of how the saints would ‘suck the breast of kings’, and the Zion’s ‘officers shal be peace, and her exactours righteousnesse’ (Isa. 60:3, 11–17).13 Similarly he held out the hope to the godly that ‘Kings shall be thy nursing-fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers’ (Isa. 49:23).14 In Isaiah, the return from Babylonian captivity was often likened to the Exodus. This allowed Owen, like other defenders of the new Commonwealth, to claim that England was undertaking a journey out of slavery and tyranny into the Promised Land.15 He told Parliament that, like Moses, it was to lead the people out of bondage and to settle them in a new state and condition.16 Owen warned MPs and the City of London rulers that they would face the same challenges as did Moses as they journeyed through the wilderness because it was a ‘mixed multitude’ who ‘went up with the people

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of God’.17 Such an interpretive framework allowed him to liken the Second Civil War to Korah’s Rebellion and to pronounce a curse on those who responded to the current situation with Meroz-like indifference (Judg. 5:23; Num. 16:1–3).18 Royalists derided the idea that the parliamentary cause was a journey to the Promised Land: Mercurius Pragmaticus asked sarcastically, ‘Is this the Canaan, t’ which they’d bring’s? / And free’s from Pharoah’s rule’.19 Such was exactly the grumbling and backsliding that Owen expected from a body of people he would later describe as ‘darke, and profane’.20 After the particularly bad weather in the summer of 1648, disastrously, the harvest failed once again.21 Some laid the blame on Parliament, but Owen reasoned that, like Moses, Parliament was an instrument of deliverance that would often be reviled.22 This Exodus framework also helped him account for slow progress in the task of reformation. For instance, Owen described how, in spite of good intentions, the First Protectorate Parliament made little progress because the cloudy pillar (a reference to divine guidance through the wilderness) moved slowly, and he expressed his hope that the Second Protectorate Parliament would be led quickly towards the promised rest.23 Such was the godly magistrate’s important role in Owen’s apocalyptic chronology. His initial call to magistrates was to recognise the authority of Christ (in biblical language, to ‘kiss the Son’), thus becoming the types of magistrates promised for the coming golden age of the church (Isa. 60). Such a magistracy would, according to Owen, have an instrumental role (like that of Moses) in the deliverance of the people from Babylonian captivity. For Owen, the priority of such godly magistrates was twofold: first, to uphold the ‘interest’ of Christ and his people; and, secondly, to unravel and untangle ‘the mystery of iniquity’ (which he believed to be the great discovery of his generation). i. The ‘interest’ of Christ and his people Owen suggested that there were specific priorities which should guide the godly magistrate. One of his favourite descriptions of the godly magistrate’s aim was serving ‘the interest of Christ’ (which was to be furthered, promoted and improved).24 For Owen, ‘the interest of Christ’ was frequently coupled with the interests of the saints and put forward as the single ‘interest of Christ and his people’.25 He believed that this was to be the magistrate’s ‘peculiar aim’ and that in the ‘new moulding of the Kingdoms and Nations’ everything must be ‘framed a new into a due subserviency to the interest of Christ’.26 Owen believed that all the providentially significant events he was witnessing in the mid-seventeenth-century crisis were designed to bring about such a change of governmental perspective: All the promises relating unto Gods Providential Dispensations in the World, with reference unto the Interest of his Church and people, do centre in this, that the rulers in and of the world shall exert and exercise

98 The magistrate’s response their power in subserviency to the Interest of Christ, which lies in his Truth and his Worship. (Isa. 60:3, 11–17; Rev. 11:15)27 When Owen spoke of the associated interests of Christ’s people, he usually defined it as a ‘general’ or ‘common’ interest: not that of one particular party or polity, but rather one which comprehended all the godly.28 As Thomas Goodwin put it: ‘when I say Saints, I mean no one party of men’.29 It is instructive to recognise the political dimension to Owen’s use of ‘interest’ language. As Blair Worden has shown, at this time, there was ‘a growing understanding of the extent to which politics was governed by the ‘interests’ of those who participate in it’. Jonathan Scott demonstrates that by 1648, ‘interest theory’ had become the political language of the New Model Army.30 Steven Pincus, tracing the development of the idea of the national interest, has shown how it was popularised in England with the publication of a translation of the tract by Henri duc de Rohan (1579–1638) entitled, A Treatise of the Interests of the Princes and States of Christendom (1641).31 This Huguenot theorist argued that all political actions were determined by interest.32 The Commonwealth propagandist Marchamont Nedham praised Henri’s ‘little but weighty book’ and used it to develop his own thoughts about the balancing of conflicting interests in order to bring about what he called a ‘union of interests’.33 The Congregationalist divines engaged with the writings of Henri but were concerned that the language of interest was subject to abuse. Thomas Goodwin’s 1646 parliamentary sermon published as The Great Interest of States & Kingdomes, spoke of ‘that worthy Duke of Rohan’: the CIVILL INTEREST OF THE STATES OF EUROPE, in his Preface to it, sayes, That according as the proper INTEREST of each hath been well or ill followed, it hath caused the ruine of some, the greatnesse of others. That which that worthy Duke thus speaketh of the Civill Interest, give me leave, from all the grounds forementioned, to presse upon you concerning that which is your greatest interest; and an interest most divine, most general, and fundamentall. The Saints of England are the Interest of England.34 Preaching later that year, the ecumenist John Durie (who went on to work closely with the Congregationalists) spoke about how ‘The principle of the Babylonian government, is that Idol which Politicians call the Reason of State, or the Interest of state, upon which, as upon an Axel-tree, all the wheels of government runne in the minds of states-men’.35 Similarly, Owen identified a ‘profane’, ‘corrupt’ or ‘carnal interest’ in his opponents.36 For him, the only legitimate interest was that of Christ and his people, and he was convinced that ‘all Government shall at last be brought unto .  .  . an orderly subserviency, to the common interest of the Saints’.37 Thus, the Savoy Declaration (1658), which Owen helped to draft, spoke of the magistrate’s

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responsibility ‘to order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the world’.38 Owen would not allow the interest of Christ to be balanced by other competing interests. Rather, he contended, pursuing the interest of Christ was ‘the true real interest of these Nations’.39 He cautioned MPs: ‘Say not, in the first place, this or that, suits the interest of England, but look what suits the interest of Christ; and assure your selves, that the true interest of any Nation, is wrapped up therein’. For Owen, this was ‘a matter of the greatest importance’, and he reminded Parliament of what he had said about the matter on a previous occasion.40 All other interests were subservient to the interest of Christ and were liable to be destroyed if they failed to submit to it because of what he described as The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ (‘advantage’ here meaning superior position). Some objected to such usage of the language of interest by Owen and his Congregationalist colleagues, accusing them of employing this rhetoric as a cover for pursuing their own agenda. Nedham wrote, in what turned out to be his last editorial of the Rump’s flagship newspaper Mercurius Politicius, that Owen’s proposals for the national church settlement actually represented ‘in a word the interest not of Christ but of the clergy’.41 Nedham’s republicanism repudiated any idea of ‘permitting the settlement of ClergyInterest, with the Secular in National Formes, and Churches’.42 ii. The ‘unravelling’ of civil and ecclesiastical powers Having charged magistrates to prioritise Christ’s interest, Owen further summarised the magistrate’s task ‘in a word’ as ‘the ordering, framing, carrying on of affairs as is most conducible to the unravelling and destruction of the mystery of iniquity’.43 On one occasion, he went as far as saying that ‘the great discovery of these dayes’ was the necessity of ‘opening, unravelling, and revealing the Antichristian interest, interwoven, and coupled together in civill and spirituall things, into a State opposite to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus’, something he regarded as ‘close-woven webb of destruction’.44 In Vindiciæ Evangelicæ (1655), Owen described his days as ‘the appointed Time of mercy’ during which ‘God would visit his people with light from above, and begin to unravel the mystery of Iniquity’.45 Later, in 1664, he was still waiting for the time when, ‘in the Providence of God’, religion would ‘be unravelled from that worldly and secular interest, wherewith it hath been wound up and entangled for sundry Ages’.46 Owen’s call for action against the combination of civil and ecclesiastical powers was a particularly memorable motif in his preaching. When Richard Baxter recounted Owen’s debates with Samuel Parker, he described how Parker had no shortage of material to use against Owen: Parker had so many of [Owen’s] Parliament and Army Sermons to cite, in which he urgeth them to Justice, and Prophesyeth of the ruine of the

100 The magistrate’s response Western Kings, and telleth them that their work was to take down Civil and Ecclesiastical Tyranny.47 Similar sentiments about the mystery of iniquity were voiced by the Congregationalist Matthew Barker in his parliamentary sermon from October 1648 as he spoke of the Antichristian combination of ‘temporall and spirituall’ power, a power ‘that had so twisted it selfe in the power of the State’ that it had ‘to be pull’d away’.48 At least in this, Nedham was in agreement with Owen that Antichrist ‘hath twisted the Spiritual Power . . . with the worldly and secular interest of the State.49 In Mercurius Politicus he claimed that the Episcopal and Presbyterian interests ‘had twisted an Interest with the Civill power’.50 Months later, Owen described the same threat posed by supporters of Charles II and the Scots as the combined threat of ‘Ægypt and Babel’, a yoke for ‘our necks, and consciences’, namely ‘a Tyrant full of revenge, and a discipline full of persecution’. Hence, Owen proclaimed that the recent victory at Worcester had been an occasion of both ‘Temporall’ and ‘spirituall deliverance’.51 A most striking usage of this language is that of John Cook’s near-repetition of Owen’s words prior to his execution as a regicide: the peculiar light and worke of this generation being to discover and oppose the Civil and Ecclesiastical tyrannies intended upon the Nations by the Popes leger demain, to exalt Christ as Lord and King over mens consciences, to magnifie and make the law of God honourable, and authentique every where, and to give justice and mercy the upper hand.52 Cook’s dying words closely parallel Owen’s description of a generational discovery and ‘the legerdemain of the Whore’ through which the ‘Western Nations have been Juggled into spirituall and civill slavery’.53 Thus, amongst the Congregationalist ministers and their associates, it was widely believed that the great discovery of their generation was the need to separate spiritual and civil powers. Reformation would therefore seek to untangle these powers, freeing them both to be exercised within their respective spheres. An example of such reformation is seen in the regime’s approach to episcopacy. Owen noted that the bishops had held a twofold power as ‘barons of the realm and members of parliament’.54 He would probably have regarded this process of reformation to have begun in earnest in February 1642 when clerics (including bishops) were forbidden to exercise secular powers. By October 1646, episcopacy was abolished and provision was made for selling church lands. As Morrill has shown, a ‘central plank of the Laudian programme was the restoration of the wealth of the Church’.55 In the 1630s, many had feared that the cancellation of the transfers of church lands which had been attempted in Scotland and Ireland might have been repeated in England. That was not to be the case. In 1649, the Cathedral estates (known as Dean and Chapter lands) were put up for sale to pay the debts of the state and

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finance the invasion of Ireland. Such a move implied the permanent abolition of episcopacy and was highly controversial (it being one of the sticking points with Charles during the negotiations over the Treaty of Newport).56 Those opposed to the alienation of church lands often used the rhetoric of consecration and sacrilege to argue their case. In 1642, Ephraim Udall published his anonymous work, Noli Me Tangere: Or a Thing to be Thought on, in which he intended to arouse the consciences of those who held former abbey lands.57 The title page had a memorable image (drawn from Aesop’s Fables) of an eagle carrying sacrificial flesh from an altar to its nest of chicks but inadvertently destroying it because of a live coal still attached to the meat. Before his death in 1647, Udall was sequestered from his rectory for ‘charging the Parliament with Sacrilege’.58 In Essex, the county in which Owen ministered, a petition of May 1648, coordinated by Nathaniel Ward and published as Humble Petitions, condemned, among other things, Parliament’s willingness to ‘alienate such lands, as were given, and consecrated to Church uses, which many conceive would make good inlargements to the defective livings of many poor and faithful Ministers’.59 Unlike some of the ministers in Essex, Owen was in favour of the sale of church lands. Inverting the language of sacrilege and consecration, he charged those who opposed the alienation of such lands with committing sacrilege against the liberties and privileges of the godly. According to Owen, the image of ‘The Eagle that stole a coale from the Altar’ had ‘been abused to countenance the holding of Babylonish wedges’.60 This was an allusion to the sin of Achan who coveted ‘a goodly Babylonish garment . . . and a wedge of gold’ that the Lord had stipulated should be devoted to destruction (Josh. 7:21). Drawing out the implications of this motif, as far as Owen was concerned, the ‘Jericho’ of episcopacy had fallen, and it was now to be devoted to destruction. Those who were unwilling to see church lands sold and put to a new use had, like Achan, been seduced by something Babylonian, that is, the Papacy’s confusion of civil and ecclesiastical power. For Owen, the entanglement of civil and ecclesiastical powers was also seen in the British constitution. Owen claimed that an ‘Antichristian interest’ had been ‘woven’ into it, thus necessitating its replacement.61 James I had famously summed up the reciprocal nature of episcopacy and monarchy in his aphorism ‘No Bishop, no King’, a principle that Owen stated the ‘late KING’ had learnt from his father.62 Unravelling these powers would, Owen argued, result in a new constitution quite unlike the old establishment of King, Lords and Commons. He reasoned that since the present constitutions and governments of the nations were ‘cemented’ from top to bottom ‘with Antichristian morter’, the shaking necessary to remove these foundations would have to be as thorough as an ‘earthquake’ (the very judgment which had destroyed pagan Rome). In Owen’s metaphor, the nation’s constitution was held together with errors so pervasive that the whole structure would have to be brought down and rebuilt. Switching metaphors, Owen claimed that ‘interest of Antichrist’ had ‘rivetted itself’ into the very fundamentals of

102 The magistrate’s response the constitution.63 This trope of ‘riveting’ was used across the spectrum to refer to episcopacy. On the one hand, for example, the radical army chaplain John Saltmarsh described how prelacy ‘remained rivetted into our Laws and usages’ and on the other, Bishop John Bramhall spoke of episcopacy as ‘woven and riveted into the body of our law’ and ‘cemented into our laws’.64 Thus, according to Owen, constitutional reformation would require the separation of powers which had been securely riveted together. In a third illustration, he asserted that ‘for 1,600 years’ the Babylonian principle of idolatry and tyranny had ‘beene insinuating it selfe into all the Nations’ and was now ‘the marrow in their bones’ – in other words, it was at the core of what nations relied upon for strength and support.65 Owen concluded that it would take a considerable time to remove such a pervasive power which had exercised its influence over the nations for a thousand years.66 Thus, Owen’s apocalyptic chronology held out the promise of godly magistrates who, serving the interest of Christ and his people, would be instrumental in unravelling the mystery of iniquity. In civil government, Owen believed that this would require an entirely new constitutional settlement.

II. The nature of the desired constitutional settlement Owen was closely involved in the long and tortuous search for a political settlement from the time of the Second Civil War until the collapse of the Committee of Safety in 1659. In this section, we will consider the important factors which shaped his understanding of the quest for the desired constitutional settlement. i. Not destroying civil power, but rather translating it In the constitutional process of untangling civil and ecclesiastical powers, Owen recognised two problems. First, some were resistant to this whole process of untangling and, secondly, others, only too keen to separate civil and ecclesiastical power, were jeopardising the very survival of those powers. Examples of those whom he believed to be intent on destroying properly constituted civil power can be seen in his second sermon to the Rump on 23 April 1649 (which was to be the last of their regular monthly fasts).67 Owen brought together two contemporary groups that manifested levelling tendencies. Acknowledging the pervasive influence of ‘interest of Antichrist’, Owen insisted that ‘no digging or mining’ would be able to remove it. Rather, what was required was for Christ to ‘so far open their whole frame to the roots as to pluck out all the cursed seeds of the mystery of Iniquity, which by the craft of Satan, and exigencies of State, or methods of advancing the pride and power of some sons of blood, have been sown amongst them’.68 Contextually, it is plausible to see here oblique references to two groups of which MPs were very well aware: first, the Diggers (or True Levellers) sowing seed and, secondly, the Derbyshire miners.

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Three weeks before Owen preached this sermon, Gerrard Winstanley and around thirty others established a settlement upon St George’s Hill, Walton-upon-Thames. They began to cultivate the commons, ‘casting in Seed, that we may eat our Bread together in righteousness’.69 These ‘Diggers’ declared the earth a common treasury and called for an end to private property as the source of all bondage and violence. On 16 April, the Council of State ordered Fairfax to disperse them and, and on the day of Owen’s sermon, Captain Gladman was in Surrey investigating. The following day, 20 April, Winstanley and William Everard were brought to Whitehall to explain themselves (both refused to remove their hats). Regarding the second group with levelling tendencies, for several years, the Earl of Rutland had been involved in a dispute with lead miners who claimed the right to mine on his Derbyshire estate. On 28 March, Rutland had petitioned the Commons to declare against the miners who had recently won the support of the Levellers.70 Countering such levelling ideas, Owen explained that the change of government which was to be expected would be a ‘translation’, not ‘a destruction, and totall amotion, of the great things of the Nations’ (the legal term ‘amotion’ means either ‘removal of a person from office’ or ‘removal of property from its owner’). Rather than being levelled, he believed that the magistracy would be ‘new-moulded, for the interest of the Lord Jesus’.71 After the suppression of the Leveller troops who mutinied at Burford in May, on 7 June, Owen preached alongside Thomas Goodwin before the City authorities, Council of State, MPs and senior officers at Christ Church, Newgate Street. Owen indicted the Levellers for ‘throwing up all bounds and fences, laying all in common to [satisfy] their lusts’). He told his hearers that the godly magistrate was responsible for the ‘ordering, framing, carrying on of affairs as is most conducible to the unravelling and destruction of the mystery of iniquity’. Rather than unravelling magistracy and ministry from their entangled state, he claimed that the Levellers were seeking to destroy them both. Twice he described how they came with ‘their axes and hammers’, crying out, ‘Down with it! down with it even to the ground!’ Owen believed that their goal was to bring down the ‘Parliament and their own commander’.72 Although Communion with God appeared in 1657, it was based on sermons which Owen agreed to publish in 1651. According to Owen, those with levelling tendencies were amongst those whom he believed demonstrated that they did not enjoy communion with God. He described how they caused ‘All manner of trouble and disturbance’ by ‘breaking in upon the rights, usages, interests, relations of another’. Such people caused ‘all the commotions in the world; the breaking up of bounds, setting the whole frame of nature on fire’. By contrast, he claimed that the saints had ‘Prudence in the management of Civill affaires’ and so ‘attain the peculiar end whereunto it is appointed’, namely ‘to keep the rationall world in bounds and order, to draw circles about the Sonnes of men, and to keep them from

104 The magistrate’s response passing their allotted bounds and limits, to the mutuall disturbance and destruction of each other’.73 Owen was also concerned that the Fifth Monarchists were undermining the legitimate civil power. According to him, they, too, mistakenly thought that the political heights would be removed rather than translated. He clearly distanced himself from those who ‘for sinister ends pretend to fancy to themselves a terrene kingly state unto each private particular saint’, thinking that this would lead to ‘the disturbance of all order and authority, civil and spiritual’ and that Christ would ‘exceedingly abhor’ such ‘confusion and disorder’.74 In October 1652, MPs witnessed this clash of ideologies as both Owen and the Fifth Monarchist Christopher Feake preached before them.75 Owen took the opportunity to condemn the type of millenarianism to which the Fifth Monarchists subscribed: ‘there is nothing more opposite to the spirit of the Gospell, then to suppose that Jesus Christ will take to himselfe a kingdome by the carnall sword and bow of the sonnes of men’. He believed their agenda was to ‘subvert the Magistrate’ and by the ‘carnall sword’ set up ‘a few to rule over others’.76 Feake’s fast sermon was not preserved; a newsletter simply states that ‘Master Feake [did] his part extremely in speaking plain English before the Parliament the last fast day’.77 Owen and the Congregationalists remained concerned about Fifth Monarchism throughout 1653 and, near the end of the year, Cromwell had Owen and three other ministers attempt to reason with some of their preachers.78 In January 1654, in the aftermath of the failed Nominated Assembly, Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye and Sidrach Simpson sent a letter to the congregational churches denouncing the Fifth Monarchists because their views ‘cut the sinews of all Magistracy’ and endangered England’s peace.79 For these Congregationalist divines, the Fifth Monarchists posed a threat to the very existence of England’s magistracy and jeopardised the progress that had been made in the quest for a political settlement that the nation was obligated to pursue. ii. Ambivalence towards particular political forms Although the abandonment of the ancient constitution involved a profound reexamination of political theory, Owen and his associates were uncharacteristically ambivalent about the precise form the settlement should take.80 For Owen, the government’s ability to pursue the interest of Christ and the godliness of those in power mattered more than the exact form of government. He held that whilst God had instituted civil government and its priorities, the form of government could vary. Owen’s clearest statement of this is found in Ireton’s funeral sermon in which he argued that in government ‘some things are universally unchangeable and indispensable’. He offered examples: government is divinely appointed for ‘mutuall preservation’; ‘in Government some do rule, and some be in subjection’; and ‘that all rule be for the good of them that are ruled’.81 However Owen suggested that other

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aspects of politics, particularly ‘forms of government’, were ‘alterable  & dispensable, merely upon the account of preserving the former principles’. When forms ‘degenerate’ or are ‘shattered by providential Revolutions’ they ‘may and ought to be changed’. Many other aspects of government, he continued, were to be determined by ‘prudence . . . according to present circumstances’. These included: questions of how individuals be ‘designed’ into government; the ‘proportion of time’ individuals stay in government; the nature of representation; and the use of ‘bonds & engagements’ in response to ‘occasional emergencies’. Thus, although there were universal ‘unchangeable and indispensable’ principles, there was also great flexibility – ‘what is most wisely proposed in one season may be most foolishly pursued in another’.82 This repeats the description of the saints having ‘prudence’ in the management of civil affairs from the sermons on Communion with God. The notion of prudential reasoning in government was important for Owen, and he associated it with the other Thomist conceptions of necessary principles, conjecture and probability.83 Such prudence would allow flexibility in responding to the exigencies of the times. An example of a wise undertaking which, given new circumstances, might become a foolish commitment could be the Solemn League and Covenant. Similarly, rather than the Commonwealth’s Engagement Oath being controversial, it might simply have been a legitimate response to an emergency.84 The application of Owen’s principles would mean that it was ‘prudence’ which was to determine whether to fill empty parliamentary seats by ‘recruiter’ elections or whether to call a general election for ‘a new representative’. Likewise, such prudence should determine when the Rump Parliament might dissolve itself (or be dissolved). Naturally of course, the godly prudence which Owen had in mind belonged to those, like Ireton, who shared his particular prophetic worldview. In other words, in this period, Owen was tacitly encouraging those who were impatient with the lack of reform to act as they saw fit, according to the principles of godly prudence.85 Such ambivalence to political forms resulted in a remarkable degree of political flexibility. In September 1656, during a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey at the opening of the Second Protectorate Parliament, Owen told MPs that God’s purpose did ‘not consist in this or that form of the civile Administration of humane affaires, there being nothing promised nor designed concerning them’.86 It was Owen’s contention that God did not delight in one form of government more than another. This was a tacit rebuke to civilian republicans like Sir Arthur Hesilrige, John Bradshaw, Thomas Scot and John Weaver, who refused to accept the Protectorate and who were prominent among the 100 elected members whom the Council excluded from Parliament.87 Owen, however, was not wedded to Lambert’s constitution, the Instrument of Government under which the Second Protectorate Parliament met. Further insight is gained by assigning a date to a second set of Owen’s previously undated expository material, published posthumously in 1721 and

106 The magistrate’s response entitled Providential Changes, An Argument for Universal Holiness. In it Owen laments how ‘we scarce seem to be the same generation of men that we were fifteen or sixteen years ago’.88 There are reasons to believe that this is a reference back to the golden era of 1641–42 and that this sermon was preached in 1657. In it, Owen made three references to ‘constitutions’ of government, particularly highlighting debates between rival parties over ‘newly framed constitutions’. He described providential ‘alterations’ which had shown that ‘forms of government of old established’ but also ‘newly framed constitutions’ were ‘obnoxious to dissolution’.89 The ‘old established’ form was clearly that of King, Lords and Commons. The ‘newly framed’ constitution would be the Instrument of Government by which, in December 1653, Cromwell became Lord Protector. This sermon was not necessarily preached after the Instrument was replaced by the new constitution called The Humble Petition and Advice in May 1657; rather, it could belong to earlier in the year, when many had decided that the Instrument was unsatisfactory and in need of replacement.90 Twice in Providential Changes, Owen employed the trope of a plot, adapting it to rhapsodise upon a plot for godly reformation that ‘the men of the world would have more just cause to fear than ever they had of any’, one which would ‘blow up their contrivance, disappoint their counsel, ruin their interest, shake heaven and earth’.91 This would appear to place the sermon after the arrest of Miles Sindercombe, convicted of treason for plotting to bomb the Lord Protector’s apartments at Whitehall and sentenced on 9 February 1657.92 It is plausible to see Owen alluding to Sindercombe’s plot because secretary Thurloe’s propaganda machine made great use of the trial in order to give additional impetus to moves that were afoot for a new, more traditional, constitutional settlement.93 Further contextual clues can be found in a number of references to what had been, as yet, unsatisfactory meetings of ministers.94 In February, Owen and other ministers were involved in high-level meetings in London designed to settle the split in the Scottish Kirk between the rival Protester (or Remonstrant) party and the majority Resolutioner party.95 Intriguingly, there was a parliamentary fast on 27 February at which Owen was invited to assist along with Philip Nye, Thomas Manton, Joseph Caryl and Patrick Gillespie.96 According to Wariston, the atmosphere in the House was heated and Owen was only invited to preach ‘after two houres debayte’.97 Mercurius Politicus only mentions the involvement of Caryl, Nye and Manton. According to Gilbert Mabbott, ‘Yesterday Mr. Galeaspey and Mr. Nye preached in the Parliament House before the Members. The first was bitter, the 2d more moderate against King-shippe’.98 Parliament voted to thank Caryl, Gillespie, Manton and Nye – for some unknown reason, no mention is made of Owen.99 Regardless, this material was certainly prepared to be delivered on a national stage to a body of auditors who were ‘contemptible to the nation’ because of their divisions. Owen believed that if his hearers united in his ‘project to save three nations’, then further reformation would be accomplished in ‘councils, counties, [and] cities’. He dismissed the idea

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that a constitution, what is only ‘a mere human creation, a mere product of the sayings and the wisdom of men, to pretend for eternity, or any duration beyond the coincidence of its usefulness to the great ends that Christ hath to accomplish’.100 This contradicted the views of those advocates of a return to monarchy, or ‘kinglings’, as they were called, like George Downing, who in January had urged Cromwell to take the crown because ‘Government is the foundation of security . . . Men go away, but constitutions never fall’.101 If this sermon belongs to this period, then it would appear that Owen was willing to see the Instrument replaced, presumably because the unprecedented debate surrounding the trial of the Quaker James Nayler in December 1656 had demonstrated the inadequacies of the existing constitutional settlement. This is because the Instrument protected Nayler so long as he professed faith in God by Jesus Christ.102 Owen’s sermon to Richard’s Parliament in February 1659 also gives voice to his ambivalence towards particular political forms: ‘I know full well, that there is not any thing from the beginning to the ending of this short discourse that doth really interfer with any form of civil Government in the world’.103 The political theorist James Harrington recounted a report he received about Owen’s sermon: ‘But they say, Mr Dean Owen, to the Parliament at their fast, was positive that no government upon mere humane principles can be good or lasting’.104 We can infer from this that Owen was understood to have expressed a potential willingness to abandon the current form of the Protectorate in order to reach a lasting settlement. Owen’s ambivalence to forms allowed him to adapt to changing circumstances. However, he was not indifferent to all forms of government: in particular, his view of monarchy was largely negative, even if he did not reject it outright. Two biblical factors condition this attitude: first, the negative image presented of many biblical kings and, secondly, the typological function of those kings which were positively presented. Owen’s negative perspective on kingship stretched back to Nimrod, the great hunter, who set up his kingdom at Babel (Gen. 10). When it came to the Israelite monarchy, Owen noted that it came not ‘by the Word and Command of God but from the peoples pride & ardent importunity, they were mad for a King to be like unto the Heathens’ (1 Sam. 8).105 Subsequent biblical history told the story of many kings who failed to live faithfully and, in his post-regicide sermon, Owen likened Charles to King Manasseh, the very worst of the Judean kings (2 Kings 21).106 Eschatology also contributed to the negative conception of monarchy through the ten Western kings who played a significant role in the apocalyptic drama.107 At the end of the Second Civil War, Owen referred to the imminence of their demise through his use of Revelation’s figurative call for the predatory birds to gather to eat the flesh of those kings hostile to Christ (Rev. 19:18).108 For Owen, the positive examples of monarchy within the Bible were understood typologically as prefiguring Jesus Christ, the king par excellence. Owen believed that, just as carnal Israelites had lost sight of the typological significance of kingship, so those intent on the

108 The magistrate’s response preservation of monarchy in his day were guilty of confusing the shadow for the substance.109 There can be no doubt that Owen condoned the regicide, despite the attempts of some to dissociate him from it. For example, an early biography suggested that Owen turned down the opportunity for easy promotion by ignoring the subject in his post-regicide sermon.110 Owen’s opponents were, of course, quick to point out exactly how Owen’s sermon praised Parliament as ‘the Instruments of Gods glory in this Generation’ called ‘to the rouling up the Nations like a scroll, and to serve him in their Generation in the high places of Armageddon’. Vernon continued with the claim that Owen made the ‘Royal party’ to be the ‘devoted Sons of Babel’.111 Similarly, Zachary Grey, in his writings against the nonconformists, was able to include passages from Owen’s sermon which, he alleged, supported the regicide.112 Owen’s support of the regicide was not because he espoused republicanism as a political theory, i.e. he did not believe that ‘the common good of a community can never be satisfactorily assured under a monarchical form of government’.113 As Pocock has argued, republicanism was ‘far more the effect than the cause of the execution of the King’.114 Rather, he believed Charles had been put to death because the regime had no other alternative but that the king be ‘brought to punishment for blood’.115 Owen offers a glimpse into the nature of the resistance theory he espoused. He referred to Zwingli ‘Artic. 42’, presumably the proposition that ‘When Kings raigne perfidiously, and against the rule of Christ, they may according to the word of God be depos’d’.116 Likewise, he pointed readers to ‘Bilson of Obed. part 3’, namely Bishop Thomas Bilson and his True Difference Between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (1585).117 According to Wood’s recollections, Bilson ‘did contribute much to the ruin’ of Charles, and the historian William Lamont claims that True Difference ‘was probably more quoted on the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War than any other source’.118 Owen was more critical of royalism than of monarchy per se. He repeatedly underlined that, since his was an era of shaking and overturning, those in public office should not attempt to maintain forms or structures which were passing away (Heb. 12:27). In 1649, Owen reassured the reluctant regicides by praising them for not following King Saul, who had attempted to spare King Agag (1 Sam. 15). However, he warned: ‘Turne not to the wayes of such, as the Lord hath blasted under your eyes’.119 This was a critical issue because, as Little and Smith have argued, ‘perhaps the central constitutional problem of the Protectorate’ was ‘whether, and how far, its institutions should resemble older forms of government’.120 In the quest for a settlement, all attempted solutions endeavoured to strike a balance between the ancient constitution and newer goals. Owen repeatedly presented such older forms of government as proud and pompous but now ruined and destroyed. He told MPs that while God’s ‘generall designe’ was ‘to pull downe all those high oppositions to the Kingdome

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of his Sonne’, his ‘peculiar aim’ was ‘to stain the glory of all flesh’.121 This was a reference to Isaiah’s judgment oracle concerning the kingdom of Tyre, where we read, ‘The Lord of Hosts hath purposed to pollute the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the Honourable of the Earth’ (Isa. 23:9). In his post-regicide sermon, Owen implied that the previous day the glory of a pompous king had been stained: like the prince of Tyre, Charles had been brought into contempt (Ezek. 28:11–19).122 Months later, in Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, Owen explained that those who ‘knew the season’ did not ‘labour for honour’ because they knew that ‘God at this time were labouring to lay all the ‘honour of the earth in the dust’.123 In his post-Worcester thanksgiving sermon, Owen refused to give ‘particular instances’ of those whose glory had been stained, thinking it enough to ‘leave this unto a silent thought’.124 This allowed for a wider application, inclusive of all supporters of the royalist cause who had, in his estimation, recently been humbled. Owen’s point was that what they championed had been stained and brought low, and therefore, no attempt should be made to restore it. In the quest for a settlement, although generally unprescriptive as to forms, Owen did warn against the danger of replacing one ‘carnal’ form of government with another. Preaching to the Rump in April 1649 Owen described those for whom ‘no sooner is one carnal form shaken out, but they are ready to cleave to another, yea, to warm themselves in the feathered nests of unclean birds’.125 In the Bible, the unclean birds are listed in Leviticus 11:13–19 and Deuteronomy 14:11–18 and, in Revelation, fallen Babylon (i.e. Rome) becomes ‘a cage of every unclean and hateful bird’ (Rev. 18:2). It would appear that by these ‘feathered nests’ Owen may have been referring to the ideas of the political thought of classical antiquity. At that time, some were attempting to legitimise the new regime by appealing to the ideas of classical republicanism and the Renaissance humanism of the city-states of the Italian peninsula.126 The journalist Marchamont Nedham would be responsible for widely disseminating these ideas, first in The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated (1650) and then in the government newspaper Mercurius Politicus (1651–52).127 Just over a month before Owen made these comments, the godly of Norwich voiced similar concerns about those who looked to the ideas of ‘heathen Rome and Athens’.128 Thus, whilst Owen’s idea of a political settlement did not entail precise constitutional forms, neither did it resemble the old monarchical constitution brought down by providence. Nor would it involve the implementation of the ideas of classical republicanism: instead, Owen believed that a commonwealth would flourish when godly magistrates, looking to the interest of Christ and his people, set about unravelling and untangling the Mystery of Iniquity. iii. The importance of the rhetoric of providence In the quest for a political settlement, the invocation of providence played an important role. Owen’s providentialism has been analysed in detail in

110 The magistrate’s response Chapter 2. Providence could be used to grant a mandate to those who had known its favour and also ex post facto to justify political decisions. This rhetoric also employed the trope of ‘waiting’ on providence to explain the delay in reaching a judgment or decision. The political utility of his invocation of providence is most clearly revealed by the emphasis which his opponents placed upon a critique of providentialism. The disgruntled pamphleteer Clement Walker in Anarchia Anglicana, or, The History of Independency, the Second Part (1649) wrote about how in 1648, those he termed Independents appealed to ‘the secret will and Providence of God, to which they most Turkishly and Heathenishly ascribe all their enormities, only because they succeed: and, from that abyss of God’s Providence draw secondary Principles of Necessity and Honest intentions’.129 At the same time, the Leveller leaders in The Second Part of Englands New-Chains criticised those whose practice was what ‘they ever termed a waiting upon providence, that with colour of Religion they might deceive the more securely’.130 In the ensuing Engagement Controversy, some Presbyterian clergy were sceptical about the providentialist arguments deployed by supporters of the Commonwealth: ‘The providence of God (which is so often pleaded in justification of your ways) is no safe rule to walk by, especially in such acts as the word of God condemns . . . nor is it safe to be guided by impulses of spirit, or pretended impressions on your hearts’.131 Speaking retrospectively of Owen, George Vernon identified the idea ‘That success in any Cause or Enterprize declaims it to be lawful and just, and that to pursue it is to comply with the Will of God; because it is to follow the conduct of his Providence’ as one of Owen’s ‘darling Opinions’. Vernon chose to brand it ‘Alcoran-Divinity’. He offered the example of Owen’s alleged rejection of the suggestion that the young prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, should be crowned. Vernon claimed that Owen asserted that ‘Providence has so shut up all other wayes that it is impossible God should be in them’.132 A glimpse into how Owen’s providentialist preaching was received is given by newspaper reports of his unpublished fast sermon to the Rump in March 1651.133 According to a Perfect Account, ‘Mr. Owen did preach very excellently’, the purpose of his sermon being the ‘vindication of the present government’.134 Likewise, Mercurius politicus summarised the sermon as describing how: The wonderful dispensations of the Providence of God in the salvation which he hath wrought for this nation, and the Alterations which he hath made within a few yeers [came about because God led] some of his servants beyond their first intentions, to follow him in untrodden pathes of danger and difficulty, which hee by his evident Providence did trace out to them.135 When the second Protectorate Parliament assembled in 1656, it heard what Woolrych described as Owen’s ‘adulatory sermon’ which presented the

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current constitutional settlement as divine in origin.136 The diarist Burton records that one argument used in favour of rule by a single person was ‘Divine Providence, which had set a stamp and seal upon this Government’. Burton noted that others countered this by the observation that ‘the providences of God are like a two-edged sword, which may be used both ways; and God in his providence, doth often permit of that which he doth not approve’.137 It was providence which justified Owen’s acquiescence to the Humble Petition and Advice. He believed that it was only ‘inveterate prejudices’ and ‘old superstitions’ that had meant that many did not realise that Christ’s ‘hand’ was at work in the ‘forms of government which have been removed’. An unwillingness to recognise providence had left some, presumably Royalists and Commonwealthsmen, ‘utterly blinded as to any discovery of the ways or work of God in these revolutions’.138 For Owen, providentialist arguments remained important throughout 1659. Owen preached at Fleetwood’s London Residence, Wallingford House, in preparation for the deliberations which led up to the dismissal of Richard’s parliament.139 A source close to the army wrote: ‘there are very many godly men, both minsters and others, who do accord the dissolution of the Parliament a merciful as well as an extraordinary providence of God at the time it was done’.140 Subsequently, one of the reasons why Owen and the group of officers based at Wallingford House were willing to recall the Rump Parliament was that they were ‘eminent Asserters of that Cause, and had a special presence of God with them’, as witnessed in the providentially significant events that occurred during their sitting.141 The day after the Rump gathered was a Sunday, and Owen was invited to preach to its members.142 The Weekly Intelligencer reported how ‘Doctor Owen entertained them with a comfortable Sermon’.143 According to a Quaker source, Owen ‘calledst them dry Bones breathed into’, thus invoking a prophetic trope to speak of Parliament being divinely resurrected (Ezek. 37).144 Owen employed the rhetoric of providence to great effect as an explanatory mode of discourse during the quest for a settlement. For Owen, the invocation of providence was not so much an argument but more a kind of emotive and persuasive form of prophetic speech. Opponents could not so much argue against providence as only object to the frequent use of such providentialism. Thus, in the quest for a lasting constitutional settlement, Owen was expecting the translating or new moulding of government. Although generally ambivalent to particular political forms, he was hostile to royalism and warned about what he termed ‘carnal’ forms of government, such as what has become known as classical republicanism. For Owen, godly prudence, informed by his prophetic scheme, was what should guide the magistrate in the search for a new constitution which would enshrine the interest of Christ and his saints. The frequent use of the rhetoric of providence helped

112 The magistrate’s response to justify the mandate and the decisions of those attempting to find such a settlement.

III. The magistrate’s reform programme A godly magistracy, pursuing the interests of Christ with prudence, would, in Owen’s mind, have been a powerful force for national reformation. Owen laid at least two significant areas of reform before Parliament in his preaching, namely legal reform and provision for the poor. Chapter 5 will discuss the magistrate’s role in the reform of the church. Owen called the magistrate to engage in legal reform. For the Congregationalists, this would be part of the fulfilment of the prophecy of Amos 5:29 that one day, justice would flow like a mighty stream.145 This was particularly important because the church courts which had traditionally enforced moral discipline had been swept away. In 1650, the Rump passed new laws regarding legal efficiency (March), Sabbath keeping (April) and adultery (May).146 Further steps towards reform were taken following the victory at Dunbar when Parliament agreed that proceedings of law, both oral and written, be in English.147 Fired by the triumph at Worcester, Owen added his voice to those who pressed for further legal reform. Praising the Sabbath law passed the previous year, he urged MPs to progress ‘in the administration of justice and judgment’.148 This came to fruition in the establishment of the Hale Commission in January 1652 which was charged to investigate the law and increase the efficiency of the legal process.149 The following month, Owen challenged the regime to take the lead in providing a positive example of legal reform to counties which were ‘slack and slow’ in ‘the execution of Justice’.150 In October, he preached about the duty of the magistrate ‘to seek the good, peace, and wellfare, and prosperity of the them committed to their charge’, reminding MPs that God had given them the sword to act against ‘Theeves, Murtherers, [and] Adulterers’ (the recent Adultery Act had provision for the death penalty). Given that those hostile to legal reform could always point to the threat of the Fifth Monarchists, Owen was careful to distinguish the moral principles derived from the Mosaic law from ‘their judaicall forme’.151 On 30 October 1656, Owen urged MPs to set the wheels in motion for the ‘righteous Administrations of Justice’. Mentioning how ‘Many particulars lie before you, more will present themselves’, he opined that ‘troublesome times have allwayes produced good laws’ and urged them to provide for ‘good Execution’ of justice.152 The ‘particulars’ before Parliament were those suggested by William Sheppard in Englands Balme. It was entered in Stationers’ Register on 11 October, and by 23 October, Thomason had received his copy.153 The Protectorate administration indicated that it was prepared to back Sheppard’s plan by creating him a serjeant-at-law just weeks later. Sheppard had spent the past two years working on this blueprint for the reform of English law aimed at establishing a new simplified and decentralised legal system. He proposed transferring much more responsibility

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to godly JPs (assisted by a second rank of ‘all sober and civil men’) whilst ensuring that ‘godless and wicked men’ were ‘incapable of any office in the commonwealth’.154 Owen’s conception of legal reform extended to the manner of the oath taken in court. In Colt v. Dutton (1657), Vernon records that Owen ‘refused to kiss the Book, and professed it to be against his Conscience to swear with any other Ceremony, than Eyes and Hands lifted up to Heaven’.155 The jury was clearly disturbed that Owen refused to be sworn in the usual manner, but Chief Justice Glynne told them to consider Owen’s testimony as strong as that of any other witness. This example is indicative of the comprehensive reformation of the law for which Owen was calling. A second part of the reform programme Owen called for was that provision be made for the poor, widows and orphans. Using the example of Nehemiah, who was unlike ‘former governors’, and pointing out the ‘mournfull cryes of all sorts of People’, Owen called for general taxation relief, presumably from the extremely unpopular excise.156 After three poor harvests and the Civil Wars, there were many maimed and incapacitated beggars. Ralph Josselin reported on 7 January 1649 ‘the great dearness of everything’ and noted that ‘men expect it will be dearer and dearer’.157 Owen warned, ‘O let it be considered by you, that it be not considered upon you!’158 This resonated with a sinister warning from the Leveller weekly newspaper The Moderate that March: ‘either take some care to ease, or relieve’ the poor, it warned, ‘else their necessities will enforce them to be rich and level what they never intended’. The Kingdomes Faithful and Impartiall Scout concurred ‘if the Lord puts it not into the hearts of the Parliament to take some speedy course for the care of the people’, ‘we shall then fear nothing but confusion, and many will turn Levellers upon necessity’.159 Owen’s practical recommendation was that ‘a Committee of your Honourable House might sit once a week, to relieve poor men that have been oppressed by men, sometimes enjoying Parliamentary Authority’.160 The London Corporation had been established by parliamentary Ordinance in 1647, but the Presbyterians in Parliament had limited its scope. Three months after Owen preached, Parliament would pass its Act for the Relief and Employment of the Poor, and Punishment of Vagrants and other Disorderly Persons within the City of London.161 This was perceived to be a new beginning in ‘reformation of and provision for the necessitous poor’.162 By the summer of 1649, the Rump had resolved to reform the excise but would only complete those plans in September 1650.163 In February 1650, Owen highlighted the plight of those who ‘lye Begging, Starving, Rotting in the Streets, and find no relief’. In particular, he called them to provide for the families of soldiers who had ‘lost their dearest Relations in your Service’ but who were now ‘seeking for bread, and finding none’.164 In 1652, Owen was still urging the government to provide for poor widows and orphans.165 At this time, William Sheppard published a second version of Constables which provided detailed procedures for providing for the poor and also for widows and orphans.166

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IV. Conclusion This chapter has considered the particular obligations which Owen believed to have been placed upon the magistrates of England, a nation to which God had shown undeserved favour. Throughout this period, with remarkable consistency, he called upon magistrates to have an instrumental role in reformation. Not only was this a fitting response to the providentially significant events he believed the nation had witnessed, but, by engaging in godly reformation, magistrates anticipated the godly government promised to the faithful in the church’s coming golden age. Such magistrates would lead the people out from under the idolatrous tyranny of Antichrist, which was likened to deliverance from Egyptian slavery and Babylonian captivity. This was not the only way in which Owen’s particular eschatology proved decisive. He contended that a proper understanding of the times, as laid out in his prophetic preaching, helped to shape the role and specific priorities of the magistrate. Magistrates were called to recognise the authority of Christ (in biblical language, ‘kiss the Son’) and to pursue the ‘interest’ of Christ and his people. In this regard, the political dimensions to Owen’s frequent use of the language of ‘interest’ were identified. Owen used the apocalyptic trope of unravelling and untangling the ‘mystery of iniquity’ to describe how the magistrate must separate the civil and ecclesiastical powers and set them in their proper domains. The importance of this motif should not be overlooked, since Owen explicitly stated that the magistrate’s vocation to take action against the combination of civil and ecclesiastical power was the great discovery of his generation. For Owen, this entwining was seen in the old constitution of King, Lords and Commons and especially in the episcopacy. Separating them would require a new constitutional settlement quite unlike what had gone before, especially as it found expression in the episcopacy. In this regard, Owen was in favour of the sale of church lands – for him, this was part of the removal of the legacy of the Papacy’s confusion of civil and ecclesiastical powers. Owen’s idea of a lasting settlement did not prescribe precise constitutional forms. However, Owen strongly opposed those with levelling tendencies who, in their eagerness to separate civil and ecclesiastical powers were, he believed, in danger of jeopardising the very survival of those powers. Owen expected a radical ‘translation’ or ‘new moulding’ of government, but not the destruction of legitimate government. Although generally ambivalent to particular political forms, the new form of government would be unlike the old monarchical constitution, which he believed had been ‘blasted’ by providence and ‘laid in the dust’ with its ‘glory’ permanently ‘stained’. Nor would it resemble what Owen termed ‘carnal’ forms of government, such as he believed classical republicanism to be. This resulted in a remarkable degree of flexibility and scope for the exercise of godly prudence. Two of the specific elements of godly reform which the magistrate was obligated to pursue were reform of the law and relief of poverty. Even here,

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there is an eschatological element to his call. The reformation of law which he desired was the appropriate response from those who desired the day of the Lord (Amos 5:18–24), while the provision for the poor was reminiscent of the actions of Nehemiah towards those returning from the time of Babylonian captivity. For Owen, implementing legal reform (for example the proposals put forward by William Sheppard) and caring for the poor, widows and orphans (particularly those who had suffered through the war) would have been a fitting response to the divine visitation he believed England to have experienced.

Notes 1 Thomas Goodwin, Great Interest of States & Kingdomes (1646), 35, 46; Jospeh Caryl, The Thirtieth and Thirty First Chapters of the Booke of Job (1659), 574. This chapter will make a number of references to Caryl’s monumental work on Job because of his assertion that ‘Tis undeniable that [Job] was a great man, a chiefe Magistrate; possibly a King’, in his The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-One Chapters of the Book of Job (1653), 203. 2 Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Parliament, Octob. 13. 1652 . . . Concerning the Kingdome of Christ, and the Power of the Civile Magistrate (1652), 16 [viii.374]; God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; with Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 26 [viii.445]; Joseph Caryl, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-One Chapters of the Book of Job (1653), 719. 3 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, in A Complete Selection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 87 [ix.211]; A Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion (1649), 76 [viii.191]. 4 Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 27 [viii.153]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649), 13 [viii.257]; The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World: Or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), 29 [viii.335]; Concerning the Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God (Oxford, 1652), 45 [viii.390]; ‘Χριστολογία’, in Works, i.248. 5 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 41 [viii.388]; ‘Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu, or, The Death of Death’ (1648), in Works, x.175. 6 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 27 [viii.153]. 7 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 45 [viii.390]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 86 [ix.210]; ‘Sermon IX’ (21 June 1674), in Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions: By the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1756), 176–7 [ix.487–8]. 8 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 15, 23, 42 [viii.258, 264, 279]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 6 [viii.318, 334]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15–16, 41–5 [viii.374, 388–90]; ‘Two Questions Concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate about Religion and the Worship of God’ (1659), in Works, xiii.511. 9 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27 [viii.334]. 10 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15 [viii.374]. 11 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 20 [viii.262]. 12 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.129].

116 The magistrate’s response 13 Owen, Toleration, 76 [viii.192]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 11, 19, 23, 41 [viii.255, 261, 264, 278]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 39, 47 [viii.387, 391]; Glory and Interest of Nations Professing the Gospel Preached at a Private Fast to the Commons Assembled in Parliament (1659), 16 [viii.467]. 14 Owen, Toleration, 51, 76 [viii.172, 192]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 39 [viii.387]; ‘Eshcol, A Cluster of the Fruit of Canaan’ (1647), in Works, xiii.60; ‘Two Questions’, xiii.515. 15 This is what Joseph Caryl described as a ‘civil’ salvation that would bring about ‘A Kingdom of Heaven Upon Earth’, in Englands Plus-Ultra (1646), 40; John Coffey, ‘England’s Exodus: The Civil War as a War of Deliverance’, in Charles W.A. Prior and Glenn Burgess, eds., England’s Wars of Religion Revisited (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 256–68. 16 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 9 [viii.139]. 17 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 86 [ix.210]; ‘Providential Changes, an Argument for Universal Holiness’, in Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 63 [ix.154]. 18 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 17 [viii.92]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 9, 18 [viii.139, 147]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 14 [viii.324]. 19 Mercurius Pragmaticus (5–12 June 1649), 57. 20 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; with Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 25 [viii.445]. 21 Steve Hindle, ‘Dearth and the English Revolution: The Harvest Crisis of 1647–50’, Economic History Review 61 (2008): 64–98. 22 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 10, 23–4 [viii.140, 151]. 23 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 19 [viii.441–2]. 24 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 66 [ix.159]. 25 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, and His Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 41, 44 [viii.421, 423]. 26 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 42–3 [viii.389]; ‘Providential Changes’, 65 [ix.157]. 27 Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.512. 28 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 29–30, 35, 37, 40–1 [viii.415–16, 418–19, 421]. 29 Goodwin, Great Interest, 53. 30 Blair Worden, ‘“Wit in a Roundhead”: The Dilemma of Marchamont Nedham’, in Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky, eds., Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 317; J.A.W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1969), xi, 1–52; Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic 1623–1677 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 207–8. 31 Steve Pincus, ‘From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Study of Population and the Invention of the State’, in Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, eds., A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 272–87; J.H.M. Salmon, ‘Rohan and Interest of State’, in J.H.M. Salmon, ed., Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 98–116. For Rohan, see Gunn, Public Interest, 36–8, 48. 32 Henri duc de Rohan, A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome (1641), 44. 33 Blair Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution’, in H. Lloyd-Jones et al., eds., History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H.R. Trevor-Roper (London: Duckworth, 1981), 193–5.

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34 Goodwin, Great Interest, 52–3. 35 John Durie, Israels Call to March Out of Babylon unto Jerusalem (1646), 36; Victoria Kahn, ‘Political Theology and Reason of State in Samson Agonistes’, South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (1996): 1065–98. 36 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 28 [viii.268]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 20 [viii.329]; God’s Presence with a People, 34–5 [viii.451]. 37 Owen, ‘Vindiciæ Evangelicæ, or The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated, and Socinianism Examined’ (1655), in Works, xii.34; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 40 [viii.421]. In Matthew Barker’s sermon on Psalm 2, MPs are warned about neglecting Christ’s interest or subordinating Christ’s interest to their own; The Faithful and Wise Servant (1657), 35. 38 Savoy Declaration, XXIV.iii: ‘Of the Civil Magistrate’. 39 Owen, Glory and Interest, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.455]; God’s Presence with a People, 32 [viii.449]. 40 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 41 [viii.278]. 41 Mercurius Politicus (29 April 1652), 1553–6. This provocative phrase was not reprinted in Nedham’s The Excellencie of a Free State (1656). 42 Nedham, Excellencie, 149–52. 43 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 87 [ix.211]. 44 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 35–6 [viii.274]; Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 7 [viii.138]. Cf. John Milton, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953–82), iii.446, 509, 549, 570 where Milton speaks of those ‘twisted Scorpions’ of ‘temporal and spiritual Tyranny’, those ‘two burd’ns, the one of prelatical superstition, the other of civil tyrannie’, with ‘very dark roots’ which ‘twine and interweave’. 45 Owen, ‘Vindiciæ Evangelicæ’, xii.15–16. 46 Owen, ‘A Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux’ (1664), in Works, xiv.318. 47 Richard Baxter, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ (1696), pt. iii.42; Samuel Parker, Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity (1669), ix. 48 Matthew Barker, A Christian Standing & Moving upon the True Foundation, 41–3. 49 Nedham, Excellencie, 148–9. 50 Mercurius Politicus (24–31 July 1651), 950–1. 51 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 17–18 [viii.326–7]. 52 The Speeches and Prayers of Some of the Late King’s Judges (1660), 41. 53 Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 35 [viii.274]. 54 Owen, ‘Of Schism: The True Nature of It Discovered and Considered, with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’ (1657), in Works, xiii.184–5. 55 John S. Morrill, ‘The Causes and Course of the British Civil Wars’, in Neil H. Keeble, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 16. 56 Ian Gentles, ‘The Sales of Bishops’ Lands in the English Revolution, 1646–1660’, English Historical Review 95 (1980): 573–96. For the wider context of cathedrals in this period, see Ian Atherton, ‘Cathedrals and the British Revolution’, in Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith, eds., The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 96–116. For the treaty of Newport, see Jason McElligott and David L. Smith, Royalists and Royalism during the English Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 194–5. 57 Other examples of those who wished to stop the sale of these lands include: Richard Steward, An Answer to a Letter Written at Oxford, and Superscribed to Dr Samuel Turner (1647); John Warner, Bishop of Rochester, Church-Lands Not to Be Sold (1648); A Letter from Utercht, to the Assembly of Divines . . .

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58 59 60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69

70

71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Shewing the Conversion of Church-Lands to Lay-Uses, to Be Condemned (1648). For Ephraim Udall see ODNB, s.v. Nathaniel Ward, To the High and Honorable Parliament .  .  . The Humble Petitions, Serious Suggestions, and Dutifull Expostulations of . . . the Easterne Association (1648), 15; for Ward’s authorship see ODNB, s.v. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 21 [viii.95]. Philip Nye apparently ‘put some hundreds into buying bishop’s lands in 1651’, see A.G. Matthews, ed., The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order 1658 (Letchworth: Independent Press, 1959), 24. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 15 [viii.374]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 12 [viii.323]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 26, 35 [viii.267, 274]. John Saltmarsh, A Solemn Discourse upon the Grand Covenant (1643), 50; John Bramhall, ‘The Serpent Salve’ (1643), in Works (Oxford, 1842–45), iii.468–69; David L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for a Settlement, c.1640–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 220–3. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 11 [viii.322]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 35–6 [viii, 274]. CJ, vi.175. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 25 [viii.266]. Gerrard Winstanley, ‘The True Levellers Standard Advanced’ (April 1649), in The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. Thomas N. Corns et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 252; John Gurney, ‘Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement in Walton and Cobham’, Historical Journal 37 (1994): 775–802. CJ, vi.175; H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 400–52; Andy Wood, The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 279–85. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 14 [viii.257]. Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 83, 87, 90 [ix.205, 211, 215–16]. Owen, Of Communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost (1657), 129 [ii.115]; William Greenhill, The Exposition Continued upon the Nineteen Last Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1662), 405, 412; William Strong, XXXI Select Sermons (1656), 405; Joseph Caryl, The Twenty-Seventh, the TwentyEighth, and Twenty-Ninth Chapters of the Book of Job (1657), 474. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 17 [viii.259]. Owen quotes Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum 5: ‘quid est libertas? potestas vivendi ut velis’ (Then what is freedom? The right to live as you like). Christopher Feake, ODNB, s.v. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 19, 28 [viii.376, 381]; Severall Proceedings in Parliament (7–14 October 1652). Clarke Papers, v.67; David Farr, Major-General Thomas Harrison: Millenarianism, Fifth Monarchism and the English Revolution 1616–1660 (London: Routledge, 2016), 131. Several Proceedings of State Affairs (27 October–3 November 1653), 3391. Correspondence, 66–8. J.C. Davis, ‘Against Formality: One Aspect of the English Revolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th Series, 3 (1993): 265–88; Steven K. Baskerville, ‘Puritans, Revisionists, and the English Revolution’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly 61 (1998): 151–73; Greenhill, Last Chapters, 107; Caryl, Job [27–9], 472–3; Jeremiah Burroughes, The Glorious Name of God (1643), 35; Jeremiah Burroughes, Gospel Conversation (1648), 143.

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81 Owen, The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest: A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable Henry Ireton Lord Deputy of Ireland (1652), 7 [viii.350]. It is impossible to agree with Peter Toon’s assertion that this sermon contained ‘no religio-political ideas’; see his The Life and Work of John Owen, Pastor, Educator, Theologian (Exeter: Paternoster, 1971), 83. 82 Owen, Labouring Saint, 7 [viii.349–50]. 83 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 48 [viii.425]; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, Q.48 ‘Of the Parts of Prudence’. 84 Glenn Burgess, ‘Usurpation, Obligation and Obedience in the Thought of the Engagement Controversy’, Historical Journal 29 (1986): 529–31. 85 Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 263, 266–8; John S. Morrill, ‘Cromwell, Parliament, Ireland and a Commonwealth in Crisis: 1652 Revisited’, Parliamentary History 30 (2011): 193–214. In this context, Owen was clearly supporting lending his support to an Iretonian settlement. 86 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 9, 40 [viii.405, 421]. 87 Carol S. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement: Exclusions from the Second Protectorate Parliament’, parts 1–2, Parliamentary History 17 (1998): 178–97, 301–21. 88 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 69 [ix.164]. 89 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 52–3, 60 [ix.135, 137, 149]. 90 For details of the debates of January-March 1657 see: Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 145–60; Christopher Durston, ‘The Fall of Cromwell’s Major-Generals’, English Historical Review 113 (1998): 34–7. 91 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 71, 75–6 [ix.166, 174]. 92 Mercurius Politicus (5–12 February 1657), 7588–92; Publicke Intelligencer (2–9 February 1657), 1180. 93 Patrick Little, ‘John Thurloe and the Offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell’, in Patrick Little, ed., Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 235. 94 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 71 [ix.167]. 95 Archibald Johnston, Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, ed., J.D. Ogilvie (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1919–40), iii.62; Stephen, i.349–50. 96 CJ, vii.497. 97 Johnston, Diary . . . of Wariston, iii.67. 98 Clarke Papers, iii.92. 99 CJ, vii.497. 100 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 52, 77–8 [ix.135, 176–7]. 101 Burton, i.364–6. 102 Patrick Little and David L. Smith, Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 214–15; Leopold Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 103 Owen, Glory and Interest, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.455]. 104 J.G.A. Pocock, ed., The Political Works of James Harrington, Part One (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 652–3. By contrast, Harrington claimed that the Presbyterian Thomas Manton sought to prove ‘that the government instituted by Moses consisted of kings, lords and commons’. 105 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 5 [viii.136]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 4–5 [viii.317]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 13, 48 [viii.373–5, 391]. For arguments about the abolition of monarchy from texts,

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106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

118

119 120 121

122 123 124 125 126 127 128

such as 1 Sam. 8, see: Warren Chernaik, ‘Biblical Republicanism’, Prose Studies 23 (2000): 147–60; Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 23–56. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 4–7 [viii.135–7]. Goodwin, Great Interest, 39; John Cook, Redintegratio Amoris (1647), 67–8. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 38 [viii.110]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 4 [viii.317]; Barker, Faithful and Wise Servant, 1. Asty, ‘Memoirs’, vii; Willaim Orme, Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Religious Connections of John Owen (London: Hamilton, 1820), 89–90. George Vernon, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 15–16. Zachary Grey, An Impartial Examination of the Third Volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans (1737), 358. Quentin Skinner, ‘The State’, in Terrence Ball et al., eds., Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 114. J.G.A. Pocock and G.J. Schochet, ‘Interregnum and Restoration’, in J.G.A. Pocock et al., eds., The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 148. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 15 [viii.325]; John S. Morrill and Philip Baker, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the Regicide and the Sons of Zeruiah’, in Jason Peacey, ed., The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 15–36. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 5–6 [viii.136]; Ulrich Zwingli, Operum D. Huldrichi Zwingli (Zurich, 1581), i, fol.84a. Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 6 [viii.137]; Thomas Bilson, True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (Oxford, 1585), 520; William M. Lamont, ‘The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson’, Journal of British Studies 5 (1966): 22–32. Richard Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth, ed. William M. Lamont (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xxvi; Anthony à Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford: To Which Are Added the Fasti, Or Annals of the Said University (1691), i.334. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 18, 20 [viii.146, 148]. Little and Smith, Parliaments, 170. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 26, 30 [viii.333, 336]. This motif was also employed by other Congregationalists, see George Cokayne, Flesh Expiring, and Spirit Inspiring (1648), 23, 10–11 and the following works by Thomas Brooks, The Hypocrite Detected (1650), 13, 19; Heaven on Earth, ‘Epistle to the Saints’; Unsearchable Riches, 35, 54, 145. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 26 [viii.129–30, 153]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 31–2 [viii.271]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 30 [viii.336]. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 28 [viii.268]. Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism’, 184–93; J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Political Thought in the Cromwellian Interregnum’, in G.A. Wood and P.S. O’Connor, eds., W.P. Morrell: A Tribute (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1973), 21–36. Blair Worden,‘Marchamont Nedham and the Beginnings of English Republicanism, 1649–1656’, in David Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 45–81. Certain Quaeres Humbly Presented in Way of Petition ([February 1649]), 3; Sarah Barber, Regicide and Republicanism: Politics and Ethics in the English Revolution, 1646–1659 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 192.

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129 Clement Walker, Anarchia Anglicana, or, The History of Independency (1649), sig.A2r. 130 John Lilburne, Richard Overton and Thomas Prince, Second Part of Englands New-Chaines (1649), 4. 131 A Serious and Faithful Representation (1649); Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the Political Nation, 1553–1682 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). 132 Vernon, Letter, 42, 46, 17. 133 Ralph Josselin, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 234; CJ, vi.544, cf. 548–9. 134 Perfect Account (12–19 March 1651), 77. 135 Mercurius Politicus (13–20 March 1651), 657. 136 Austin H. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 646. 137 Burton, i.xxix–xxx. 138 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 57, 61 [ix.144, 150]. 139 Little and Smith, Parliaments, 164. 140 Clarke Papers, iv.7. 141 A Declaration of the Officers of the Army, Inviting Members of the Long Parliament to Return to the Exercise and Discharge of Their Trust (6 May 1659); Ronald Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–1667 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 43. 142 Richard Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England (1684), 660; Ludlow, ii.74; CJ, vii.646; The Publick Intelligencer (2–9 May 1659), 416. 143 The Weekly Intelligencer (3–10 May 1659), 8. 144 Correspondence, 118. 145 Barker, Faithful and Wise Servant, 19, 30; Caryl, Job [27–9], 538; Jeremiah Burroughes, Sermon before Commons Assembled in Parliament . . . August 25 1646 (1646), 28, 33. 146 CJ, vi.357, 380; Worden, Rump, 233; David Underdown, Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 275; Keith Thomas, ‘The Puritans and Adultery: The Act of 1650 Reconsidered’, in Keith Thomas and Donald Pennington, eds., Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in SeventeenthCentury History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 276–80; Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 140–1. 147 CJ, vi.485–88; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 277–8; Worden, Rump, 238. 148 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 29, 32 [viii.335, 338]; Worden, Rump, 290. 149 Mary Cotterell, ‘Interregnum Law Reform: The Hale Commission of 1652’, English Historical Review 83 (1968): 689–704; Alan Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 1609–1676: Law, Religion, and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 70–3. 150 Owen, Labouring Saint, 14–15 [viii.355–56]. 151 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 52 [viii.394]; ‘Providential Changes’, 73 [ix.170]; Bernard S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 162–8. 152 Owen, God’s Presence with a People [viii.452]. Earlier in the month, Caryl had argued before Parliament that an appropriate response to the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet would be the promotion of justice in the nation; see his Great Duty, 37. 153 William Sheppard, Englands Balme: Or, Proposals by Way of Grievance and Remedy (1656); G.E. Briscoe Eyre, ed., A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640 to 1708 (London: Roxburghe, 1913–14), ii.90; Nancy L. Matthews, William Sheppard, Cromwell’s Law Reformer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 58, 144–86.

122 The magistrate’s response 154 Sheppard, Balme, 41–2. 155 Vernon, Letter, 22; Michael Bennett, ‘The Right of the Oath’, Advocates’ Quarterly 17 (1995): 40–70. 156 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 20 [viii.148]; Judith Richards, ‘A “Radical” Problem: The Poor and the English Reformers in the Mid-Seventeenth Century’, Journal of British Studies 29 (1990): 118–46. The link to Nehemiah was also made by Nicholas Lockyer in A Sermon Preached (1648), 31. Joseph Caryl often discussed poverty; see: Job [18–21], 537; The Twenty-Second, Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fourth, Twenty-Fifth, and Twenty-Sixth Chapters of the Books of Job (1655), 60–70; Job [27–9], 516. 157 Josselin, Diary, 154–6, 162–3, 167; Hindle, ‘Dearth’, 64–98. 158 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 20 [viii.148]. 159 The Moderate (20–27 March 1649), 375; The Kingdomes Faithful and Impartiall Scout (17–24 August 1649). 160 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 20 [viii.148]. 161 CJ, vi.202; A&O, ii.104–10; Valerie Pearl, ‘Puritans and Poor Relief: The London Workhouse, 1649–1660’, in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas, eds., Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 206–32. 162 Rice Bush, The Poor Mans Friend, or, a Narrative of What Progresse Many Worthy Citizens of London Have Made in That Godly Work of Providing for the Poor (1649). 163 Worden, Rump, 167–8, 216; A&O, ii.168–91, 422–3. 164 Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 46 [viii.237]. 165 Owen, Labouring Saint, 15 [viii.356]. 166 William Sheppard, The Offices of Constables, Church-Wardens, Overseers of the Poor (1652), 20–49, 62–7.

5

The obligations of the magistrate and the search for a church settlement

Owen had such a high view of the magistrate’s role in matters of religion that he and his colleagues have been dubbed ‘Magisterial Independents’.1 The Royal Supremacy, the Edwardian Reformation and the Elizabethan settlement, and the influence of Swiss theology had bequeathed to English Protestants a reverence for a magistrate-led Reformation.2 Owen believed that the magistrate had two main responsibilities in this area: the first was to acknowledge publicly the true religion and to seek to see it propagated; the second was to protect against public idolatry and peace-disturbing blasphemy. These ideas are present from Owen’s first parliamentary sermon in April 1646 which summoned the government to the task of propagating the gospel. His dedicatory preface praised Parliament for recovering the almost-ruined rights and liberties of Englishmen, for dissolving the hierarchical tyranny of episcopacy and abolishing the recently-invented popish and Antichristian rites of Laudianism. Taking as his text Paul’s vision of a man directing him to preach in Macedonia (Acts 16:9), Owen issued his own call to MPs to use ‘every lawfull way’ to bring about ‘the publishing of the Gospel’, particularly to the ‘poor Macedonians’ in Wales and the North of England.3 It was printed with a short treatise which offered a vision of godly, orthodox, peace-loving ministers sent out by Parliament to preach the gospel which was ‘owned and established by authority’.4 Similarly, in 1649, Owen explained that the magistrate is ‘bound to know the minde and will of God, in the things which concerne his Honour and Worship’ and to ‘declare, or take care that it be declared unto others, even all committed to his governing charge’.5 Despite the ‘noise and clamours’ of the sects, Parliament was to uphold the ‘ordinances of Christ’ by affording them its ‘protection, countenance, authority [and] laws’.6 In a sermon from 1652 dealing expressly with the magistrate’s power in matters of religion, Owen spoke of how it was incumbent upon MPs that ‘the faith’, and ‘all the necessary concernments of it’, were ‘protected, preserved, propagated’. Elaborating, he called them to ensure that the church was ‘supported, and promoted, & the truth propagated’. Equally, he maintained that ‘error and falsehood’ should not receive any ‘priviledge, protection, advantage, liberty, or any good thing’ from the magistrate.7

124 The obligations of the magistrate These two main responsibilities may be summarised as the protection and propagation of true religion. This chapter will outline how, in order to carry out these duties, the proper relationship between the magistrate and the ministry had to be defined. For Owen, this involved setting out the nature of the boundaries which he believed to exist between the spheres of religion and politics. It will be shown how, in a situation of flux, in which the existing church settlement had been rendered obsolete, Owen played a vital role in the quest for a new religious settlement. He insisted that any proposed settlement should both include and protect the whole number of the godly, and not just one constituent party thereof. Furthermore, such a settlement should be instrumental in propagating the gospel throughout the nation. Owen believed the type of settlement he envisaged to be a via media between other more extreme positions and one which ought to be acceptable to all parties who deserved to share in it.

I. Defining the boundaries between magistracy and ministry Owen’s conception of the proper relationship between the magistracy and ministry involved each having due respect for their respective bounds. As we have observed, for Owen, the ‘mystery of iniquity’ involved a refusal to stay within the established bounds by mixing civil and spiritual power. The ideas articulated by Owen are very similar to those expressed by John Cotton in New England and by Owen’s Congregationalist colleagues.8 In Cotton’s Keyes of the Kingdome (1644), a book that exercised a profound influence on Owen, it was claimed that ‘The greatest commotions’ in the world were caused by conflicting views of ‘Power, and Liberties’ and their ‘due bounds and limits’.9 Similarly, Burroughes warned against blurring the boundaries between church and state and claimed that happiness would only be enjoyed if appropriate boundaries were maintained.10 Reformation was furthered by the ministry and magistracy working together towards the same goal but staying within the limits of their respective powers and authority. As Matthew Barker put it, Antichrist has a ‘double sword in his hand, temporall and spirituall’ but he is destroyed by two swords, namely the sword of the state and the sword entrusted to the church. This, he told MPs, was the ‘propagation of the Gospel’ to which they were called; it was the ‘promoting of religion within your Spheare’.11 Three principles summarise what, for Owen, it meant for magistracy and ministry to remain within their respective bounds. First, the magistracy must not allow the ministry to meddle in its role; secondly, the magistracy must not encroach upon the domain of the ministry; and thirdly, the magistracy must not allow others to deny its religious responsibilities. i. The magistracy must not allow the ministry to meddle in its role From the sixteenth century, there had been a diversity of views in Reformed theology concerning the magistrate’s role in matters of religion. In Geneva,

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Calvin had presided over a system in which a consistory of pastors and elders exercised autonomous powers of excommunication. In the Palatinate, Erastus had an influential role in encouraging Frederick III to adopt Reformed Protestantism as the territory’s confession and had also strongly opposed churches having autonomy in matters of excommunication.12 In Zurich, the magistrate’s role in the discipline of the church was also emphasised, and a civic court oversaw moral discipline and excommunication. The Zurich theologians Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli played an important part in the English religious reform during the reign of Edward VI and the early reign of Elizabeth.13 During the campaigns of 1645–46 to establish jus divinum (divine right) Presbyterianism, Owen found ready allies in those concerned to restrict clerical interference in the secular sphere.14 The perceived abuses of Laudian clericalism such as the Court of High Commission, the Canons of 1640 and the controversial et cetera oath had enraged many members of the Houses of Parliament and only strengthened their commitment to a magistrate-led English Reformation.15 As Pearl has noted, by this time, Robert Baillie (a commissioner of the Scottish Kirk in London) had built a party of high Presbyterians among the Sion House Conclave of London Presbyterian ministers.16 These men were concerned about any threats to ministerial prerogatives and wished to see a strict Presbyterian settlement. To this end, through the winter and spring of 1645–46, they had orchestrated petitions to the London Common Council which were designed to precipitate further petitions from the City to Parliament. Their petitioning did not have its desired effect because in March, Parliament determined that lay commissioners should be appointed in every province to exercise the functions of the local ecclesiastical courts. Baillie denounced this as ‘but a lame Erastian Presbytery’ because it was under the control of lay politicians.17 Samuel Rutherford, similarly incensed, produced his The Divine Right of Church Government and Excommunication (1646).18 The Westminster Assembly also petitioned against this system of lay commissioners.19 This was not well received: the Commons voted the Assembly’s petition a breach of parliamentary privilege. Parliament asserted that it ‘hath jurisdiction in all causes, spiritual and temporal’, reminded the Assembly that it was merely an advisory council and even threatened the divines with praemunire.20 The rebuke concluded by noting ‘it is the doctrine of the Pope to take from princes the power that God committed to them’.21 A fortnight before Owen preached, the Common Council voted to continue its petitioning campaign, and, at the time of the sermon, the famous City Remonstrance was circulating.22 Before the end of May, another petition signed by 300 ministers from Suffolk and Essex was submitted which also criticised the supposed Erastianism of the Parliamentary ordinance.23 This is the context surrounding Owen’s attack on those ‘pretending to power and jurisdiction over others’, who sought ‘to act with the combined mixed power of Heaven and Earth’. To Owen, a deadly mixture of civil

126 The obligations of the magistrate and ecclesiastical power, so obvious in the papacy, was now discernible in the high Presbyterian agenda. Such Presbyterians sought a national church with full autonomy, whose elders possessed the power of excommunication and the power of ordination.24 Owen’s contention was that this posed an Antichristian threat in that they sought to usurp the civil power in order ‘to stampe’ their errors with ‘authority’. They were like rebellious Absalom, who pretended to speak for ‘the people’s good’ but actually ‘intended his own power’.25 He asserted that those who sought ‘the glory and pomp’ of power aped the ‘grand signieur’, the ‘strong Lion of the East’ (a description of the Ottoman Empire), who, crucially, ‘sets his Throne upon the necks of Kings’. Owen highlighted his opposition to popular petitioning campaigns by claiming that through such petitions Parliament’s ‘authority is every day undermined’.26 Owen was not alone in voicing such criticism: Jeremiah Burroughes and William Greenhill also spoke out against such petitioning.27 Owen developed the motif of petitioning by declaring that the only petitions Parliament required were ‘hands to petition the throne of grace’ in prayer for the success of the preachers that Parliament would send out by way of answering this Macedonian call.28 The danger of the ministry seeking to usurp and gain control of the power of the magistracy was an important theme during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and Scotland, when Owen served as a senior army chaplain. Both military campaigns were portrayed as victories over those clergy who sought to usurp magisterial power in the name of religion. Woolrych has suggested that Owen had a hand in composing Cromwell’s response to the Irish Roman Catholic bishops’ declaration from Clonmacnoise. He believes it ‘extremely unlikely’ that Cromwell authored it all himself because some parts of it are ‘quite unlike his authentic writings and utterances in style’, being ‘couched in pulpit-rhetoric’ suggestive of a ‘clerical hand’, perhaps that of Owen. This counter-declaration dismissed the idea that ‘that secular power hath nothing to do to appoint and superintend [the clergy’s] Spiritual Conventions, as they call them’ and instead accused the bishops of having actively sought ‘to intermeddle in all Secular Affairs’.29 In 1650, after the victory at the battle of Dunbar, Owen persuaded Alexander Jaffray that ‘the sinful mistake of the good men of this nation’ concerned ‘the knowledge and mind of God as to the exercise of the magistrate’s power in matters of religion – what the due bounds and limits of it are’.30 Cromwell agreed with his army chaplain, opining that God had dealt a blow to the ‘ministers of Scotland’ for ‘meddling with worldly policies, and mixtures of earthly power, to set up that which they call the kingdom of Christ’.31 There is an interesting use of the ‘bounds’ trope during the debates with the Presbyterians in Glasgow in the following April. Cromwell, impressed by the performance of a young Scottish minister Hugh Binning, retorted: ‘He hath bound well, indeed, but’, putting his hand on his sword, ‘this will loose all again’.32 Thus, the first boundary which Owen defined was to insist that the magistracy was not to allow the ministry to meddle in secular affairs, far less allow

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the clergy to usurp or co-opt its power. To do so, he believed, was to confuse the boundaries between government and the church. ii. The magistracy must not interfere in the church’s worship and discipline Secondly, for magistracy and ministry to stay within their allotted bounds, the magistrate must not encroach upon matters of the church. Owen was clear that the magistrate was not entitled to exercise ‘church power’, nor was he a ‘Church officer’. He warned that if MPs ‘by the authority God hath given you in the world, shall take upon you to rule the house of God, as formally such, as his house’ they would fall under divine judgment. This would ‘entangle’, ‘mingle’ and ‘compound’ what should be separated and was, for Owen, the ‘greatest badge of Antichrist’.33 Owen portrayed the Second Civil War as a consequence of the ‘dangerous encroaching’ that occurred when magistrates attempted ‘to rob Gods people’ of their ‘liberties, privileges, ordinances, [and] ways of worship’ in order ‘to bring them again under the yoke of superstition’. His sermon at the end of the siege of Colchester was in effect a denunciation of the 132 Essex ministers who earlier in the year had signed A Testimony of the Ministers in the Province of Essex to the Truth of Jesus Christ and to the Solemn League and Covenant, as also against the Errors, Heresies and Blasphemies of these times and the Toleration of them (1648). For Owen, this was actually a call for the magistrate to act like a Pharaoh and to ‘meddle’, or ‘assigne’, in matters of the church’s worship (Exod. 10:26). Owen stated that all who did so would fall under divine judgment, which he illustrated by referring to the divine punishment that fell upon King Uzziah when he attempted to offer incense in the Temple. In his pride, Uzziah had ignored warnings from the priests, attempted to take to himself their ministerial privilege, and was consequently smitten with leprosy (2 Chron. 26:18).34 Owen is employing a biblical motif used in the New England Cambridge Platform (1648), (the preface of which expressed the desire that ‘the example of such poor outcasts as ourselves, might prevail if not with all . . . yet with some other of our brethren in England’): As it is unlawful for church officers to meddle with the sword of the magistrate, so it is unlawful for the magistrate to meddle with the work proper to church officers. The acts of Moses and David, who were not only princes, but prophets, were extraordinary, therefore not imitable. Against such usurpation, the Lord witnesses, by smiting Uzziah with leprosy, for presuming to offer incense.35 Owen believed that the magistrate must not encroach into matters of church polity. Although Congregationalists often found common cause with parliamentary Erastians, the preface to the Savoy Declaration (1658) revealed that

128 The obligations of the magistrate they had refused to accept the Erastian idea that ‘there is no settled Order laid down in Scripture; but it’s left to the Prudence of the Christian Magistrate, to compose or make choice of such a Form as is most sutable and consistent with their Civil-Government’. Rather, the Congregationalists believed their church polity to be that ‘which Christ himself hath appointed to be observed’.36 Nevertheless, in what they saw as ‘remarkable’ providence, the Government had chosen a ‘just’ settlement in that they believed that ‘in such differences about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or ways of the worship of God, as may befal men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them of their liberty’.37 Furthermore, within Congregationalism, church power did not belong to the state, but rather, in each congregation, the elders and members together had the power of the keys of excommunication and also the right to call and ordain its own ministers and elders.38 iii. The magistracy must not allow its rightful religious authority to be challenged Although, as we have seen, Owen charged magistrates not to interfere in matters of the church’s worship and discipline, there were certain religious matters in which he thought the magistrate had a vital role. The final threat to proper cooperation of magistracy and ministry, as Owen conceived it, came from those who sought to deny the magistracy’s important, but limited, authority in spiritual things. For him, this was a doggedly persistent challenge in the time period under consideration. Those who challenged the magistrate’s authority in matters of religion included John Goodwin, the Levellers, Roger Williams, Henry Vane and John Milton.39 Owen and the Congregationalists were implacably opposed to any attempt to deny the magistrate’s duty in matters of religion. They believed that the civil power had the duty to promote the true religion and to protect the state from certain forms of religious error. This opposition horrified Roger Williams, who went as far as to say that the ‘(so called) Independents . . . cast down the Crown of the Lord Jesus at the feet of the Civill Magistrate’ even ‘more explicitely than the Presbyterians’.40 The Congregationalists defended the magistrate’s authority in certain matters of religion from both natural theology and Scripture. In Irenicum (1645), Burroughes said that the idea that the magistrate had nothing to do with religion was ‘abhorring to nature’ and ‘against the light of Scripture’.41 During the Whitehall Debates, Philip Nye and Henry Ireton used both types of arguments against John Goodwin and the Levellers.42 In the 1650s, Owen strengthened his appeal to man’s natural knowledge of God in order to shore up the magistrate’s ability to uphold doctrines such as the Trinity and justification by faith alone. As Carl Trueman has shown, Owen drew heavily on the Thomist natural law tradition in the Diatriba de

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Justitia Divina (1653).43 Owen reiterated his conviction in 1659 when he stated that it was ‘contrary to the light and law of nature’ to suggest that ‘the supreme magistrate as such, in any nation, ought not to exert his authority for ‘the supportment, preservation, and furtherance of the profession of the faith and the worship of God’ and in order ‘to forbid, coërce, or restrain such principles and practices as are contrary to them, and destructive of them’.44 Scriptural argument also formed an important part of Owen’s defence of the magistrate’s power in matters of religion. He argued from the exemplary practice of the godly kings and rulers of the Old Testament, for example, David, Asa, Hezekiah, Josiah and Nehemiah.45 He claimed that Scripture commended ‘chiefly’ on account of the fact that each of them did ‘exert his power, legislative and executive, for the supportment, preservation, and furtherance of the profession of the faith and worship of God’.46 An example of Owen’s use of these characters is his praise for kings Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah as those who ‘being instructed in the ways of God, sent princes and priests to teach it in all the cities and towns of Judah’ (2 Chron. 17:7–9; 30:6–9).47 Once again, a position very similar to Owen’s is more systematically laid out in The Cambridge Platform: Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, are much commended by the Holy Ghost, for the putting forth their authority in matters of religion: on the contrary, such kings as have failings this way, are frequently taxed and reproved by the Lord. And not only the kings of Judah, but also Job, Nehemiah, the king of Ninevah, Darius, Artaxerxes, Nebuchadnezzar, whom none looked at as types of Christ, (though were it so, there were no place for any just objection,) are commended in the book of God, for exercising their authority in this way.48 When Roger Williams heard such arguments, his fears were confirmed that the Congregationalists wished to ‘perswade the Mother Old England to imitate her Daughter New England’s practice’.49 Far from believing that the Old Testament kings were models for the magistrate, Williams and John Goodwin argued that the authority of Israel’s rulers over the nation’s religious affairs was properly understood as typologically prefiguring Christ’s rule over the church.50 Owen recognised that there was a typological aspect to the Old Testament Law and Monarchy. In fact, he warned against the danger of carelessly drawing ‘obligatory’ rules from the ‘institutions and examples’ of the Old Testament magistrates in matters of religion. Nevertheless, he argued that, properly interpreted, ‘there is something morall in those Institutions, which, being uncloathed of their judaicall forme, is still binding to all in the like kind’.51 This, then, is Owen’s view of how magistracy and ministry functioned together appropriately when each stayed within their proper bounds. Owen was insistent that, when properly defined and bounded, no one should be allowed to question, undermine or usurp the magistrate’s power in this

130 The obligations of the magistrate matter. He believed that the magistrate’s religious function was confined to two main areas of responsibility. First, the civil power was to acknowledge publicly the true religion and to see it propagated. Secondly, it was to protect against peace-disturbing blasphemy, the spread of heresy and public idolatry. The rest of this chapter will examine how Owen believed the magistrate should exercise such powers.

II. A settlement which must include and protect all the godly The mid-century crisis had rendered the existing church settlement obsolete, and, for many, the proliferation of the sects meant that a new settlement was required urgently. Owen believed that the quest for such a settlement should have as its goal the ‘common interest’ of the saints and include the full number of the godly. i. Limited toleration for the sake of including all who agreed in fundamentals Owen was well aware that the saints were increasingly divided amongst themselves, and so for him to achieve his desired outcome, a distinction had to be made between truths which were fundamental and others which were non-fundamental. This emphasis on fundamental, or foundational, truths was the standard Congregationalist line.52 The fundamental truths that Owen had in mind were those ‘of great weight and importance, such as neerly concern the glory of God’. He believed these fundamentals to be selfevident and necessary for salvation: ‘Some things, indeed, are so clearly in the Scripture laid down and determined, that to question or deny them bespeaks a spirit self-condemned’.53 These first principles were clear, perspicuous and few. An example of such was the doctrine of the Trinity, described by Owen as ‘the great fundamental article of our profession’.54 Non-fundamentals concerned ‘lesse matters of small consequence’, examples of which included some of the disagreements amongst the saints about such things as ‘the administration of ordinances’ or church polity. Owen believed that these fundamental doctrines were to form the basis of ‘established’ religion. The magistrate should not act against those who dissented in non-fundamentals provided they ‘hold the foundation’ and that they dissented in a peaceful manner. He explained that ‘the Magistrate hath no warrant from the Word of God, nor command, rule or precept to enable him, to force such persons to submit unto the truth as by him established (this assumes conscientious dissent) by ‘any civill penalty’.55 This was a call for a strictly limited toleration to be shown towards those amongst the godly who differed over what Owen believed to be secondary matters. All along, the Congregationalists made clear that their calls for forbearance should not be misconstrued as a call for complete toleration. As Burroughes clarified to the House of Lords in November 1645: ‘There is

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a great outcry against toleration of all religions, and we are willing to join against such toleration’. In Irenicum, he stated categorically, ‘They who are for a Congregationall way, doe not hold absolute liberty for all Religions’.56 It is important to note that for Owen, the question of toleration had an important eschatological context within his prophetic chronology. As we saw in Chapter 2, he believed that he was living in a transitional period before a golden age, during which church divisions would be replaced by unity. In Toleration, he spoke of the ‘many promises’ about a time when the church would experience ‘spirituall quiet, and inoffensivenesse in the whole mountain of the Lord’, which would ‘at length be brought forth to the joy of all the children of Sion’.57 In 1656, he similarly described how forbearance in disputes relating to the church settlement was called for ‘untill the Spirit be powr’d down from on high, and the fruits of peace be brought forth thereby’.58 The same idea is recorded the following year in Of Schism, where he argued that disputes would continue and peace would not come until Christ ‘will put forth the greatnesse of his power’ and ‘another Spirit be powred out on the professors of Christianity’. This would come when the churches had ‘risen’ and been ‘shaken out of the dust of Babylon with his Glory shining on them, and the Tabernacle of God is thereby once more placed with men’.59 Thus, Owen’s advocating of limited toleration was an interim measure, for a transitional period, after which toleration would become obsolete. This eschatological perspective on toleration is explained in apocalyptic language by a number of Owen’s colleagues who claimed that in their day the ‘sea of glass’ spoken of in the book of Revelation was still ‘mingled with fire’, which they took to be representative of the ongoing conflict amongst the churches over some matters of doctrine (Rev. 15:2–3). John Cotton suggested that such ‘fiery’ controversies included disagreements over baptism, synodical authority, prophesying, church polity and eucharistic doctrine. The Congregationalists anticipated a time to come when the ‘sea’ would be transformed into ‘the sea of glass like unto crystal’, which they believed to represent clarity of vision in the understanding of doctrine (Rev. 4:6). A similar apocalyptic image, which they used to signify present confusion caused by differences in doctrine, was drawn from the idea of the temple being filled with smoke during the pouring out of the vials of judgment (Rev. 15).60 The conclusion of these arguments implied the eventual triumph of truth over error and, in particular, the vindication of congregational church polity. Until that time, limited toleration was required to craft a church settlement which would include all the godly who were agreed on fundamentals. ii. Protecting against peace-disturbing blasphemy, heresy and public idolatry Owen called the magistrate to protect the nation against public blasphemy, the spread of heresy and idolatry. This was by way of restraint, not requiring obedience, but restraining and punishing public disobedience. Owen

132 The obligations of the magistrate summarised his position in these words: ‘That to revile, or to blaspheme this God, or his Name, is an evil punished by them who have jus puniendi, or the right restraint in them, or committed to them’.61 This assumed that the godly magistrate was a keeper of both tables of the decalogue (a core confessional idea amongst the Congregationalists).62 For instance, when Thomas Goodwin presented the Savoy Declaration (1658) to Richard Cromwell he declared: ‘We look at the magistrates as custos utriusque tabulae, and so commit it to your trust, to countenance and propagate’.63 In January 1649, Owen insisted that ‘Offences against the first Table’ which resulted in ‘disturbances of publick peace’ were punishable. He did question ‘some mens apprehensions’ of what constituted public blasphemy and idolatry, believing that they delved too deeply into the private thoughts of those who peacefully might dissent.64 There was, however, no such hesitation when he spoke of the ‘noise and clamours’ from various sects that had recently ‘sprung up’ voicing ‘contempt for all [God’s] Ordinances’.65 By ‘Ordinances’, Owen is referring to the outward means of grace within the church, namely preaching, the sacraments, and censure. At the time, some of the godly were concerned to restrain men like William Erbery. Erbery served as a chaplain to John Lambert’s regiment and, amongst other things, claimed that water-baptism had terminated with the Apostles.66 Owen called Parliament, in no uncertain terms, to ‘assert, maintain [and] uphold the order of the gospel, and administration of the ordinances of Christ’ by its ‘Protection, Countenance, Authority [and] Laws’.67 If fundamental errors were publicly espoused in a manner which showed ‘contempt and scorn’ for the truth, Owen stipulated that the magistrate must ‘vindicate the honour of God, by corporall restraints’. As an example of what he had in mind, Owen offered the anti-Trinitarian phrase ‘Tricipitem Cerberum’.68 As Sarah Mortimer has shown, such rhetoric was used by Michael Servetus and, in Owen’s day, by Paul Best.69 For Owen, the issue was not ‘dis-beleeving’ the truth, but rather the resultant public blasphemy of ‘reviling opprobious speeches’. Owen also stated that those who by ‘vice or sin, draw others to a pretended Religion’ deserved a double punishment’.70 Several months later, Owen praised Parliament for its defeat of the Levellers, singling out their hostility to ministers of the gospel because they ‘administer ordinances’.71 In 1650, Owen appeared to be particularly concerned about so-called ‘Ranter’ ideas: those preachers of a ‘high and heavenly notion which have an open and experimented tendency to earthly, fleshly, dunghill practices’.72 He told Parliament that if it failed to act, Ireland in particular was in danger of becoming a ‘Frippery of Monstrous, Enormous Contradictious Opinions’.73 That year there were three pieces of Parliamentary legislation which went some way to addressing his concerns. In June, there was an Act to suppress the Ranters, closely followed in August with an Act against Blasphemy (it is unlikely that this would have satisfied Owen because it failed to define what he believed to be fundamental errors such as anti-Trinitarianism). Thirdly, in September, the Rump passed the Act for

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the Relief of Religion and Peaceable People. Despite this legislation, Owen continued to call Parliament to act to protect the nation against the spread of heresy. In 1651, he once again warned MPs of the diabolical scheme of some sects who planned to do away with the ordinances of Christ.74 In February 1652, days after he had preached at Ireton’s funeral, Owen and some other Congregationalists appeared at the bar of the Commons to submit a petition calling for Parliament to take action over the recent republication of the Latin Racovian Catechism (1651). A committee was formed to address the matter and Owen was one of ten ministers who were appointed as advisors. It was duly condemned as ‘Blasphemous, Erronious and Scandalous’ and consigned to the flames.75 The magistrate’s duty to protect the state from those who would publicly abuse the true religion continued to be an important emphasis for Owen. In 1656, he told MPs: ‘Where men under a pretence of Religion’ act to ‘defile themselves, or disturb the civile peace’ they must be shown that the magistrate’s ‘Sword is not borne in vaine’.76 Similarly, in 1659, he argued that ‘things, or opinions of publike scandall, National demerite, and reproach to the profession of the Gospel, ought to be restrained from being divulged by that publike speaking of the Press, or in Extrafamiliall Assemblies’.77 Owen was exercised about those who endeavoured to incite the people to deny the magistrate’s role in religion, and he called the magistrate to take a strong line against such proponents. Such a denial was an error which, in its ‘own nature’, would ‘tend to the disturbance of public peace’. For Owen, this was one of the reasons why the ‘Popish religion’ was not to be tolerated because it was ‘a fatal engine against all magistracy’. More generally, anyone ‘perswaded that the power of the Magistrate is in Christian Religion groundlesse, unwarrantable, unlawfull’ and who took action to ‘stir up the people to the abolishing and removall of that power’ should ‘be proceeded against by them who bear not the sword in vain’. Here Owen held out the case of ‘what happened once in Germany’ and, rather ominously, speculated ‘may do so again in other places’.78 This is a reference to Jan of Leiden’s millenarian Melchiorite experiment in the town of Münster in Westphalia (1534–35), frequently used as a warning against those who sought to deny magisterial power in religion.79 Owen thought it much more straightforward to determine the magistrate’s responsibilities towards any ‘publick places’ used for what the state judged as ‘false and abominable worship’. It was, he said, the magistrate’s duty ‘to demolish all outward appearances and demonstrations of such superstitious, idolatrous and unacceptable service’. Things to be removed by the magistrate went beyond simply Laudian innovations and included many things left untouched during earlier periods of reformation. Owen called for the removal of: ‘Papists Images, Altars, Pictures, and the like, Turks Mosckes; Prelates Service book’ and also ‘Crosses’. He also said that the magistrate must not allow Somerset House to be used for the service of the Mass (in 1643 the Commons ordered that ‘all the Vestments and Utensils, belonging

134 The obligations of the magistrate to the Altars and Chapel of Somerset House be forthwith burnt’).80 Owen supported this by appealing to the command that the Israelites destroy the worship centres of the Canaanite religion (Deut. 12:1–3).81 Given that most of what he considered idolatrous had been removed by the time Owen was writing in 1649, his comments should be taken first of all as heaping condemnation upon those responsible for the worship at Somerset House. Furthermore, in a context where some wanted to curtail the magistrate’s power in matters of religion, this action demonstrated the importance of the magistrate retaining power to act against breaches of the first table of the law. A decade later, Owen stated that the policy of the magistrate acting to protect against public idolatry had been ‘visibly owned and blessed of God’: namely, ‘the Removal of Idolatry, destroying of Idols and Images, prohibiting the Masse, declaring and asserting the doctrine of the Gospel, supporting professors of it’.82 Thus, the settlement pursued by Owen would protect the full number of the godly by excluding none of them. Furthermore, it would be one which would see them protected from peace-disturbing blasphemy, the spread of heresy and also public idolatry. This role of protection was the first duty incumbent upon the magistrate. We turn now to examine the second, namely the propagation of the gospel.

III. Proposals for a church settlement which would see the gospel propagated Owen’s 1646 ‘Macedonian call’ to the English Parliament envisaged a public ministry ‘acknowledged, owned, and maintained by the supreme magistrate’.83 Such propagation of the gospel required structures of national ministry in which Parliament maintained godly, well-educated preachers and refused to support those who would not, or could not, further the task of the propagation of the gospel. Traditionally, the national ministry had been financed through a system of tithes. Although not opposed to tithes, Owen favoured an alternative model of maintenance, perhaps such as is outlined in the Cambridge Platform, which stated that individual congregations were responsible for the maintenance of their own ministers but if, ‘through the corruption of men’, this were not possible, ‘the magistrate is to see the ministry duly provided for’.84 In February 1650, Owen preached to Parliament upon his return from the Irish expedition. His sermon had a particular focus on the need for Parliament to seek to propagate the gospel in Ireland. He gave an impassioned first-hand account of what he had witnessed, speaking of the ‘Tears and Cryes of the inhabitants of Dublin after the Manifestations of Christ’.85 Elsewhere, he revealed how in Dublin, he had been constantly preaching to ‘a numerous multitude, of as thirsting a People after the Gospel as ever yet I conversed withal’.86 After the violence in which he claimed to see Christ ‘as a Lyon stayning all his garments with the bloud of his Enemies’, he pressed

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Parliament to send preachers to the island in order to ‘hold [Christ] out as a Lamb sprinkled with his own bloud to his friends’. This concern was accentuated by his fears about preachers who had already travelled to Ireland ‘without call, without employments’ who were, he believed, ‘seducers and blasphemers’ (he had previously called the magistrate to bring under his cognisance those who wander about with ‘no calling . . . under a pretence of teaching the truth, without mission, without call, without warrant’).87 To this end, Owen’s sermon proposed that Parliament should send ‘one Gospel Preacher for every Walled Town in the English possession in IRELAND’. Practically, he suggested that a committee be appointed to ‘hear what sober PROPOSALS’ might come regarding how best to further this aim. No doubt spurred on by the Rump Parliament having the previous week established the Commission for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales, Owen was hoping to revitalise the Irish Ordinance for the Propagation of the Gospel from November 1649.88 That Owen thought himself amongst those bringing sober proposals is clear from the sermon’s dedicatory epistle which describes the printed tract as ‘a serious proposal for the advancement and propagation of the Gospel in another land’. This was successful, and on 8 March 1650, an ‘Act for the Better Advancement of the Gospel and Learning in Ireland’ was passed, vesting the property of the late Archbishop of Dublin and the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral in 15 commissioners (of whom Owen was one).89 At Ireton’s high-profile funeral, Owen continued to urge those with authority to use their ‘industry and wisdom’ to determine how ‘places destitute of the gospel .  .  . might be furnished and supplied’, cautioning them to be ‘diligent’ in the work, not letting it ‘too long hang upon your hands’.90 Days later, after Owen and some other Congregationalists appeared before Parliament, the Rump created a Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel.91 Mortimer suggests that Owen may have wished to take advantage of Ireton’s legacy in order to call Parliament to greater religious reform.92 A week later Owen and his colleagues submitted a blueprint for a church settlement to the committee in the form of a list of 15 proposals which they duly published as The Humble Proposals of Mr Owen, Mr Tho Goodwin, Mr Nye, Mr Simpson and Other Ministers (1652). The title page reveals its consistency with what we have seen Owen believed to be the two broad duties of the magistrate, namely supplying ‘all Parishes in England with able, godly and Orthodox Ministers’ and also dealing with ‘dangerous Errors and Blasphemies’. It included provision for the vetting, supervising and maintenance of ministers.93 All people were required to attend public worship, apart from those who, out of a ‘scruple of conscience’, would meet in alternative venues notified to the magistrate. Any ministers who opposed ‘those Principles of Christian Religion, without the acknowledgment whereof the Scriptures doe clearly and plainly affirme, that salvation is not to be obtained’ would ‘not be suffered to preach or promulgate any thing in opposition unto such Principles’.94

136 The obligations of the magistrate These Humble Proposals resulted in a barrage of criticism from the sects and other champions of a fuller toleration such as Roger Williams (just recently returned from New England), Henry Vane, John Milton and Marchamont Nedham.95 They were, however, an attempt for a broad settlement, and, as Coffey points out, even John Goodwin was persuaded to subscribe to them.96 In October, Owen was once again preaching before Parliament. As he had done at Ireton’s funeral, he selected a text from the book of Daniel (the Cambridge Platform described Daniel as an exemplary magistrate). This was perhaps a shrewd move in that, as a non-monarchical Old Testament magistrate in a pagan state, it was more difficult to bring typological objections to bear on the example. Owen took as his text Dan. 7:15–16: I Daniel was grieved in my Spirit, in the middest of my body, and the Visions of my head troubled me. I came neere to one of them that stood by, and asked him the Truth of all this: so he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things. Blair Worden’s description of it as a ‘vexed and despairing sermon’ requires qualification.97 Owen places Parliament alongside Daniel in a state of ‘perplexity and trouble’ but assumed for himself the position of the one who is able to furnish it with the true interpretation. Taking up the theme of the magistrate propagating the gospel, Owen describes MPs as those who had sought ‘strength and direction’ in the ‘propagation’ of the kingdom of Christ and ‘the preventing that which is contrary to sound doctrine and godlynesse’. He believed that God had put a desire into their hearts ‘to vindicate and assert the Gospell of Jesus Christ, his waies, and his Ordinances, against all opposition’.98 Owen advised Parliament not to endeavour to ‘set up forms of government to compel men to come under the line of them, or to thrust your sword to cut the lesser differences of brethren’. Far from changing his views, he explicitly refers readers of the sermon back to his Toleration (1649). He reminded them that ‘error and falsehood have no Right or Title, either from God or man, unto any privilege, protection, advantage, liberty or any good thing’. Furthermore, the prerequisite for any toleration is that the peace not be disturbed, either ‘directly’ or ‘morally’.99 The Rump appeared to respond to Owen’s plea by reviving the Committee for Propagation. Parliament then asked the authors of the Proposals to specify what ‘those Principles of the Christian Religion’ were and in December the Humble Proposals were issued containing their answer in the form of 16 Principles of Christian Religion . . . in explanation of one of the said Proposals.100 Following the structure of the Apostles’ Creed, these were a list of fundamental Reformed Orthodox doctrines ‘without the beliefe of which, the Scriptures doe plainly and clearly affirme, Salvation is not to be obtained’.101 However, with the dissolution of the Rump Parliament, this came to nothing.102 There were similarly unsuccessful attempts to reach a settlement during the Nominated Assembly of 1653.103

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Even before the end of the Nominated Assembly, Lambert had been drafting the new constitution, the Instrument of Government. Its religious articles outlined a settlement that was in some measure compatible with Owen’s thought.104 However, without a statement of fundamental doctrines the Instrument was ambiguous.105 In the early months of 1654, Owen and other ministers held meetings with the Protector to discuss the church settlement and two Protectoral Ordinances were issued which made significant steps towards a religious settlement.106 The first established the Commission for the Approbation of Public Preachers. This central committee of 38 ‘triers’ (including nine laymen) would vet and approve candidates for parish ministry and existing ministers seeking new positions. They included Congregationalists (of whom one was Owen), Particular Baptists and moderate Presbyterians. The second Protectoral Ordinance established county lay commissions for the ejection of ‘ignorant, scandalous, insufficient or negligent’ ministers and schoolmasters (Owen was appointed to assist the local Oxfordshire ‘ejectors’).107 There were, however, implicit fault lines, and since at least April 1654, Owen and Thomas Goodwin had been working together in Oxford on ‘a mor general Confession of Fayth, as might draw al to an agreement’.108 At the end of August, Archibald Johnston heard that ‘M. Ouen sayd of [Lambert] that, if he got the power, al the godly in thes nations would be ruyned’.109 This is indicative of Owen having an alternative understanding of the religious clauses of the Instrument at variance to the one who drafted it. During the First Protectorate Parliament, Owen was among those ministers who met to draw up a statement of the ‘Publike Profession’ provided for by the Instrument.110 At this time, Owen was increasingly concerned about the Socinian threat and the need for the national confession to articulate clearly Reformed fundamentals to address the growing anti-Trinitarianism. Parliament now asserted that ‘the true reformed Protestant Christian religion as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and no other, shall be asserted and maintained, as the public profession of these nations’. Owen’s subcommittee produced 20 explicitly Reformed fundamentals, but these were laid aside and came to nothing.111 Two years later, the parliamentary debate concerning the case of the Quaker James Nayler persuaded many of the inadequacy of the religious articles of the Instrument of Government.112 The Instrument protected Nayler because he professed ‘faith in God by Jesus Christ’. This, combined with other issues in the winter of 1656–57, led to the replacement of the Instrument of Government first by a Remonstrance and then by what eventually came to be known as the Humble Petition and Advice.113 In 1658, Owen claimed that in the religious settlement envisaged in the ‘Petition and Advice’, Parliament had ‘come up to my judgment’, one which he had held since the mid-1640s.114 This new settlement comprised what Owen deemed necessary for a church settlement. There was provision for a national ‘Confession of Faith’, and limited toleration for non-fundamental differences in ‘Doctrine,

138 The obligations of the magistrate Worship, or Discipline, from the publick Profession held forth’, for those who ‘profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His eternal Son, the true God, and in the Holy Spirit, God co-equal with the Father and the Son, one God blessed for ever’. In other words, anti-Trinitarians, such as Quakers and Socinians, were portrayed as being outside the bounds of acceptable orthodoxy. The magistrate was also to exercise restraining power by not permitting anyone the freedom ‘to revile or reproach the confession of faith’.115 Owen’s position is summed up in the Savoy Declaration XXIV.iii: Although the Magistrate is bound to incourage, promote, and protect the Professors and Profession of the Gospel, and to manage and order civil administrations in a due subserviency to the interest of Christ in the World, and to that end to take care that men of coroupt minds and conversations do not licentiously publish and divulge Blasphemy and Errors, in their own nature, subverting the faith, and inevitably destroying the souls of them that receive them: Yet in such differences about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or ways of the worship of God, as may befal men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways of worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them of their liberty. For Owen, such a settlement was full of potential for the propagation of the gospel. Magistracy and ministry were kept within their respective boundaries, the full number of the godly could be included, the spread of antiTrinitarian heresy could be prevented and the system of triers and ejectors allowed for the vetting and supervising of the clergy.

IV. Owen’s preferred settlement as a via media The Reformation settlement within the English church had permitted a limited toleration for a variety of Reformed beliefs and practices, so long as order and episcopal authority were upheld.116 The polemical trope of the ‘via media’ was employed by various parties in order to present their own position as irenic and moderate and to cast the other as disruptive.117 Owen deployed this rhetorical device to present the type of settlement which he had been pursuing since the mid 1640s as a via media between authoritarian Presbyterianism and chaotic separatists. In this he was following the lead given by the Dissenting Brethren who portrayed themselves as occupying the middle ground. In the preface which Nye and Goodwin penned for Cotton’s Keyes, they claimed: ‘As for ourselves, we are yet, neither afraid, nor ashamed to make profession (in that midest of all of the high waves on both sides dashing on us) that the substance of this brief extract . . . is that very middle way (which in our Apology we did in the general intimate and intent) between that which is called Brownism, and the Presbyterial

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Government’. Similarly, Burroughes in his Irenicum claimed to occupy a middle way between advocates of a strict uniformity and those who called for ‘absolute liberty for all Religions’. In order rightly to understand Owen’s preaching, it is important to realise that he is endeavouring to hold what he saw as a middle line which would include all the godly in the church settlement he was pursuing. After the victory at Naseby, Parliament was less reliant upon the Scots, and advocates of a high Presbyterian settlement endeavoured to bolster their influence by styling the Congregationalists as part of the sectarian threat. Congregationalists were indignant that they were included in catalogues of heresy such as Thomas Edwards’s massive Gangraena (1646). Only weeks before Owen preached, Caryl had stood in Edwards’s own pulpit and before Parliament, the City, and the Westminster Assembly, had plainly stated, ‘I shall never believe all Heresiographers’.118 Owen preached just before the second part of Edwards’s work appeared and was horrified to discover that some wrongly believed his sermon had ‘helped to open a gate, for that which is now called a Troian Horse’. In other words, some claimed that Owen had ‘undermined’ church government and had called for ‘a toleration of different perswasions’.119 As noted in Chapter 2, the other preacher at the parliamentary fast was James Nalton. His sermon warned of the danger of toleration: Beware lest out of Cowardize or carnall feares, out of sinfull complyance and conformity to the wils of men, ye TOLERATE what God would not have TOLERATED . . . [and] exchange the Prelacie for an Universall Liberty.120 Consequently, Nalton urged Parliament to follow the Westminster Assembly’s statement of ‘the minde of Christ in point of government’ by acting to ‘Hasten a setling’ of church government in order to curtail the spread of a deadly ‘Gangrene’.121 Owen did not accept the simple antithesis offered by Nalton and those seeking Presbyterian uniformity: either toleration with ‘errours, haeresies, sins . . . plagues, judgements, [and] punishments’ or Presbyterianism as ‘the only way’. Owen employed some of the tropes used by those advocating a high Presbyterian settlement, for example ‘temple building, Gods Government, Christs sceptre, throne, Kingdom’.122 He refused to believe that the disagreement and confusion which existed among the godly was caused by ‘want of Church-Government’. He thought it naive to suggest that by implementing Presbyterian uniformity, ‘they could in an houre put an end to all our disturbances’. Owen placed the emphasis instead on the propagation of the gospel by godly preaching, by the means of which, he contended, ‘the doctrine of the Gospel might make way for the Discipline of the Gospel’.123 In order to clarify his position, when publishing his sermon, Owen appended a particularly apposite work entitled A Short Defensative about

140 The obligations of the magistrate Church Government, Toleration and Petitions about These Things. In this, Owen endeavoured to lay out his middle way by offering nine propositions which demonstrated how his position was distinct from both radical tolerationists who were pushing for far more sweeping changes (e.g., John Goodwin, Henry Robinson, William Walwyn and Roger Williams) and the anti-tolerationists wishing to impose strict jure divino Presbyterianism. Owen’s sermon from January 1649 with the appended treatise on Toleration must also be understood as a plea for a middle way, rather than a call for a toleration, from which he would eventually distance himself. Owen explained how he believed the toleration debate had taken on ‘sinful and dangerous extremes’, and so he laid out some ‘positive observations’ in which he hoped to find agreement from both sides, thus ‘pouring a little cold water upon the common flames.124 The immediate context for the publication of Toleration was the public rebuke of the Rump Parliament by the Scots in which they denounced the policy of ‘a Toleration unto all Errours’ apart from ‘Popery and compulsion’.125 This afforded Owen the opportunity to do two things. First, Owen was able to reassure those who had heard the Congregationalists’ strong line on the role of the magistrate in religion during the Whitehall debates that what was being suggested did not involve the persecution of true religion.126 Secondly, it allowed him to condemn those who sought to wreck the alliance between the Congregationalists and some Presbyterians. The portrayal of those who sought to enforce Presbyterian uniformity as Antichristian became a common theme for Owen over the next few years. In Toleration, Owen is constantly drawing parallels between the arguments and rhetoric used by Presbyterians and those that had been used by what he described as persecuting Rome, whether pagan or papal. In a caricature common amongst the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians were portrayed as being like, or even more severe than, the Laudians.127 Owen highlighted the rhetoric used against the godly, noting how ‘our friends’ employ the pejorative language previously used only by our enemies for example, mocking the ‘Parliament of Saints’, the ‘Army of Saints’, and God’s ‘precious ones’.128 He had said the same thing in 1646 when he likened the Presbyterian use of the term ‘sectaries’, despite knowing ‘the odiousnesse of the name’, to the Laudian usage of the term ‘Puritan’.129 Owen also charged the high Presbyterians with spreading lies about ‘Brownists and Puritans’. To Owen, this was the latest manifestation of a trend which had spanned church history. He called attention to the hellish ‘gall’ of rhetoric which he believed had often been deployed to speak of members of the true church, for example the early church, the Waldenses, Wycliffe and his followers, as well as Luther and Calvin. Concluding that it was fitting for adherents of the false prophet to give false accounts of the saints, he identified this as a mark of ‘the dragon’, namely the portrayal of saints as ‘Devilish . . . that under that forme they might fit them for Fire and Fagot’.130

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As well as identifying what he believed to be Antichristian rhetoric, Owen also saw marks of Antichrist in the methods suggested by those who wished to use the magistrate’s power to enforce a narrow uniformity. The ‘weapons of the Dragon’ were ‘Banishment, Imprisonment, Mine-digging, Torturing in sundry kinde, Mayming, Death, according to the pleasure of the Judges’.131 Owen paints a picture of the same weapons being used throughout church history. They had been wielded by the Roman emperors who persecuted Christians by deporting them to the mines and then also by the Papacy, under whom the likes of Cardinal Bellarmine argued for their use against the Reformers.132 Owen believed that behind all these persecuting magistrates stood ‘Turbulent Priests and aspiring Prelates’ and, by implication, in his contemporary context, coercive Presbyterian divines.133 In particular, Owen was seeking to counter the arguments of those who were calling for ‘corporall punishment’ of those in error – those ‘Divines of no small Name’, who pursued a policy of forceable opposition, restraint and punishment.134 These were ‘Pen-men, both in our own, and our neighbour Nation’ who had once written against religious persecution but who had now taken up ‘the weapons’ previously used against them.135 Owen speaks of a ‘wholesome Severity’, the title of a book by George Gillespie, a Scottish commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, written ‘to vindicate the lawful, yea necessary use of the coercive power of the Christian Magistrate in suppressing and punishing heretics and sectaries’. In it, Gillespie explicitly sent out a warning to the Congregationalists: O doe not involve your selves in the plea of Toleration with the Separatists and Anabaptists. Do not partake in their Separation, lest you partake in their suppression. Let us heare no more Paraeneticks for Toleration, or liberty of Conscience.136 According to Owen, the point was not that these Presbyterians had a role for the magistrate in suppressing heresy: it was that they were advocating the use of the magistrate’s sword against those who dissented peacefully in secondary matters. For Owen, this was an attempt to use ‘the Broome of Antichrist, to sweep the Church of Christ’.137 After exposing as Antichristian the rhetoric and methods of those who sought to enlist the magistrate in persecution, Owen turned to assess the substantive arguments used in support of this agenda. According to Owen, one of the main arguments of those who sought to co-opt the power of the magistrate to advance religious uniformity was that toleration disturbed the peace of the commonwealth and called forth plagues of divine wrath.138 Owen countered this by demonstrating that some of the bloodiest episodes in history came from religious coercion: for example, Emperor Valens, who, he argued, was more cruel than his ‘Pagan Predecessors, [in] killing, burning, slaying’; the Byzantine Iconoclasm of the eight and ninth centuries; and the Albigensies, whom Bellarmine ‘boasted’ that he had ‘extinguished by the

142 The obligations of the magistrate Sword’.139 For Owen, it was not toleration that called forth divine wrath, but rather, the persecution of the godly. Parliament, he opined, should be more concerned about the danger of provoking ‘the angel of the covenant’ rather than offending advocates of the Solemn League and Covenant in the City of London. This contention was reinforced by offering numerous providentialist evidences of the ‘sad consideration concerning the End and Issue, which the Lord in his righteous Judgement hath in all Ages given to Persecutors and Persecution’. Owen rehearsed a grisly catalogue of the unnatural deaths of eleven of the persecuting Roman emperors.140 Particularly tellingly, given the Scottish dimension to this toleration debate, he pointed to the eventual assassination of Cardinal David Beaton for his part in the burning of the Scottish Reformers Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart as heretics.141 He was insistent that legislation against idolatry and blasphemy was not the best response to peaceful dissent – particularly if those in question were ‘sound in so many fundamentals’. The legislation he had in mind may have included the Blasphemy Ordinance of 2 May 1648 (passed at a time when it was politic to appease the Scots and the Presbyterians), which included provisions for imprisonment for stating that Presbyterian polity was unlawful.142 In Owen’s sermon from October 1652, he spoke of the ‘perplexity’ facing Parliament because of the ‘Extreames’ and ‘extravigancies’ of the various parties involved in the quest for a church settlement: say some, the Magistrate must not support the Gospell; say others, the Gospell must subvert the Magistrate: say some, your rule is only for men, as men, you have nothing to doe with the interest of Christ and the Church: say others, you have nothing to doe to rule men but upon the account of being Saints.143 By contrast, Owen endeavours to occupy what he claimed was the middle ground (not a difficult task, given that the Fifth Monarchist Christopher Feake was also preaching).144 For maximum impact, Owen quotes those who refer shockingly to the clergy as ‘Chemarims’ and ‘Locusts’ – something Feake’s associate John Simpson had done.145 He endeavoured to present the moderation of his position by contrasting it with other more extreme positions: on the one hand, if ‘you shall say, you have nothing to doe with Religion as Rulers of the Nation, God will quickly manifest that he hath nothing to doe with you as Rulers of the nation’; on the other, do not ‘set up formes of Government, to compell men to come under the line of them’, or ‘thrust in your sword to cutt the lesser differences of brethren’.146 When the Second Protectorate Parliament gathered, Owen addressed it twice. First, on 17 September 1656, he exhorted members to promote a ‘coalescency in love and truth’ with a ‘mutuall forbearance of one another’ among ‘the people of God’.147 One of Owen’s main themes in this sermon is the call for Parliament to pursue the ‘common’ or ‘generall interest of all the Sons and Daughters of Sion’. He lists the different agendas that exist in the

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search for a church settlement: some call for ‘a forme of Church worship and discipline [to] be established, such a rule of doctrine confirmed to which ‘all men are compelled to submit’; others call for ministerial maintenance to be ‘destroyed’ as ‘Antichristian’; and still others call for what Owen sees as the abolition of ‘Law and Magistracy’ in order to make way for the rule of the Saints. Using an illustration from Plato, Owen suggested asking people what their second best option would be as a way of finding a satisfactory settlement for all the godly based on the people’s common interest. Through this, he believed that Parliament might be instrumental in the settling of ‘Zion’.148 The following month he reminded MPs of their responsibility to protect, encourage and, where necessary, instruct the godly. He made it clear that he was not speaking about ‘this or that party’, but rather about all of ‘those who seek the face of God’ in ‘these Nations’. Addressing some things which have ‘of late’ been done in regard to ‘the publick profession of Religion in the land’, Owen stated his belief that once ‘envie, and anger, and disappointment shall cease’, then, all the godly in the nation will rejoice. Recognising that many were unhappy with the church settlement, he nonetheless expressed his confidence that it would eventually be seen to have been good for all the godly in the nation. He highlighted how in Wales nearly all were ‘running into extremes’ to the detriment of the propagation of the gospel. He thus presented his position as a compromise. First, he distanced himself from the ‘misguided zeal’ of the Welsh Commission for the Propagation of the Gospel who, under Major-General Harrison, had in the three years of its existence ejected 278 clergy from their livings whilst failing to find suitable replacements. Secondly, he portrayed those at the opposite extreme as being committed only to ‘formality’, impossible to satisfy except by a return to ‘beggarly Readers in every Parish’.149 Owen believed that if party spirit were to be abandoned, and if Parliament implemented the church settlement he favoured, there was the potential to unite all the godly. By constantly claiming the middle ground, he sought to make his proposed settlement more reasonable, and thereby made other proposals appear extreme and lacking the potential to be truly comprehensive.

V. Conclusion Owen and his associates were indeed ‘Magisterial’ Congregationalists. Throughout the period covered in this study, Owen had a consistent understanding of a magistrate-led reformation. This would see the magistracy and ministry cooperating in order to be a powerful force for national reformation. In order for this to happen, the proper relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical powers had to be defined. Here, once again, the apocalyptic motif of ‘unravelling’ the mystery of iniquity was deployed with the insistence that both the ministry and the magistracy should have due mutual respect for the boundaries that existed between their respective spheres. Three principles were observed which describe what it meant for

144 The obligations of the magistrate these powers to remain within their respective ‘bounds’. First, the civil power must not allow ministers to meddle in secular affairs, still less seek to usurp or co-opt its power. Secondly, the magistrate was not to encroach upon the domain of the church’s worship and discipline. Thirdly, the civil government must not allow any to question or undermine the very important (although strictly limited) religious responsibilities it possessed. For Owen, the civil power’s function in matters of religion was confined to two main areas of responsibility. First, the government was to acknowledge publicly the true religion and endeavour to see it propagated. Secondly, it was to protect against peace-disturbing blasphemy, the spread of heresy and public idolatry. Owen was insistent that any proposed religious settlement would include the full number of the godly. To this end, a distinction was made between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines. This allowed for a limited toleration, one which the Congregationalists were adamant should not be misconstrued as a call for complete religious toleration. Here, there was an important eschatological perspective because this toleration was provisional, designed to protect the godly during a transitional period until such times when truth had triumphed over error. The Cromwellian church settlement, rooted in the policies of the Dissenting Brethren, had important similarities to the position laid out in the New England Cambridge Platform (1648), and it found mature expression in the Savoy Declaration (1658). Owen himself claimed that the church settlement envisaged under the Humble Petition and Advice of 1657 was that which he had been advocating for over a decade, assuming, that is, that all the constitutive elements (such as the confession of faith) had been agreed. For Owen, it offered the potential for the gospel to be propagated through structures which would vet and supervise the clergy, whilst also protecting the fundamentals of the true religion by preventing the spread of anti-Trinitarian heresy. Owen always portrayed his favoured settlement as part of a quest for a broad ‘middle-way’ option which ought to be acceptable to all parties whom he thought legitimately to deserve a share in it. Owen has been mistakenly charged with inconsistency in this area. In 1670, writing against the dissenters, George Vernon suggested that Owen was something of a ‘weathercock’ when it came to his thinking on government and toleration – ‘notwithstanding his zeal in 1648 . . . before 1652 he altered his Mind’.150 In his study of the Rump Parliament, Worden claimed that in 1649, Owen thought it repressive for the state to impose ‘fundamentals’ in religion, but by 1652, he was seeking to impose them himself (although Worden later conceded that Owen’s position appears ‘less inconsistent’). Some have even wrongly portrayed Owen as an advocate of religious toleration.151 However, such apparent differences are explained by changing contexts which warranted different emphases. Most noticeably, there was a shift from standing against the perceived threat of Presbyterian tyranny towards a rapprochement with many Presbyterians in view of the perceived dangers posed by the Quakers and Socinianism in its various

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shades. As we shall see in the next chapter, this attempt at a via media started to collapse as it became clear that such a settlement was only truly favoured by a relatively small number of the godly.

Notes 1 Jeffrey R. Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 102–14. 2 G.W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 1999). 3 Owen, A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646), 3, 44–5 [viii.7, 40–1]. Five months before this, in November 1645, Jeremiah Burroughes highlighted that ‘There are at this day, thousands of Congregations in England, who want able Preachers, especially in remote parts, as Cumberland, Westmerland, divers parts of York-shire’. See A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Peeres (1645), 47. Christopher Hill, ‘Puritans and the “Dark Corners of the Land”’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, 13 (1963): 77–102. 4 Owen, ‘Country Essay’ (1646), in Works, viii.49, 57. 5 Owen, A Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate about Religion (1649), 72–3, 78–9 [viii.188–9, 194]. 6 Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 28 [viii.154]. 7 Owen, Concerning the Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God (Oxford, 1652), 53 [viii.394]. 8 Collins, Allegiance, 104. 9 John Cotton, Keyes of the Kingdome (1644), ‘Epistle to the Reader’. Owen describes the influence that Cotton’s Keyes had upon him in ‘A Review of the True Nature of Schism, with a Vindication of the Congregational Churches in England’ (1657), in Works, xiii.222–3. 10 Jeremiah Burroughes, Irenicum, to the Lovers of Truth and Peace (1645), 153. 11 Matthew Barker, A Christian Standing & Moving upon the True Foundation (1648), 41–2. 12 Charles D. Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate: A Renaissance Physician in the Second Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 13 W.J. Torrance Kirby, The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 14 Michael Mahony, ‘Presbyterianism in the City of London, 1645–1647’, Historical Journal 22 (1979): 93–114; J.R. de Witt, Jus Divinum: The Westminster Assembly and the Divine Right of Church Government (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1969), 100–66. 15 Collins, Allegiance, 71–9. 16 Valerie Pearl, ‘London Puritans and Scotch Fifth Columnists: A Mid-SeventeenthCentury Phenomenon’, in A.E.J. Hollaender and W. Kellaway, eds., Studies in London History (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969), 320, 325–32; Valerie Pearl, ‘London’s Counter-Revolution’, in G.E. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646–1660 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 29–56; Keith Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), 356–67. 17 Baillie, ii.90, 362.

146 The obligations of the magistrate 18 John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 207–11. 19 Elliot C. Vernon, ‘The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during the English Revolution’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (1999), 90–9. 20 CJ, iv.513; de Witt, Jus Divinum, 195–6. 21 A.F. Mitchell and J.B. Struthers, Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (Edinburgh, 1874), 449–55. The great fourteenth-century statutes of praemunire forbade all invasions of the king’s regality, especially any activity by an ecclesiastical court that diminished the authority of the king’s courts. G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 339. 22 Mark Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 86–7; A Petition of Citizens of London Presented to the Common Councell for Their Concurrence . . . and Submission to Parliament (1646); LJ, viii.332–4; Thomas Juxon, The Journal of Thomas Juxon, ed. Keith Lindley and David Scott (London: Royal Historical Society, 1999), 122. 23 Lindley, Popular Politics, 382–6. 24 Rosemary Bradley, ‘The Failure of Accommodation: Religious Conflicts between Presbyterians and Independents in the Westminster Assembly, 1643–1646’, Journal of Religious History 12 (1982): 23–47. 25 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 25, 30–1 [viii.25, 29–30]. 26 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26 [viii.26]; ‘Country Essay’, viii.46. 27 Thomas Edwards, Gangræna (1646), 105. 28 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 45 [viii.41]. 29 Abbott, ii.196–205; Austin H. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 473; Toby C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: English Government and Reform in Ireland, 1649–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 172, detects Ireton’s influence in the counter-declaration. 30 Alexander Jaffray, Diary of Alexander Jaffray, ed. J.M.G. Barclay (Aberdeen: G&R King, 1856), 37. 31 Abbott, ii.325. 32 R. Scott Spurlock, Cromwell in Scotland: Conquest and Religion, 1650–1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007), 55; Collins, Allegiance, 196. 33 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 38 [viii.386]. 34 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), 22 [viii.96]; Brian Lyndon, ‘Essex and the King’s Cause in 1648’, Historical Journal 29 (1986): 19. 35 Cambridge Platform (1648), XVII.v: ‘Of the Civil Magistrate’s Power in Matters Ecclesiastical’. 36 Savoy Declaration, ‘Preface’. 37 Savoy Declaration, XXIV: ‘Of the Civil Magistrate’. 38 Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), 87–95; Hunter Powell, ‘October 1643: The Dissenting Brethren and the Proton Dektikon’, in Michael A.G. Haykin and Mark Jones, eds., Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenboeck and Ruprecht, 2011), 121. 39 John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 233–5; Ruth E. Mayers, ‘Real and Praticable, Not Imaginary and Notional: Sir Henry Vane, a Healing Question, and the Problems of the Protectorate’, Albion 27 (1996): 37–72; Blair Worden, ‘John Milton and Oliver Cromwell’, in Ian Gentles, et al., eds., Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 266–8.

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40 Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), 200–1. 41 Burroughes, Irenicum, 19, 23. 42 Clarke Papers, ii.98–101, 109–17; Carolyn Polizzotto, ‘Liberty of Conscience and the Whitehall Debates of 1648–9’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26 (1975): 69–82; Glenn Burgess, ‘Religion and Civil Society: The Place of the English Revolution in the Development of Political Thought’, in Michael J. Braddick and David L. Smith, eds., The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 277–8. 43 Carl R. Trueman, ‘John Owen’s Dissertation on Divine Justice: An Exercise in Christocentric Scholasticism’, Calvin Theological Journal 33 (1998): 87–103; Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 209–10. 44 Owen, ‘Two Questions Concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate’, in Works, xiii.509–10. 45 Owen, Toleration, 72 [viii.189]; Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 20, 22–3 [viii.148, 150]; The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest: A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable Henry Ireton Lord Deputy of Ireland (1652), 14 [viii.355]. 46 Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.511. 47 Owen, Toleration, 72, 79 [viii.189, 194]. 48 Cambridge Platform, XVII.vi: ‘Of the Civil Magistrate’s Power in Matters Ecclesiastical’. 49 Williams, Bloudy Tenent, 201. 50 On Williams’s typological interpretation, see Perry Miller, ‘Roger Williams: An Essay of Interpretation’, in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, vol. 7 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 5–25. For John Goodwin’s arguments from Typology during the Whitehall debates see Clarke Papers, ii.116. 51 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 52 [viii.394]. 52 Thomas Goodwin, et al., An Apologeticall Narration (1643), 26; John Cotton, Certain Queries Tending to Accommodation and Communion of Presbyterian & Congregationall Churches (1654), 8; Burroughes, Irenicum, 41; William Strong, Ananeosis, or, Two Sticks Made One (1658), 117; Savoy Declaration, ‘Preface’ and XXIV: ‘Of the Civil Magistrate’. See Richard Muller’s discussion of ‘Fundamental Articles and Basic Principles of Theology’, in Richard Muller, ed., Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), i.406–50. 53 Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.60; Toleration, 81–2, 93 [viii.196, 205]. 54 Owen, ‘The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Profession of the Gospel and the Punishment of Apostates Declared’ (1676), in Works, vii.28–9; ‘A Vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat Lux’ (1664), in Works, xiv.346; ‘Of Schism: The True Nature of it Discovered and Considered, with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion’ (1657), in Works, xiii.146. 55 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 89–90 [ix.215]; Toleration, 92–4 [viii.204–5]; ‘Country Essay’, viii.58. 56 Burroughes, Sermon Before Peeres, 45. For the toleration debate see: Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 6–13; Blair Worden,‘Toleration and the Protectorate’, in Blair Worden, ed., God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 63–90; Avihu Zakai, ‘Religious Toleration and Its Enemies: The Independent Divines and the Issue of Toleration during the English Civil War’, Albion 21 (1989): 1–2, 33; J.C. Davis, ‘Religion and the Struggle for Freedom in the English Revolution’, Historical Journal 35 (1992): 510–23; Paul C.-H. Lim, ‘The Trinity,

148 The obligations of the magistrate

57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

Adiaphora, Ecclesiology, and Reformation: John Owen’s Theory of Religious Toleration in Context’, Westminster Theological Journal 67 (2005): 281–300. Owen, Toleration, 89 [viii.202]. Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, and his Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 42 [viii.422]. Owen, ‘Schism’, xiii.95, 98, 119, 173, 191, 203. John Cotton, ‘Sermon upon a Day of Publique Thanksgiving’ (1651), in Francis J. Bremer, ‘In Defense of Regicide: John Cotton and the Execution of Charles I’, William and Mary Quarterly 37 (1980): 110–15, 122–4. For Cotton’s earlier use of the ‘sea of glass’, see Powring Out, ‘Third Viall’, 2–3. See also William Strong’s frequent use of this trope in XXXI Select Sermons, Preached on Special Occasions (1656), 139, 152, 157, 410, 579. Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.509. Cambridge Platform, XI.IV; Joseph Caryl, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Chapters of Job (1650), 86; The Thirtieth and Thirty First Chapters of the Booke of Job (1659), 583–7. Mercurius Politicus (7–14 October 1658), 924. Owen, Toleration, 41 [viii.164]. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 28 [viii.154]. For William Erbery see ODNB, s.v., and his works: Nor Truth, Nor Error, Nor Day, Nor Night (1647) and The Testimony of William Erbery, Left upon Record for the Saints of Suceeding Ages (1658). Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 28 [viii.154]. Owen, Toleration, 81 [viii.196]. In Mythology, Ceberus was the three-headed hound guarding the gates to the underworld. Mortimer, Reason and Religion, 195. Owen, Toleration, 82–3 [viii.197]. Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 89 [ix.215]. The ‘Ranter’ phenomenon is controversial, with some historians suggesting it was a myth projected by the pulpit and press, e.g., J.C. Davis, Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 11, 83. An alternative view is argued by Nigel Smith, ed., A Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth Century (London: Junction Books, 1983), 7–39. Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 44 [viii.236]. Owen, The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World: Or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), 32 [viii.338]. CJ, viii.85–6, 113–14; Weekly Intelligencer (30 March–6 April 1652), 409. Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 47 [viii.425]. Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.514. Owen, Toleration, 41–2, 79–80 [viii.164–5, 194–5]; ‘Country Essay’, viii.59. Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 67, 72, 89. A ready account was available in the translation of Frederick Spanheim’s, Englands Warning by Germanies Woe (1646). Owen, Toleration, 77–9 [viii.192–4]. For the Parliamentary ordinances see: CJ, ii.24, 246, 287; A&O, i.265–6, 425–6. Julie Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm during the English Civil War (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003); William Dowsing, The Journal of William Dowsing: Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War, ed. Trevor Cooper (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001); John Walter, ‘“Abolishing Superstition with Sedition”? The Politics of Popular Iconoclasm in England, 1640–1642’, Past and Present 183 (2004): 79–123.

The obligations of the magistrate 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107

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Owen, Toleration, 79 [viii.194]. Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.513. Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.59. Owen, ‘Two Questions’, xiii.516; Cambridge Platform, XI.iv: ‘Of Maintenance of Church Officers’. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 44 [viii.235–6]; Crawford Gribben, God’s Irishmen: Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7, 11; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 145. Owen, ‘Death of Christ’, x.479. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 44 [viii.236]; Toleration, 81–2 [viii.196]. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 44–6 [viii.235–7]; Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 120, 234–5. CJ, vi.248; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 95–8; Raymond Gillespie, ‘The Crisis of Reform, 1625–60’, in Kenneth Milne, ed., Christ Church Cathedral Dublin: A History (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 209–10; Gribben, God’s Irishmen, 40. Owen, Labouring Saint, 14–15 [viii, 355–6]. CJ, vii.85–6. Mortimer, Reason and Religion, 198. Jeffrey R. Collins, ‘The Church Settlement of Oliver Cromwell’, History 87 (2002): 24–5. Humble Proposals, 4–6; Worden, Rump, 296. Carolyn Polizzotto, ‘The Campaign against the Humble Proposals of 1652’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987): 570–1; Worden, ‘Milton and Cromwell’, 266–8. Coffey, John Goodwin, 233–4; Michael Lawrence, ‘Transmission and Transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project, 1600–1704’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2002), 150. Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 248; Worden, Rump, 292–4. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 12, 27, 38, 52 [viii.373, 381, 386, 393]. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 53–4 [viii.394–5]. Humble Proposals, 5; Lawrence, ‘Transmission and Transformation’, 151. Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 168. Worden, Rump, 321–7; Austin H. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (London: Phoenix, 2000), 54. Francis J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the AngloAmerican Puritan Community, 1610–1692 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), 193–4; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 335–41. Peter Gaunt, ‘Drafting the Instrument of Government, 1653–1654: A Reappraisal’, Parliamentary History 8 (1989): 28–9. CDPR, 416; Worden, ‘Toleration’, 77. Hunter Powell, ‘The Last Confession: A Background Study of the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order’, MPhil Thesis, University of Cambridge (2008), 57ff.; Cooper, Owen and Baxter, 171; Peter Gaunt, ‘“To Create a Little World Out of Chaos”: The Protectoral Ordinances of 1653–1654 Reconsidered’, in Patrick Little, ed., The Cromwellian Protectorate (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 105–26. A&O, ii.855–8, 968–90; Ann Hughes, ‘“The Public Profession of These Nations”: The National Church in Interregnum England’, in Christopher Durtson and

150 The obligations of the magistrate

108 109 110

111

112 113 114 115 116

117

118

119 120

121 122

Judith Maltby, eds., Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 97–9. Archibald Johnston, Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, ed., J.D. Ogilvie (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1919–40), ii.246. Johnston, Diary . . . of Wariston, ii.310. David L. Smith, ‘Oliver Cromwell, the First Protectorate Parliament and Religious Reform’, Parliamentary History 19 (2000): 38–48; Peter Gaunt, ‘LawMaking in the First Protectorate Parliament’, in Colin Jones, et al., eds., Politics and People in Revolutionary England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 163–86. Polizzotto, ‘Humble Proposals’, 569–81; Mortimer, Reason and Religion, 207, 223; Cooper, Owen and Baxter, 211; Nigel Smith, ‘“And If God Was One of Us”: Paul Best, John Biddle and Anti-Trinitarian Heresy in Seventeenth-Century England’, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature, and Politics in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 172; Paul C.-H. Lim, In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in its Seventeenth-Century Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 169–73. Theodore A. Wilson and Frank J. Merli, ‘Naylor’s Case and the Dilemma of the Protectorate’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal 10 (1965): 44–59. Patrick Little and David L. Smith, Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 110. Owen, ‘An Answer to a Late Treatise of Mr Cawdrey about the Nature of Schism’ (1658), in Works, xiii.294–5. CJ, vii.507–10; CDPR, 454; Woolrych, Revolution, 652; Little and Smith, Parliaments, 40–3; Worden, ‘Toleration’, 85; Lawrence, ‘Transmission and Transformation’, 153. Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), 32–3; Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterians and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 145–230; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society, 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 19, 82. Peter Lake, ‘Joseph Hall, Robert Skinner and the Rhetoric of Moderation at the Early Stuart Court’, in Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, eds., The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 167–85. Joseph Caryl, Englands Plus Ultra, Both of Hoped Mercies, and of Required Duties: Shewed in a Sermon Preached to the Honourable Houses of Parliament, the Lord Major, Court of Aldermen, and Common-Councell of London: Together with the Assembly of Divines, at Christ-Church, April 2 1646 (1646), 23–5. Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.44. James Nalton, Delay of Reformation Provoking Gods Further Indignation (1646), 38. On 7 March, the ministers from Essex printed a letter they had written to the Westminster Assembly about ‘intolerable Toleration’ entitled A True Copy of a Letter (1646). Nalton, Delay, 33, 38–9. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 49 [viii.45]. Several Letters from the Parliament and General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to the Houses of Parliament of England, the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London and the Assembly of Divines (1646), 22; Anthony Burgess, Publick Affections, Pressed in a Sermon before the Honourable House of Commons (1646), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 14–15.

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123 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 45, 52 [viii.41, 46]. 124 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.130–1]. 125 Commissioners of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, A Solemn Testimony against Toleration and the Present Proceedings of Sectaries and Their Abettors in England (Edinburgh, 1649), 2, 10. Thomason acquired his copy on 18 January. 126 Clarke Papers, ii.74; John Coffey, ‘Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution’, Historical Journal 41 (1998): 961–85; G.E. Aylmer, The Levellers in the English Revolution (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 41; Polizzotto, ‘Whitehall Debates’, 69–82. 127 Jeremiah Burroughes, A Vindication of Mr Burroughes, against Mr Edwards (1646), 2, 24, describes Edwards as being full of ‘prelacy and violence’ and likened him to Bishop Wren. Similarly, in Irenicum, 56, Burroughes compared the ‘moderation’ of Bishop Davenant with the extremism of the Scots. 128 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 16 [viii.145]. 129 Owen, ‘Country Essay’, viii.46. 130 Owen, Toleration, 58, 95 [viii.178, 206]. 131 Owen, Toleration, 56 [viii.176]. 132 Owen, Toleration, 61 [viii.180]; De Laicis appeared in the first volume of Bellarmine’s Controversiae (Ingolstadt, 1586), the relevant section is chapters 21–22. 133 Owen, Toleration, 68 [viii.186]. 134 Owen, Toleration, 52 [viii.173, 200]. 135 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 16 [viii.145]. Samuel Rutherford, who penned Lex, Rex: The Law and the Prince (1644) in defence of armed resistance, went on to write Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649). 136 Owen, Toleration, 58 [viii.178]; George Gillespie, Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty . . . and in Conclusion a Paraenetick to the Five Apologists for Choosing Accommodation Rather Then Toleration (1645), ‘Preface’, 38. 137 Owen, Toleration, 61 [viii.180]; Caryl used the same phrase in his Plus Ultra, 23–5. 138 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 28 [viii.154]; Eliott Vernon, ‘The Quarrel of the Covenant: The London Presbyterians and the Regicide’, in Jason Peacey, ed., The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 202–24. 139 Owen, Toleration, 56, 61–2 [viii.176, 179–80]. 140 Owen, Toleration, 69–70 [viii.186–7]. Owen’s examples are drawn from Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum. 141 Owen, Toleration, 63 [viii.181]. 142 Owen, Toleration, 90–2 [viii.203–4]; CJ, v.549; A&O, i.1133–6. 143 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 28 [viii.381]. 144 For the context see David Farr, Major-General Thomas Harrison: Millenarianism, Fifth Monarchism and the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 2016), 131. 145 Nickolls, 82–3. 146 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 37 [viii.385–6]. 147 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 42 [viii.422]. 148 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 10, 35–6, 42–3 [viii.405, 418, 422]. 149 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; with Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 35–7 [viii.451–2]; Lloyd Bowen, ‘“This Murmuring and Unthankful Peevish Land”: Wales and the Protectorate’, in Patrick Little, ed., The Cromwellian Protectorate (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 147.

152 The obligations of the magistrate 150 Vernon, George, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 67, 70. 151 Worden, Rump, 137; Worden, ‘Toleration’, 72. Two works which portray Owen as an advocate of religious toleration are: W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, from the Convention of the Long Parliament to the Restoration, 1640–1660 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), iii.140–2; R. Glynne Lloyd, John Owen: Commonwealth Puritan (Pontypridd: Modern Welsh Publications, 1972), 44.

6

Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation

For Owen, the 1650s was a decade of failure.1 He believed that the nation had witnessed providential works of immense eschatological significance, and, consequently, his preaching had insisted upon the necessity of a programme of godly reform as the only appropriate response. However, this agenda for individuals, religion, the university and the magistrate was to prove largely unsuccessful, and Owen himself lost his position of influence at the very heart of the Cromwellian establishment. Recent scholarship concurs, in identifying how, despite some limited success, Interregnum attempts for comprehensive national reformation were a ‘dismal failure’.2 This chapter will show how Owen attributed this to both individual and national ingratitude, infidelity and negligence. Rather than the ‘universal holiness’ he had called for, Owen lamented the appearance of sins which he saw as symptomatic of spiritual backsliding. Furthermore, he believed that in the political sphere, the magistracy upon which he had placed the obligation to be ‘the instrument in [God’s] hands to perform all his pleasures’, had itself succumbed to the very temptations about which he had persistently warned.3 Such analysis will be used as an interpretative framework for understanding Owen’s growing disillusionment with the direction the Protectorate came to take. The chapter will demonstrate how, throughout the period 1646–59, Owen warned of what would be lost because of sin, discerned tokens of divine wrath, and offered an explanation of God’s purposes in such judgments. Finally, it explores three important persuasive ends to Owen’s warnings of judgment.

I. A sinfully negligent nation Owen believed the nation to be guilty of a litany of sins. For instance, in only a few lines of the sermon Providential Changes, Owen inveighed against ‘unbelief, worldliness, atheism, and contempt of the gospel’, denounced ‘swearers, drunkards, and other vicious people’ and, finally, castigated the ‘abominable pride, folly, vanity, luxury’ of the city.4 Such sins were exacerbated by the unthankfulness of undeserving England. He believed that, like Israel, the more the people prospered, the more they sinned: all they were concerned about was the grain, wine and oil of their prosperity, but yet, they

154 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation failed to realise that it was the Lord who had given these blessings to them (Hos. 2:8).5 Above all, Owen was concerned about what he claimed to be the greatest sin, namely ‘the despising of spiritual gospel mercies’.6 He believed that this was often manifested in ‘contempt for ordinances’, namely ministry, church order and the sacraments.7 Such negligence was often described by Owen as a symptom of spiritual backsliding. In this context, he repeatedly employed the extended trope of grumbling Israel in the wilderness, calling for a new leader and a return to Egypt (Exod. 14–16; Numb. 14, 16, 20).8 This backsliding motif enabled him to make a number of different points. The call to go back is portrayed as a refusal to wait for the fulfilment of the promised new future. It also displayed an unwillingness to accept God’s promise that the enemies they so feared were actually ‘but bread for them’ – as Owen expounded, ‘bread, ground, made up, baked, ready to eat’ (Numb. 14:9).9 Furthermore, within the trope, a murmuring people calling for new leadership is portrayed as guilty of the far greater sins of rebellion against God and his chosen leaders. Additionally, it enables Owen to speak of the folly and sickness of backsliding by highlighting how quickly they desired to return to Egypt, a place that was for him, first and foremost, one of tyranny and superstition. Finally, it contains an implicit warning of the danger of backsliding, since the rebellious generation was sentenced to die in the wilderness because of their unbelief (Ps. 95:11).10 For the magistrate in particular, Owen believed that such backsliding was caused by falling into two significant temptations which would impede any move to reform: unbelief and pride. The sin of unbelief received particular attention from Owen in his sermon from February 1650, The Stedfastness of the Promises. Taking as his text Paul’s description of Abraham’s faith, ‘He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief’ (Rom. 4:20), Owen argued that unbelief would have two deleterious effects on magistrates: ‘disquietment’ and ‘staggering’. Without faith, those in government would be preoccupied with the ‘Arguments [that] arise on both sides’, and be left ‘hanging in suspense’, paralysed because ‘they know not what to do’.11 Two years later, in Ireton’s funeral sermon, Owen portrayed him as an exemplary godly magistrate precisely because he ‘staggered not’ but was ‘stedfast in faith’.12 Unbelief manifested itself in what Owen described as the policies of the flesh rather than those of the Spirit. These included ‘carnal fear’, ‘fleshly reasoning’ and the ‘hungry, never to be satisfied Beast of Carnal Policy’.13 According to Owen, too many of those ‘called out to public actings’ actually conducted their affairs ‘like the men of the world’. They would ‘Plot and Contrive’ and engage in ‘pragmatical shufling’.14 Such unbelief resulted in misplaced trust in ‘the arm of the flesh’, namely parliaments, armies, councils or rulers, forgetting that faith was more powerful than ‘millions of armed men’.15 It led to an impatient inflexibility in which politicians would almost ‘prescribe unto the Almighty’ and ‘run ahead of providence’,

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insisting that they ‘must have their desires precisely accomplished this year, this month, this week, or they will wait no longer’. In this regard, two texts to which Owen often appealed were: ‘he that believeth shall not make haste’ (Isa. 28:16); and ‘For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry’ (Hab. 2:3). For Owen, unbelief also resulted in ‘sinful compliances with wicked men’.16 A second major temptation for those in authority was pride and the ‘Desire of preheminence’.17 In 1649, Owen had highlighted that ‘Covetousnesse and Ambition’ were often associated with a desire to hold on to ‘perishing things’, and he cautioned MPs to avoid the ‘selfe-seeking’ ways of those who had been ‘blasted’ by God. He warned of the fate awaiting those who endeavoured to ‘build their Honours, Greatnesse, and Preferments’ upon the ‘Tottering foundation’ of the ‘heapes and ruins’ of what God had pulled down.18 Owen was horrified that such pride was often cloaked in religion and denounced those who would allow the gospel to be used as a shadow or ‘stalking-horse for carnal designs’.19 In his sermon celebrating the crowning mercy of the defeat of the Scots in 1651, Owen condemned the Scots for attempting to set Charles Stuart on the throne in the hope that they would ‘be great under him’. He claimed that they were motivated by the ‘cursed designs of revenge, persecution, bondage in soul and body, spoil and rapine’, but masked it with a cloak of ‘the most glorious pretences of zeal, covenant, reformation, and such like things’. He was incensed that ‘an oath of God’ (the Solemn League and Covenant) was used as pretence for these ‘most desperate undertakings against God’.20 Portraying the Covenant as a mask for religious hypocrisy served a useful function because it undermined the claims of those who resisted the Commonwealth’s oath of Engagement and defended former advocates of the Covenant from the charges of covenant breaking.21 The twin temptations of unbelief and pride provide a useful interpretive framework for reconstructing Owen’s attempts to resist a number of changes of direction within the Protectorate. Such manifestations were first discernible in Scotland and Ireland, particularly in attempts to replace the initial parts of the Cromwellian church settlement in those nations with a new religious settlement. In Scotland, Owen sided with the minority Protester (or Remonstrance) party within the Kirk rather than the majority group, the Resolutioners, who were loyal to Charles Stuart. Patrick Gillespie’s faction within the Protesters had initially been favoured by the regime, and in 1654, the Scottish version of the English system of ‘triers’ had been introduced as part of a religious settlement known as ‘Gillespie’s Charter’. Change, however, was afoot. In March 1655, Lord Broghill was appointed Lord President of the Scottish Council, and he instead supported the majority Resolutioner ministers.22 In what Barry Coward has described as a ‘trend in Protectorate policy in both Scotland and Ireland towards moderation and pragmatism’,

156 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation complementary policies were pursued in Ireland under Henry Cromwell.23 Owen was a strong supporter of Lord Chancellor William Steele and later offered his assessment that ‘the age wherein he lived did not produce many more wise, more holy, more useful than he in his station, if any’.24 In Ireland, under the influence of Steele and his allies, a new system of government-sponsored ministerial maintenance was established to support orthodox Protestant ministers regardless of their differences over church polity. Henry Cromwell, however, began to distance himself from Steele and from the Congregationalist Samuel Winter, Provost of Trinity College. Instead, he courted groups like the Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster and an association of ministers in Munster under the leadership of Edward Worth, the Dean of Cork, in the hope of eventually erecting a broadly Presbyterian Irish Church.25 A shift in policy, similar to that begun in Scotland and Ireland, was in the winter of 1655–56 discernible in England. Woolrych describes it as the ‘conservative reaction’ in which tensions emerged between what have been variously dubbed ‘old’ and ‘new Cromwellians’, or, the ‘army’ and ‘civilian’ interests.26 These ‘new Cromwellians’ succeeded in offering the Crown to Cromwell as part of a new constitution entitled the Humble Petition and Advice. Owen appears to have been unhappy with this reorientation of the Protectorate. Although he was chosen (alongside Caryl, Nye and Gillespie) to help the Protector seek God’s guidance about the offer of the crown, Richard Cromwell wrote to his brother Henry on 7 March: ‘Dr Owen hath been very angry and went in great haste oute of London’.27 Owen and many others viewed the period of the kingship debates as a time of apostasy. In April, Alexander Jaffray commented that many who professed to be engaged in the work of reformation were ‘deserted and forsaken by the Lord’.28 In the months leading up to the kingship crisis, Owen had insisted that ‘real reformation’ required ‘discarding old uselesse formes received by tradition from our Fathers’ despite those ‘zealous for the traditions of their fathers’ calling for a return to the ‘old road’.29 In Providential Changes, plausibly dated to around this time, Owen claimed that ‘Times of peace and outward prosperity are usually times wherein, through manifold temptations, even the saints themselves are apt to sully their consciences, and to have breaches made upon their integrity’. According to Owen, the ‘peculiar controversy’ that Christ had with the saints was their ‘inordinate cleaving unto the shaken, passing things of the world’. Owen believed that during this time ‘false, hypocritical, selfish hearts, who had treasured up the hopes of great things to themselves’ were ‘discovered’. Set within the context of the kingship debate, Owen’s description of men desiring, ‘in things of a public tendency’, that some ‘fleshly imagination’ be ‘enthroned’ is striking.30 To Owen, it now appeared that Cromwell was in danger of being seduced by those calling for a settlement that sought to cling to old passing forms. In ‘the things of man’ it appeared as if the ‘wheels’ were going to be set on the ‘old road’.31 This background helps contextualise the petition which

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Owen assisted in drawing up for circulation amongst the officers in May 1657, desiring that Parliament would cease to offer Cromwell the crown and urging it to ‘discountenance all such persons’ as were seeking ‘to bring the nation again under their old servitude’ and instead to ‘continue stedfast to the old cause’.32 According to reports, the Protector was ‘infinitely disturbed’ and ‘extreame angry’ at Owen’s petition, but it does appear to have played a role in Cromwell’s decision to finally reject the crown.33 For Owen, the issue was not so much the crown as the retreat from his programme of comprehensive godly reformation and acquiescence to the will of the majority.34 Consequently, even though the Lord Protector rejected the title, Owen and those who shared his outlook found themselves increasingly excluded from their influential positions.35 For example, the programme of legal reform drawn up by William Sheppard and favoured by Owen was quietly dropped.36 At Oxford, Owen’s position of influence was in decline and by the time of the kingship controversy, the University Visitation, his vehicle for reformation, was under attack in Parliament.37 Later in the year, Richard succeeded his father as Chancellor of the University and Owen lost his ViceChancellorship to John Conant, the Presbyterian rector of Exeter.38 Conant (who would later welcome the Restoration and conform) restored many of the traditional practices, such as the wearing of caps and hoods, which Owen had considered popish. In December, it was reported that Owen was no longer preaching Sunday afternoon sermons in the University Church but had instead set up a rival opposition lecture.39 This is vital historical context for understanding Owen’s famous work Of Temptation (acquired by Thomason in June 1658). Biographers of Owen have tended to glean their knowledge of his political thought from the parliamentary sermons and have missed the political dimensions of this work of pastoral theology; similarly, studies of Owen’s pastoral theology have often abstracted it from its political context. This is surprising because Owen emphasised that these sermons from Cromwellian Oxford were particularly ‘suited to the times that passe over us’ in which ‘Providentiall dispensations, in reference to the publick concernments of these nations’ had seen all things ‘shaken’.40 First, it is important to note that Owen was not merely dealing with temptation in a general sense: this was an exposition focused on a particular form of temptation that he likened to the ‘houre of temptation’ which comes to ‘try them that dwell upon the earth’ (Rev. 3:10). This time of testing would cast down some who previously ‘shone in the firmament of the Church’ (Rev. 12:4). Owen claimed his was a general time of ‘backsliding’ in which ‘thousands’ had apostatised ‘within a few yeares’.41 He singled out the public temptations that come to the ‘top boughs and branches’ of professors. This trope was drawn from the description of the King of Assyria as a mighty tree which was to be brought down with a great shaking (Ezek. 31). Owen, now increasingly alienated, highlighted how ‘the prevailing party of these nations, many of those in Rule, power [and] favour’ had formerly been regarded as lowly ‘Puritans’ but their attitudes had changed once they

158 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation had been ‘translated by a high hand to the mountaines, they now possesse’. Owen lamented: how soone they have forgot the customes, manners, waies, of their owne old people, and are cast into the mould of them that went before them, in the places whereunto they are translated.42 Owen specifically referred to those ‘in high places’ who were particularly tempted to pursue ‘Crownes, Glories, Thrones, pleasures, [and] profits of the world’. Strikingly, he claimed that his readers would have known ‘instances yet living, of some, who have ventured on compliance with wicked men after the Glory of a long and usefull profession’. Owen’s litany of sins resonated with the issues which he believed the Protectorate to be facing: ‘setting a value on’ the things which Christ ‘has stained and trampled under foot’; the ‘slighting’ of God’s people, ‘casting them into the same considerations with the men of the world’; and ‘leaning to our own counsels’.43 As such, this is an example of the ‘oblique discourse’ described by Annabel Patterson by which criticism of contemporary political events was voiced by couching it in Scriptural metaphor. Preachers employed this code of communication ‘partly to protect themselves from hostile and hence dangerous readings of their work, partly in order to say what they had to publicly without directly provoking or confronting the authorities’.44 Not that this was a ‘clandestine code’: rather, in the early modern sermon ‘the biblical idiom was its own and sufficient political comment: a measured, subtle, and precise medium of criticism and a vocabulary of political exordium’.45

II. Warnings which threatened judgment Owen warned such a sinfully negligent nation and government about the threat of divine judgment. By means of the ‘Israelite paradigm’ laid out in Chapter 1, Owen applied the warnings of the Old Testament prophets to the nation. It has been noted that such preaching during the Civil War and Interregnum was ‘the climax’ of a century of English hoseads and jeremiads.46 For Owen, England was like Israel because she was a chosen and visited land which had witnessed many glorious providences and yet, despite these unparalleled blessings, had failed to respond appropriately.47 He believed that, like Israel, the continuation of God’s special presence with England was ‘purely conditional’, and therefore, England should expect curses such as plague, famine and military defeat in return for disobedience.48 What he identified as ‘provoking’ or ‘procuring’ national sins would ‘meritoriously . . . pluck down the judgments and wrath of God upon that nation or people where they are practised and allowed’.49 These included sins such as idolatry and persecution that, he asserted, would ruin states.50 In regard to failures in the implementation of religious reform, he warned that just as the Roman Empire’s failure to deal with Arianism led to its decline and punishment, so

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he had ‘no doubt’ that God would ‘quickly reject from their power’ those in England who, ‘knowing their Masters will’, were ‘negligent herein’.51 Owen spoke of the threat issued against the church of Ephesus in Asia Minor, that Christ might come and remove the candlestick of his presence from the church (Rev. 2:5). Implicit in this warning was the fact that the lampstand had been removed from the seven churches and they had been destroyed.52 He also instructed his hearers to learn from the fates of other cities which had fallen under the wrath of God, for example, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7), the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans (Luke 19:41–42; 2 Pet. 3:7) and subsequently Rome by the Goths and Vandals (Rev. 6:12–17).53 Owen portrayed England’s position as particularly precarious. In 1646, he outlined how, he believed, England had historically been spiritually unfruitful. Using the biblical motif of the unfruitful vineyard, Owen spoke of two previous times when a divine visitation had found only ‘wild grapes’ and because of which the land forfeited the gospel (Isa. 5:2; Matt. 21:33–44; cf. Luke 13:7). The first was that lamented by ‘doleful’ Gildas in preaching against the national degeneracy of the Britons and the second was when the Antichristian apostasy ‘left the land in little less than pagan darkness’. Nevertheless, like Israel of old, the nation was revived, in this case, by the coming of the Protestant Reformation (Judg. 6:38; Ezek. 37:10). Owen cautioned that since every provision had now been made for the plant to produce fruit, if upon a third visitation, it was found to be fruitless it would be cut down and burned. Therefore, he entreated England to consider with fear and trembling the dispensation that it was now under, rather bluntly stipulating ‘mend or end’.54 However, at the end of the Second Civil War, he was left pondering ‘what will be the issue of the visitations of the last years’, remembering how history had revealed that when God intends the total destruction of a people he often weakens them with previous judgments such as what they had just experienced.55 Months later, he claimed that the nation had been ‘eminently sick of the folly of backsliding’ for the past three years – in effect since the fracturing of the parliamentary cause in the early months of 1646. Ominously, he asserted that England had now fallen three times, and, thus, without renewal, it was inevitable that, as an ‘empty vine’, the nation was destined for the flames (Hos. 10:1; Isa. 5:5; Ezek. 15:3).56 In Owen’s scheme, once the sins of a nation had accumulated to a predetermined level it would, like the inhabitants of Canaan, be dispossessed from its land (Gen. 15:16). In another image, the wickedness of the land would be allowed to fill an ephah basket which would then be closed with a circular leaden cover before being taken far away, never again to trouble God’s people (Zech. 5:7). Owen contended that the sins of Manasseh (representing King Charles) had filled the ephah – all that was left was for the basket to be sealed. From this he inferred that without unprecedented mercy, the nation was ‘obnoxious to remediless ruin’.57

160 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation The prophetic warnings we have just considered do not challenge Owen’s millenarianism. Rather, such warnings had a place within his eschatological timeframe because he believed that there was to be an approaching dark hour just before the dawn of the new age (Zech. 14). This was the ‘hour of temptation’ from the book of Revelation, the text on which the sermons Temptation were based (Rev. 3:10).58 Other symbols in Scripture described this dark hour. For example, in the book of Revelation there were the ‘two witnesses’ who prophesied in sackcloth before being killed (Rev. 11:3).59 In the Old Testament, Owen referred to the ‘spirit of burning’ which would precede the coming latter day glory (Isa. 4:4–5).60 This enabled Owen in the short term to lament over the nation’s apostasy whilst also allowing him to maintain the optimism of his millenarianism. Despite what he perceived as the gravity of the situation, Owen believed that many were unconcerned. He attributed this to a work of judgment in which God sent a ‘spirit of slumber’ bringing about a false sense of security (Isa. 29:8–10; Rom. 11:8), or, a spirit of ‘giddiness, error and folly’ (Isa. 19:14) which resulted in complacency and self-indulgence (Amos 6:3–6; Rev. 11:10).61 Although seemingly less prodigious, Owen even spoke of ‘outward peace’ as a sign of coming wrath and warned that the earth being at rest might be a prelude to judgment (Zech. 1:11).62 However, for those with eyes to see, it was Owen’s contention that tokens of divine wrath which warned of the reality of judgment were observable. As the Interregnum progressed, Owen pointed to these with increasing frequency. In April 1649, at a fast held ‘to implore Gods forgiveness for the ingratitude of the people’, Owen outlined ‘The dangerous and pernicious consequence of backsliding’, telling MPs to ‘tremble’ and ‘search your hearts’ because the nation was about to enter ‘the most purging, trying furnace that ever the Lord set up on the earth’.63 A year later, he warned Parliament to repent of fleshly reasoning and carnal contrivances ‘before it be too late’.64 At Ireton’s funeral, Owen drew attention to how the death of the godly should be viewed as a warning since God often removed significant individuals (often either ministers or magistrates) before a coming judgment.65 Months later, in October 1652, he urged the House to implement reformation, telling them that they had ‘certainly backslidden’. Charging them to ‘renew your old frame’, he told them starkly: ‘The rejection of the Gospell by any people or Nation to whom it is tendred, is alwaies attended with the certain and inevitable destruction of that people or Nation’.66 Given that Owen placed so much importance on the interpretation of tokens of God’s wrath, the effect of Owen’s serious illness and bereavement in 1656 should not be overlooked. In March, Josselin recorded: ‘Heard gods hand heavy on Dr Owen his 2 eldest sons dead, himself neare death’.67 Later that year, Owen warned that the prospering of a foreign Antichristian nation was ‘that they might be a Rod in his hand for a little moment, and a staff for his indignation against the miscarriages of his people’ (Isa. 10:5, 12).68 The Protectorate had felt such a keen blow from a Spanish

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‘rod’ the previous summer in the failure of the Western Design. Great pains went into attempting to discern the nature of England’s provocation and in response the rule of the Major-Generals was extended to include the suppression of the sins which had procured this divine chastisement.69 Owen continued this process in his sermon. He placed his hearers in a situation analogous to that of Judah, brought ‘low and broken’ by ‘Forraigne invasions, and intestine divisions’ (Isa. 14:32).70 Ominously, this occurred at the end of the reign of fearful King Ahaz whose unbelief doomed Judah (2 Chron. 28; 2 Kings 16:5–9).71 The frequency of these warnings would only increase. In Providential Changes, Owen continued to lament the ‘general backsliding of most, if not of all, professors’, and on three occasions made reference to his contention that Christ had a ‘controversy with these nations’. Such provocations were, he believed, enough for God ‘to forsake the work on the wheel’. This was a reference to Jeremiah’s description of a potter refusing to rework the vessel as symbolising a nation being prepared for destruction (Jer. 18:4,10).72 Those who heard the allusion would remember that in the following chapter, Jeremiah shattered a clay flask as a sign of judgment coming upon the nation (Jer. 19:1,10).73 Writing in the preface to A Review of the True Nature of Schism in July 1657, a sense of impending doom is hinted at when Owen suggested that a time might come when, because of ‘manifold provocations’, he would have to leave his ‘native soil’, as so many of his colleagues had done in the 1630s. He mentioned those who described him as one of the ‘troublers of England’, a reference to King Ahab’s description of Elijah (1 Kings 18:17).74 Ahab saw Elijah, the prophet who had warned of God’s judgment, as the cause of the nation’s troubles, and Elijah responds by naming Ahab as the true troubler of Israel and the cause of divine judgment. Months later, in his final farewell oration at Oxford, Owen voiced his fear that ‘the divine presence calls us to reckoning’.75 The following year, in Temptation, Owen insisted that Christ would continue ‘overturning, overturning, overturning, both men and things, to make way for the things that cannot be shaken’.76 The potency of this biblical allusion lies in recognising that it is a reference to the prophet’s denunciation of the ‘profane, wicked prince of Israel’ (Ezek. 21:25). The series of sermons entitled Spiritual Barrenness may, tentatively, be dated to 1658. Owen’s prognosis was that ‘Sad symptoms appear of a tremendous issue’ in this ‘special season’ in which ‘providential calls do join in with and further gospel calls’. Owen drew attention to ‘several providential calls’ which offer assistance with dating the sermon through circumstantial evidence. He mentions three specific things: ‘the great unseasonableness of the year’, ‘all the alterations that have been amongst us’, and also ‘the danger of the loss of the gospel, which seems to stand ready for its flight from you’.77 These find suggestive parallels in a declaration issued by Cromwell in July 1658. The Protector’s brief declaration mentioned plans for a Spanish invasion by ‘an Army consisting of Papists and Atheists’ (with an associated

162 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation plot to set fire to the City), an ‘Epidemical sickness’, and includes four references to the ‘unseasonableness of the Spring’ with the consequent threat of famine.78 Certainly, 1658 had a number of significant political events which could have been regarded by Owen as ‘providential calls’. In February, an acute crisis was brought about by the abrupt dissolution of Parliament.79 This coincided with the rumours of a Spanish invasion to which the Protector’s declaration referred. For Owen, this would have entailed the ‘loss of the gospel’. In May, there was fasting in both the country and the City to avert an epidemic. Then, in June, the eminent divine Dr John Hewitt was executed for alleged involvement in a royalist plot. As for the weather, Evelyn’s diary graphically describes what Owen might have been referring to as the ‘unseasonableness’ of the weather: in March, he recorded, ‘This had ben the severest Winter, that man alive had knowne in England: The Crowes feete were frozen to their prey: Ilands of Ice inclosd both fish & foule frozen,  & some persons in their boates’. Then, in, June he described ‘An extraordinary storme of haile & raine, cold season as winter, wind northerly neere 6 monthes’. As if these providentially significant events were not enough, in June, Evelyn also noted the portentous arrival of a whale in the Thames at Greenwich which ‘drew an infinite Concourse to see it’.80 Such circumstantial evidence provides a likely background against which Owen expressed his uncertainty about what would be the end of England’s years of privilege given his assessment that ‘so many in this nation’ had withstood ‘the season of their healing’.81 In Spiritual Barrenness, Owen pondered over what would be the outcome of ‘England’s enjoying the gospel so long as it hath done’ given the highhanded provocation and spiritual backsliding which he observed.82 Like the prophet Ezekiel, he identified signs or ‘tokens’ of God’s wrath against the nation, including sickness, conflict and extreme weather (Ezek. 38:22). Drawing attention to how the prevalence of sin itself becomes a foretaste of judgment, Owen lamented how ‘Our streets, ale-houses, and many other places’ are full of those with ‘vile affections’ who are ‘little thinking that this is part of the judgment whereunto they are given up of God for their unprofitableness under the word’. This is an allusion to a judgment which involves the removal of divine restraints on sinful actions (Rom. 1:24–28). From this, he surmised that God had a controversy with the nation.83 The healing waters of the preaching of the gospel had, like the waters from Ezekiel’s temple, been flowing over the land for an allotted ‘season of healing’. He warned that if repeatedly rejected, these ‘waters of the sanctuary’ would eventually cease to flow and the land would be ‘given up, by the righteous judgment of God, unto barrenness and everlasting ruin’: ‘the miry places thereof, and the marshes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt’ (Ezek. 47:11).84 In his February 1659 fast sermon to Richard’s Parliament, Owen spoke of how, despite the ‘outward peace’ that the nation enjoyed, there was evidence that all was not well because he identified symptoms of ‘a profane, wicked,

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[and] carnal spirit’.85 In what must be seen as an indictment of the current Protectorate, he described how ‘the temptations of these days’ had led to a return to ‘old formes and wayes’ which Owen regarded as ‘a badge of apostasy’ from ‘our good old principles on which we first ingaged’. He feared lest ‘our ruine should come with more speed, then did our deliverance’ and that the nation would ‘quickly return to its former station and condition, and that with the price of your dearest blood’.86 He employed an apt metaphor from Hosea to describe the state of the nation: ‘Gray haires are here’ and he knows it not (Hos. 7:9). In other words, England was like a man unaware that he had suddenly grown old, weak, and near death.87 Similarly, drawing upon the Oracle of Doom from Amos 4:1–13, he expressed his fear that despite providential warnings, the glory was departing. The only hope, as he saw it, would be for England’s leaders to make ‘the preservation of the interest of Christ . . . the great thing . . . in their eyes’.88 Ominously, in the weeks that followed, Owen saw little evidence of the repentance and reformation he desired.

III. The application of Owen’s warnings Having discussed Owen’s portrayal of the nation as consistently sinfully negligent and therefore facing the threat of judgment, we turn now to consider the applications or ‘uses’ he sought to impress upon his hearers and readers. Owen’s immediate call was twofold: first to wake up and then to engage in self-examination. Given the perceived gravity of the situation, his preaching often attempted to rouse hearers out of complacency with its call to wake up before it was too late.89 Owen told the godly that the shaking of God’s hand and the roar of the lion should cause them to tremble and also ‘draw out our souls in prayer’ (Amos. 3:8). He emphasised the importance of listening to his prophetic voice, stating that the Lord never acted in judgment without first revealing it to his servants the prophets (Amos 3:7). Issuing the command ‘hear ye the rod’, Owen portrayed the various tokens of divine wrath as having a pleading voice imploring those who would listen. He deemed it a terrible state of affairs when minds were so closed that not even pain would speak to them (Isa. 1:5; Mic. 6:9).90 Owen believed that it was incumbent upon the godly to seek to discern the meaning of any apparent divine rebukes and this was an important part of some of the public fasts and prayer meetings in which Owen participated.91 Once again, Owen portrayed Henry Ireton as a model of this practice as he described him asking ‘What saith the Lord?’ and ‘What Israel ought to do’.92 In Ireton’s own Declaration, this outlook had been obvious, writing, for example, about how ‘the Lord our God’ had stretched ‘his heavy hand over this Nation’ in those ‘capital Judgements of Sword and Pestilence’.93 On occasion, there is a glimpse of how Owen’s published works were used to aid in this self-examination. For instance, in July 1659, Jaffray was reading Owen’s recently published work ‘On the Duty of Watchfulness’, namely part

164 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation 4 from Temptation, as part of a project of ‘finding out the duty of the times’ which included reading Owen on Mortification (1656).94 His hearers having been awoken and called to self-examination, the next stage of application involved seeking to gain an understanding of the nature of God’s work in these judgments. In his role as a prophet, Owen discerned three divine works: the reprobate was being hardened, hypocritical ‘professors’ of religion were being exposed and the godly were being refined. Owen believed that God had decreed that many in his generation would actually be hardened by the prophetic word and so would be blind to tokens of judgment and deaf to hear the voice of the rod (Isa. 6:9–12).95 Some would mock and invite the Lord to hasten his work (Isa. 5:19), and others who were more fanatical would foolishly desire the day of the Lord (Amos 5:18).96 Oblivious to what God was doing, Owen believed that they were inviting their own destruction. He uses three texts to describe the inevitability of their ruin: ‘the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand’ (Dan. 12:10);97 ‘What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed’ (Zech. 11:9); and ‘Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy’ (Rev. 22:11).98 An example of a biblical figure deployed by Owen to illustrate such hardening was King Jeroboam, the consummate rebel, who, as Kevin Killeen has shown, was used to prefigure a number of contemporary figures.99 Secondly, in addition to hardening the reprobate, God’s dispensations also served to identify hypocrites amongst the body of professors. The ‘great trials’ of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis would, according to Owen, cut off ‘all superfluous false professors’ and ‘uncase hypocrites’.100 Here, the two biblical metaphors he used were that of the sifting sieve and refiner’s fire. The prophet Amos said that the Lord would ‘shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve’ (Amos 9:9).101 As Owen explained, ‘All the stirs and commotions that are in the world, are but Gods siftings of the Nations, that his chosen ones may be fitted for himselfe, and not lost in the chaffe, and rubbish’. So too the refiner’s fire would burn as an oven to purge away the dross (Isa. 1:25; 4:4; Mal. 4:1): hypocrites would be separated off and rejected as ‘reprobate silver’ (Jer. 6:30; Ezek. 20:38; 24:13).102 Finally, for the godly, such a season brought reformation and refining (Mal. 3:1–3). Owen asserted that when God ‘sets nations on fire’ the saints would be refined and purified, pointing out that judgment would begin with the church (1 Pet. 4:17).103 However any ‘forsaking’ experienced by them was partial, and the signs of ‘plague, sickness and sword’ were actually harbingers of God leading his people out of captivity to their promised rest (Exod. 9:15). An example of this would be Owen’s comments about the godly cause in Essex during the Second Civil War. He believed that the ‘three months’ of hostilities (June–August) had brought about a ‘recovery’ which in turn called forth demonstrations of divine power as witnessed in the vindication of the parliamentary cause.104

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The application of Owen’s warnings went beyond the call to wake up, engage in self-examination and seek to understand the nature of God’s work in identifying and refining the elect. Above all, there was rhetorical purpose to this genre of Owen’s sermons towards at least three persuasive ends: the urgency of implementing a reform programme; the questioning of the true identity of those who showed signs of departing from the cause; and attaching such significance to the remnant as to justify irregular means to ensure their preservation. The first persuasive end is the need to pursue the cause of reformation. When Owen opined that the nation had now fallen three times into ‘Nationdestroying sinnes’ he called the ‘present administration’ of the Rump to ‘runne across to unravel this close woven webb of destruction’ before it was ‘too late’.105 As suggested in the title ascribed to the sermon in the Goold edition, this was Owen’s call for Parliament to exercise ‘Righteous Zeal’. In Chapter 3, it was suggested, albeit tentatively, that the sermonic material entitled Walking Humbly With God might have been sermons from Cromwellian Oxford. Based on the text ‘And to walk humbly with thy God’ (Mic. 6:8), his introductory comments on Micah’s message neatly summarise the rhetorical function of Owen preaching to a favoured, obligated but negligent nation. [Micah] emphatically presses them with the mercies [God] had of old bestowed on them, with the patience and love toward them which he showed and exercised in his dealing with them. The conviction being effectual to awaken them, and fill them with a sense of their horrible ingratitude and rebellions . . . they begin to make inquiry, according as is the custom of persons under the power of conviction, what course they shall take to avoid the wrath of God.106 This was an important scriptural passage for Owen, not least because Micah 6 opened with a statement of how the Lord had a controversy with his people and a dispute with Israel (Mic. 6:2). The verse following Owen’s text contained the charge already noted to ‘hear the voice of the rod’ (Mic. 6:9). Owen addresses his hearers as those who should be aware that they had ‘provoked’ God and consequently need to know how ‘to appease him’ ‘lest the Lord tear you in pieces’. The sinful patterns of walking from which he urgently calls his hearers away are ‘hatred of the power of godliness’, ‘cursed formality’, ‘enmity of the Spirit’ and, very importantly, ‘hatred of reformation’.107 By implication, Owen was issuing a call to pursue reformation in order to avert the wrath of God against the nation. In Providential Changes, Owen argued that ‘Other remedies’ had been tried but had proved unsuccessful and therefore he urged his hearers to ‘reformation’ as ‘the only means’ by which ‘to save three nations’ and thus ‘deliver England out of the hand of the Lord’.108 Subsequently, in February 1659, Owen told Richard’s Parliament that they had been snatched from

166 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation the flames of the 1650s and therefore must make an appropriate response (Zech. 3:2). He was concerned about ‘old formes and wayes taken up with greedinesse’ and with how God’s presence ‘seems almost to be departing’ because ‘the temptations of these dayes’ had moved hearts of some away from ‘our good old principles on which we first ingaged’.109 The Particular Baptist Colonel Jerome Sankey, writing from Wallingford House, summarised Owen’s urgent call to return to godly reform: ‘Dr Owen preached first and very seriously asserted and pressed the whole cause and interest’.110 The second rhetorical function of Owen’s prophetic preaching was to call into question the true identity (and thus the fate) of those who appeared to depart from the cause by showing signs of compromise. Owen intended to provoke this sort of questioning, either by way of self-examination or by encouraging speculation about the identity of others. In order to help his hearers recognise the manner in which these divine processes operated, Owen employs two important tropes, namely the false brother and the failed leader. Both served to increase the gravity of the sin and also to warn of the ever-present danger of backsliding and apostasy. He offered two main examples of the false brother, namely, the Edomites and Ephraim. The Edomites, descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau, were Judah’s neighbours. Relations with Edom were normally hostile and during the Babylonian crisis they sided with the foreign invaders, took advantage of Jerusalem’s misfortune, rejoiced in Sion’s distress and yet, despite their complicity, thought themselves secure (Ps. 137:7; Obad. 3, 10–14). The other false brother trope used by Owen is that of Ephraim, the northern kingdom of Israel. Of particular note was Ephraim’s attempt to form an alliance with Syria into which they would try to force Judah (Isa. 7:4). Owen thought it startling that Ephraim, a ‘brother, and fellow in former afflictions’ with Judah, would join with Syria with whom they were ‘always at mortal difference’.111 Owen applied this motif of the false brother to a number of different groups. First, to the Levellers who rebelled at Burford whom he believed to be guilty of gloating and foolishly thinking that none would bring them down, then to the Scots and Royalists who, in Ireland, were acting in concert with the Syria-like Roman Catholic Confederacy against the parliamentary cause.112 Similarly, preaching to celebrate victory at the Battle of Worcester, Owen announced that, in the defeat of the Scots, Christ had taken revenge against ‘scoffing Edomites’ who rejoiced at Sion’s distress and expected to see them destroyed.113 At a fast in October 1652, called because the English had a fortnight before clashed with the Dutch Fleet at Kentish Knock, Owen stated that in such tumultuous times they would always find that ‘Edom will appear an enemy’ as either ‘Scotland or Holland’.114 Employing the other false brother motif, Owen likened ‘Ephraim joining with Syria to vex Judah their brother’ to the Netherlands joining ‘the great Antichristian interest’. For Owen, the sin was aggravated by the fact that the Dutch, being Protestant, were brothers, and thus the conflict was, as Pincus has called it,

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a ‘fratricidal war’.115 By 1656, as divisions emerged amongst Cromwellians, the false brother was closer to home. Owen spoke to MPs about ‘the Ephraim amongst us’, people whom he believed to be motivated by jealousy towards the true Judah (Isa. 11:13).116 The second figure employed to call into question the true identity of those who evidenced signs of departing from the cause was that of failed leaders. Two examples stood out from Israel’s history, namely Jehu and Hezekiah. In the Interregnum, Jehu was a powerful example since he had been instrumental in striking down the idolatrous house of Ahab (2 Kings 9–10). Owen portrayed Jehu as representative of those who ‘followed God for a season’ only, through ‘temptation’, to ‘turn aside to pursue their own ends’ whilst hypocritically maintaining religious zeal as ‘a cloak for carnal and secular ends’.117 In June 1649, Owen claimed that he could offer ‘an example of this, as yet not much above half a year old’. He was most likely alluding to the actions of the Presbyterians who reopened negotiations with the King at Newport, zealously insisting that Presbyterianism be established and that even the Congregationalists be suppressed.118 If this is the case, Owen is implicitly speaking in defence of the actions of Pride’s Purge which removed from Parliament supporters of the Treaty of Newport.119 The other failed leader to which Owen often turned was King Hezekiah, who served as an example of a proud heart being discovered in someone who had participated in godly rule (2 Chron. 30:6–9). When temptation came, Hezekiah fell because, as the Chronicler puts it: he ‘rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem’ (2 Chron. 32:25).120 Owen explained how Hezekiah’s sin opened ‘a door of wrath against himself, Judah and Jerusalem’, thus pointing out that the people might be punished for the sins of their leader(s) (2 Chron. 32:35).121 An important occurrence of the Hezekiah trope was in Owen’s first sermon to the Second Protectorate Parliament. Owen expounded the text ‘What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it’ (Isa. 14:32). Woolrych has described this as ‘an adulatory sermon’, but it is actually a rather more ambiguous work than he suggests. Owen had selected a text which drew particular attention to one of the most obvious errors of Hezekiah’s reign.122 Owen commented that ‘all would have been well for Hezekiah and his posterity’ had he followed the clear instructions prepared for him by the prophet when the Babylonian envoys came. However, Hezekiah failed to act as required and instead the man who had once stood firm against the threat of the Assyrian army melted in the face of Babylonian flattery (Isa. 39:2). As Owen explicitly said, ‘His mistake herein, was the fatall ruine of Judah’s prosperity’, and this warning from the opening of the sermon frames all the advice that follows.123 In 1659, Owen gathered a church at Charles Fleetwood’s residence, Wallingford House, of which many senior officers were members. According to the Scottish Resolutioner James Sharp, it was erected ‘upon a state project’,

168 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation and Arthur Annesley noted that it ‘hath divers constructions put upon it and is not that I can heare very well liked at White Hall’.124 Woolrych has suggested that amongst officers always prone to sense the Lord’s displeasure, Owen played an important part in weakening their commitment to the Protectorate by awakening their consciences to the dangers of temptation and apostasy.125 The searching motifs of the false brother and the failed leader certainly had the power to awaken the conscience in the way suggested. The third rhetorical function is that of attaching such significance to the remnant as to justify irregular means in order to guarantee their preservation. Owen uses two texts which particularly illustrate the national significance of the remnant. The first is the new wine in the cluster for whose sake the whole is preserved (Isa. 65:8).126 Thomas Brooks helpfully describes the similitude: when a Vine being blasted or otherwise decayed is grown so bad, and so barren, that scarce any good clusters of Grapes can be discerned on it, whereby it may be deemed to have any life, or of ever becoming fruitful again, and the Husband-man is about to grub it up, or cut it down to the ground; One standing by, sees here a cluster, and there a little cluster, and cryes out, O don’t grub up the Vine, don’t cut down the Vine, it hath a little life, and by good husbandry it may be made fruitful.127 The second text is Micah’s description of the remnant as either being like gentle rain or a destructive lion (Mic. 5:7–9). Owen understood this to mean that the remnant was instrumental, either making the nation fruitful and prosperous or in bringing divine judgment on the nation if they are oppressed.128 The antithesis was stark: for any nation the remnant would be either ‘the spring of their mercies, or the rise of their destruction, (one of which they will alwaies be)’.129 Thus, the key to the nation’s future blessing or destruction ultimately depended on how the godly within it were treated. The remnant was so determinative for the future of the nation that Owen could countenance irregular means in order to guarantee their protection. In October 1656, Owen addressed the members of the purged Second Protectorate Parliament. He underlined to them how on any occasion he had ‘opportunity to speak to [them] or any concerned in the government of this Nation, in publick or private’ he spoke about the need to protect and encourage ‘the remnant, the hidden people’. Owen explained that this was because the civil power’s treatment of remnant would determine if God’s presence would remain with the nation. He insisted that it was the duty of those in government ‘to consider all wayes and means, whereby the Power of these Nations may be in succeeding seasons, devolved on men of the like Spirit and Condition’.130 By ‘all wayes and means’, Owen tacitly included the Council’s exclusion of a hundred elected members under Article XVII of the Instrument. Major-General Kelsey, who had sponsored Owen’s invitation to preach, was a strong supporter of this policy of exclusion, stating:

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‘the interest of God’s people is to be preferred before a thousand Parliaments’.131 By contrast, civilian republicans like Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Thomas Scott, who had been excluded, saw this as an act of ‘absolute arbitrary sovereignty’.132 In 1659, Owen was intimately involved in a number of highly controversial measures through which he endeavoured to preserve the interests of the godly remnant through those associated with the Wallingford House group.133 Both Richard Baxter and later, George Vernon, saw Owen as having a central role in the coup d’etat in which the senior officers forced Richard into dissolving Parliament.134 The insistence of modern writers such as Steve Griffiths and A.G. Matthews that Owen’s ‘desire’ was for the restoration of the Rump requires careful clarification (and the same could be said of Richard Ashcraft’s mistaken description of Owen as ‘a prominent Commonwealthman’).135 Owen and those associated with him were reluctantly forced into recalling the Rump as they attempted to secure their godly influence by various means. Later in the year, a secondary military coup meant that for many any notion of legitimate parliamentary government had been abandoned.136 In the wake of this, Owen entered into an exchange of letters with General Monck in Scotland. Monck insisted on the restoration of the parliamentary government and was prepared to use force to achieve that end. Owen appealed to Monck for restraint on the basis that renewed hostilities would destroy the good old cause and ‘the sober godly in both Nations’. Owen was prepared to submit to military rule and perhaps another nominated Parliament in order to see ‘the ministry preserved, reformation carryed on, and all the ends of our ingagements satisfied’. He was ‘resolved to live and dye with the sober godly interest’. Monck rejected Owen’s proposal, telling him that he could ‘not sitt still and let our lawes and liberties goe to ruine’ through the ‘intollerable slavery of sword Government’.137 Thus, in 1659, it appears that Owen was willing to sacrifice the previously established legal norms and customs of England and to see the army use extraordinary power in order to preserve the remnant and their interest.

IV. Conclusion The final chapter has discussed the third characteristic of Owen’s prophetic preaching, namely his persistent warnings concerning the threat of judgment to a nation which, he believed, had been consistently negligent in its response to the divine favour it enjoyed. Instead of ‘universal holiness’ and godly reformation, Owen observed the nation sinfully despise the gospel mercies it had received. This was portrayed as spiritual backsliding both generally in the people at large, and specifically, amongst those in government. Rather than making progress down the path of reform, it was Owen’s contention that unbelief resulted in ‘staggering’, and this was only exacerbated by attempts to mask pride and ambition, hypocritically, with religion. These twin temptations of unbelief and pride provided a useful interpretive

170 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation framework for understanding Owen’s concerns about the shift in direction undertaken by the Protectorate. He conceived of this as acquiescing to the will of the majority by turning to the ‘old paths’ away from ‘the cause’. This context helped to uncover the political aspects of Owen’s Temptation (1658). Owen warned that such behaviour threatened to bring about divine judgment. As part of the tradition of English hoseads and jeremiads, Owen applied his Israelite paradigm to speak of the conditionality of blessing (contra John Wilson, this was not the preserve of the Presbyterians) and of how ‘provoking’ sins would ‘procure’ punishment. The judgment threatened would be severe: in apocalyptic language, the candlestick of God’s presence might be removed from the English church. He cautioned his hearers and readers to learn from the fate of those such as Sodom, Jerusalem and Rome which had been on the receiving end of divine wrath. England’s position was precarious. By 1649, having previously fallen on three occasions, Owen asserted that if the nation continued to be unfruitful in its response it was in danger of being cut down and burned. It is important to note that such pessimism did not necessarily challenge his millenarianism, as within the eschatological timeframe of Owen’s prophetic worldview a dark hour of trial would precede the dawn of the new age. Owen’s warnings about the reality of the threat of judgment are present in his preaching throughout this period. However, as the 1650s progressed, Owen identified an increasing number of ‘tokens’ of wrath which suggested that the cycle of favour, obligation and negligence had gone full circle to a time, like the Laudian era, in which God had a ‘controversy’ with the land. The immediate application from the warnings in Owen’s preaching was the call to wake up and engage in self-examination. Like a prophet, Owen discerned three divine works: hardening the reprobate, exposing hypocritical professors, and refining a godly remnant. Owen’s analysis served at least three rhetorical functions. First, it added urgency and renewed impetus to his calls for reformation. Secondly, it called into question the identity, and thus the fate, of those who showed signs of compromise or who departed from the cause. Finally, Owen attached such significance to the faithful remnant as, in the end, to encourage in his hearers a willingness to sacrifice the existing rule of law in order to achieve their goals by recourse to the use of irregular means and extraordinary power.

Notes 1 Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 207–8. 2 Christopher Durston, ‘Puritan Rule and the Failure of Cultural Revolution’, in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, eds., The Culture of English Puritanism: 1560–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 210–33; Derek Hurst, ‘The Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic’, Past and Present 132 (1991), 46; Kevin Sharpe, Image Wars: Promoting Kings and Commonwealths

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8

9 10 11 12 13

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in England, 1603–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 465–543. For the limited success see: Elliot Vernon, ‘A Ministry of the Gospel: The Presbyterians during the English Revolution’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby, eds., Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 115–36; Bernard S. Capp, Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 257–63; Ann Hughes, ‘“The Public Profession of These Nations”: The National Church in Interregnum England’, in Durston Maltby, ed., Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 93–114. Owen, The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World: or Providentiall Alterations in Their Subserviency to Christ’s Exaltation (1651), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.313]. Owen, ‘Providential Changes, an Argument for Universal Holiness’, in Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 66 [ix.158]. Owen, Of Communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost (1657), 255, 305 [ii.221, 262]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, in Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 96 [ix.188]. Owen, A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646), 32 [viii.31]. Owen, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649), 28 [viii.154]; ‘Of Walking Humbly with God’, in Complete Collection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), 48 [ix.130]; ‘Providential Changes’, 69 [ix.164]. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 25, 28, 43 [viii, 25, 27, 40]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648), ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 48 [viii.75, 119]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 23–4 [viii.150–1]; Concerning the Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God (Oxford, 1652), 33 [viii.384]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, and His Peoples Duty Thereupon (1656), 22–3 [viii.412]; God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; with Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 30–1 [viii.448]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 24 [viii.97]. Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 66 [ix.158]. Owen, The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650), 12–15, 49–50 [viii.218–19, 239]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 30 [viii.382]. Owen, The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest: A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable Henry Ireton Lord Deputy of Ireland (1652), 9, 19–20 [viii.351, 359–60]. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 40 [viii.234]; Labouring Saint, 40 [viii.234]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 29–31 [viii.382]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 33 [viii.417]; William Greenhill, An Exposition Continued upon the XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1658), 99–100, 104; Joseph Caryl, The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-One Chapters of the Book of Job (1653), 39, 48. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 51 [viii.240]; Labouring Saint, 24 [viii.363]; ‘Providential Changes’, 69 [ix.163]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 27–9 [viii.334–6]; ‘Providential Changes’, 76 [ix.174]; Glory and Interest of Nations Professing the Gospel Preached at a Private Fast to the Commons Assembled in Parliament (1659), 12 [viii.464]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 9–10, 32–3, 56 [viii.84–5, 105, 126]; Stedfastness of Promises, 53–4 [viii.241]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 27,

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17 18 19 20 21

22

23 24

25

26

27 28 29

32–4 [viii.380, 383–4]; God’s Presence with a People, 26–7, 30 [viii.446, 448]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 30 [viii.416]; ‘Walking Humbly’, 46 [ix.127]. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 29 [viii.382]; ‘Walking Humbly’, 46 [ix.127]. Owen, Sermon Preached . . .January 31, 17–18, 20 [viii.145–6, 148]; Advantage of the Kingdome, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.314]. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 34 [viii.32]; Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 17–18 [viii.145–6]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 20 [viii.328]; ‘Providential Changes’, 78 [ix.178]. Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, 21 [viii.313, 329]. Edward Vallance, ‘“An Holy and Sacramental Paction”: Federal Thought and the Solemn League and Covenant in England’, English Historical Review 116 (2001): 50–75; Glenn Burgess, ‘Usurpation, Obligation, and Obedience in the Thought of the Engagement Controversy’, Historical Journal 29 (1986): 515–37. Later, George Vernon, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 11, would mock Owen for having ‘a throat wide enough to swallow down the Solemn League and Covenant’ and also ‘the Engagement’. F.D. Dow, Cromwellian Scotland 1651–1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), 196–8; Julia Buckroyd, ‘Lord Broghill and the Scottish Church, 1655–1656’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976): 359–68; R. Scott Spurlock, Cromwell in Scotland: Conquest and Religion, 1650–1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007), 96, 142, 145, 230. Barry Coward, The Cromwellian Protectorate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 149. Owen made this comment in ‘A Christian’s Work of Dying Daily’ (3 October 1680), in Works, ix.341, in which he mentioned the death, in the previous week, of a person he had known for 30 years, ‘half of that time in churchfellowship’. As the Goold edition points out, this cannot be a reference to John Disbrowe, who died several weeks beforehand, on 10 September. However, having examined the transcriptions from Dr Watt’s Church Book, it is possible to identify the deceased as one ‘William Steele, Sergt at Law dy’d Octob 2 1680’. T.G. Crippen, ‘Dr Watts’s Church-Book’, Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society 1 (1901), 27. Crawford Gribben, God’s Irishmen: Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 45–6, 105, 121–2; Toby C. Barnard, ‘Planters and Policies in Cromwellian Ireland’, Past and Present 61 (1973), 49–65; Toby C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland: England Government and Reform in Ireland, 1649–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 114–17, 128, 153, 158; TSP, v.710. Austin H. Woolrych, ‘Last Quests for a Settlement, 1657–1660’, in Gerald E. Aylmer, ed., The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646–1660 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 183–204; Patrick Little and David L. Smith, Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 106; Patrick Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 144–60; Christopher Durston, ‘The Fall of Cromwell’s Major-Generals’, English Historical Review 113 (1998), 34, 37. Peter Gaunt, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 1655–1659: From the British Library Lansdowne Manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 221. Alexander Jaffray, Diary of Alexander Jaffray, ed. J.M.G. Barclay (Aberdeen: G&R King, 1856), 64–5. Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 46 [viii.424]; God’s Presence with a People, 37 [viii.452].

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30 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 56, 58, 68 [ix.143, 145–6, 162]. 31 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 37–8 [viii.452]. 32 Austin H. Woolrych, ‘The Good Old Cause and the Fall of the Protectorate’, Cambridge Historical Journal 13 (1957), 146–7. 33 Ludlow, ii.132, 134; Abbott, iv.473, 511–2; Patrick Little, ‘John Thurloe and the Offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell’, in Patrick Little, ed., Oliver Cromwell: New Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 235–6; Blair Worden, ‘Cromwell and the Sin of Achan’, in Blair Worden, ed., God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 13–32. 34 Austin H. Woolrych, Britain in Revolution: 1625–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 556–7. 35 It appears that Thomas Goodwin retained Cromwell’s favour at this time: TSP, vi.539, 558, vii.561; CSPD 1656–7, 318. In a letter to Henry Cromwell, dated 29 September 1657, Thurloe mentioned ‘doctor Goodwyn, who is a good man, and entirely affectionate to his highnes, which he hath alwayes given testimony of, and most fully and particularly in our late questions and disputes; and is one that loves your familye’. Henry replied on 7 October, mentioning ‘the accommodation of our good friend Dr Goodwin’. In April 1659, a work highly critical of the regime placed Goodwin alongside Peter Sterry, ‘that cringing Courtchaplain’, see George Wharton, A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (So Called) (1659), 39–40. 36 Nancy L. Matthews, William Sheppard, Cromwell’s Law Reformer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 62, 129, 132, 223. 37 Burton, ii.64–5. 38 Blair Worden, ‘Cromwellian Oxford’, in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., The History of the University of Oxford: Vol. 4: Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 746. 39 Vernon, Letter, 28. 40 Owen, Of Temptation, the Nature and Power of It: The Danger of Entring into It: And the Meanes of Preventing the Danger (1658), ‘To the Reader’, 180 [vi.89, 150]. 41 Owen, Temptation, 42, 48 [vi.104, 106]. 42 Owen, Temptation, 65–7 [vi.112]. 43 Owen, Temptation, 44–9, 160, 176, [vi.105–6, 143, 149]. 44 Annabel M. Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 10–11, 21. 45 Kevin Killeen, ‘Veiled Speech: Preaching, Politics and Scriptural Typology’, in Peter McCullough, et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 387–88; Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Penguin, 1993), 49. 46 Patrick Collinson, ‘Biblical Rhetoric: The English Nation and National Sentiment in the Prophetic Mode’, in Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger, eds., Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27–8. For the background of the seventeenth-century jeremiad, see: James Egan, ‘“This Is a Lamentation and Shall be for a Lamentation”: Nathaniel Ward and the Rhetoric of the Jeremiad’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 122 (1978): 400–10; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953); Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Theodore D. Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 333–5; Laura L. Knoppers, ‘Milton’s The Readie and Easie Way

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

66 67

and the English Jeremiad’, in David Loewenstein and James G. Turner, eds., Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton’s Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 213–25; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 283; Michael McGiffert, ‘God’s Controversy with Jacobean England’, American Historical Review 88 (1993): 1152–3; Mary Morrissey, ‘Elect Nations and Prophetic Preaching’, in Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, eds., The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 43–58. Owen, Temptation, ‘To the Reader’, [vi.89]. Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 1–2, 5, 8–11 [viii.431, 433, 436–7]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 87 [ix.210]. Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 13 [viii.143]; Stedfastness of Promises, 49–51 [viii.239]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 50 [viii.392–3]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 48 [viii.119]. Owen, Toleration, 72 [viii.189]; God’s Presence with a People, 14 [viii.439]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 48–9 [viii.391–2]. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 23–4, 33 [viii.23–4, 31]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 96, 100 [ix.186, 194]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 80 [ix.200]. Owen, Communion with God, 165 [ii.146]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 48 [viii.392]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 34 [viii.107]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, the Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649), 13 [viii.256]; Branch, 41 [viii.308]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 10 [viii.321]; ‘Providential Changes’, 54, 66 [ix.139, 158]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 98 [ix.190]. Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26 [viii.26]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 17 [viii.92]. Owen, Communion with God, 42 [ii.41]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 8, 13 [viii.138, 143]; Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 34 [viii.32]; ‘Providential Changes’, 69–70 [ix.164]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 10 [viii.85]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 4–7 [viii.135–8]. Owen, Temptation, ‘To the Reader’, 23–54, 111–15, 143–55, 172–4 [vi.88–90, 98–108, 127–8, 137–42, 147–8]; ‘Of the Death of Christ, the Price He Paid, and the Purchase He Made’ (1650), in Works, x.433. Owen, Toleration, 61 [viii.180]; ‘Providential Changes’, 59 [ix.148]. Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 58 [ix.145]; Glory and Interest, 4 [viii.459]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 32–3 [viii.105]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 34, 38 [viii.159, 162]; Glory and Interest, 8 [viii.461]; ‘Providential Changes’, 57 [ix.144]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 98–9 [ix.191–2]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 83, 88 [ix.204, 212–13]; Communion with God, 164–5 [ii.145–6]. Owen, Communion with God, 164 [ii.145–6]; Glory and Interest, 17 [viii.467], distinguishes outward peace from the ‘quietness’ prophesied in Isa. 32:17. Owen, Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 4, 42 [viii.249, 279]; The Kingdomes Faithfull and Impartiall Scout (13–20 April 1649), 96; A Perfect Summary of Exact Passages of Parliament (17–23 April 1649), 130. Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 52–3 [viii.240–1]. Owen, Labouring Saint, 15 [viii.356]. Cf. George Cokayne’s, Divine Astrologie, or, a Scripture Prognostication of the Sad Events Which Ordinarily Arise from the Good Mans Fall by Death (1658), 16, 24, and the funeral sermon for William Strong by Obadiah Sedgwick, Elisha His Lamentation, upon the Suddain Translation of Elijah (1654), 25. Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 48 [viii.385]. Ralph Josselin, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 363.

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68 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 27 [viii.414]. 69 Worden, ‘Sin of Achan’, 23; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘Errand to the Indies: Puritan Colonization from Providence Island Through the Western Design’, William and Mary Quarterly 45 (1988): 70–99. There were fasts in November 1655 and May and September 1656 to discern the reason for ‘the late rebukes we have received’ and to recover the Lord’s ‘blessed presence’. 70 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 1 [viii.401]. 71 Owen, Stedfastness of Promises, 16 [viii.220]. 72 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 54, 58, 66, 69–70, 77–8 [ix.138, 146, 158, 164, 176, 178]. 73 In his parliamentary sermon from January 1657, Matthew Barker called for lamentation over the sins of the Parliament, City and nation. He feared that the nation was in a ‘tottering condition’, perhaps as a prelude to being ‘cast away’ in judgment; see his Faith and Wise Servant, 13, 19, 40. In February, John Warren, who had preached alongside Owen the day after the Regicide, lamented how the people were ‘insensibly drawn back almost into Egypt again’ and pondered the ‘very threatning clouds gathered over our heads’; see his Mans Fury Subservient to Gods Glory (1657), 10, 27. 74 Owen, ‘A Review of the True Nature of Schism, with a Vindication of the Congregational Churches in England’ (1657), in Works, xiii.214, 217; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 97 [ix.189]. 75 Orations, 43. 76 Owen, Temptation, 175 [vi.148]. 77 Owen, ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 93, 101 [ix.182, 195]. 78 A Declaration of His Highnesse the Lord Protector for a Day of Publick Thanksgiving (1658), 2–3. 79 David Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the Officers, February 1658’, English Historical Review 83 (1968): 101–7. 80 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E.S. de Beer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955 2006), iii.211, 214–16; Mercurius Politicus (3–10 June 1658); William E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England, 1657–1727 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 17–18. 81 Owen, ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 98–9 [ix.190, 192]. 82 Owen, ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 93 [ix.182]. 83 Owen, ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 99–100 [ix.192–3]; ‘Providential Changes’, 56 [ix.142]; Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 17–18 [viii.92]. 84 Owen, ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 92 [ix.181]; Greenhill, Last Chapters, 550, 575–6. 85 Burton, iii.11–12; Woolrych, ‘Good Old Cause’, 138–47; Derek Hirst, ‘Concord and Discord in Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, English Historical Review 103 (1988): 339–58. Liu is incorrect in his belief that this sermon was preached to the restored Rump; see Discord, 152. 86 Owen, Glory and Interest, 17–18 [viii.467–8]. 87 Jeremiah Burroughes, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of the Prophesy of Hosea (1650), 679. 88 Owen, Glory and Interest, 15 [viii.466]. 89 Owen, Orations, 43; ‘Walking Humbly’, 20, 37 [ix.84, 112]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 101 [ix.195]. 90 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 6, 7, 15 [viii.81, 83, 89]; Labouring Saint, 5–6 [viii.348]; ‘Providential Changes’, 59–60, 66 [ix.148, 158]. 91 Christopher Durston, ‘“For the Better Humiliation of the People”: Public Days of Fasting and Thanksgiving during the English Revolution’, The Seventeenth Century 7 (1992): 129–49. 92 Owen, Labouring Saint, 6 [viii.349]. John Cook shared this perspective on Ireton in his Monarchy No Creature (1652), ‘Epistle’.

176 Warnings of judgment to a negligent nation 93 Henry Ireton, A Declaration of the Deputy-General of Ireland, Concerning the Present Hand of God in the Visitation of the Plague: And for the Exercise of Fasting and Prayer (Cork, 1650), 3. 94 Jaffray, Diary, 118, 122. He was also reading Thomas Goodwin’s ‘The Folly of Relapsing After Peace Spoken’ – one of Goodwin’s three sermons published as The Returne of Prayers (1636). 95 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 14 [viii.16]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 23 [viii.330]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 98–9 [ix.191]. 96 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 26 [viii.380]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 43 [viii.423]; ‘Providential Changes’, 57 [ix.143]. 97 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ [viii.75]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 21 [viii.263]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 14 [viii.324]; ‘Providential Changes’, 60 [ix.148]. 98 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 66 [ix.158]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 95 [ix.185–6]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 34 [viii.339]. 99 Owen, Sermon Preached .  .  . January 31, 22 [viii.150]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 23 [viii.331]; God’s Presence with a People, 24 [viii.445]; Kevin Killeen, ‘Chastising with Scorpions: Reading the Old Testament in Early Modern England’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly 73 (2010): 491–506; Kevin Killeen, ‘Hanging up Kings: The Political Bible in Early Modern England’, Journal of the History of Ideas 72 (2011): 549–70. 100 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 34–5 [viii.107]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 42 [viii.279]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 15 [viii.324]. 101 Owen, Communion with God, 154 [ii.136]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 93 [ix.182]; ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 80 [ix.199]; God’s Work in Founding Zion, 26 [viii.413]. 102 Owen, Vision of Unchangeable Mercy, 26 [viii.26]; Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία, 41–2 [viii.278–79]; Advantage of the Kingdome, 9 [viii.321]; Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 24 [viii.379]; ‘Spiritual Barrenness’, 95 [ix.185–6]; ‘Providential Changes’, 59 [ix.147]; Joseph Caryl, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Chapters of Job 11–14 (1649), 569. 103 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 14 [viii.324]; ‘Providential Changes’, 56, 59, 60, 71, 77 [ix.142, 146, 149, 166, 176]. 104 Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 16, 44 [viii.91, 115]. 105 Owen, Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 7 [viii.138]. 106 Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 20 [ix.84]. 107 Owen, ‘Walking Humbly’, 20, 25 [ix.85, 92–3]. 108 Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 77–8 [ix.176–7]. 109 Owen, Glory and Interest, 2, 17–18 [viii.457, 467]. 110 Gaunt, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 449. 111 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 85 [ix.207]. 112 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 81 [ix.200]; Stedfastness of Promises, 16, 39 [viii.220, 233]. 113 Owen, Advantage of the Kingdome, 13 [viii.323–4]. 114 D. Roger Hainsworth and Christine Churches, The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars, 1652–1674 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 41. 115 Owen, Kingdome of Christ and the Civile Magistrate, 27, 31 [viii.380, 382]; Steven Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideology and the Making of Foreign Policy, 1650–68 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 75, 157. 116 Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 14–15 [viii.408]. 117 Owen, ‘Humane Power Defeated’, 87 [ix.210–11]; Temptation, 87 [vi.119]; Sermon Preached . . . January 31, 25 [viii.152]; God’s Presence with a People,

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118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

129 130

131 132 133 134

135

136

137

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24 [viii.445]; ‘Walking Humbly’, 47 [ix.128]; ‘Providential Changes’, 68, 74 [ix.162, 171]. Robert Ashton, Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War and Its Origins (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 295–6. Matthew Barker in his Christian Standing and Moving upon the True Foundation (1648), 49–50, warned MPs about the ‘Treaty’. Owen, Communion with God, 163 [ii.144]; Temptation, 8, 42, 59 [vi.93, 104, 110]. Owen, Eben-ezer, a Memoriall, 12 [viii.87]. Woolrych, Revolution, 646. Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 5 [viii.403]. Stephen, ii.158; Ludlow, ii.61–2; Gaunt, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Cromwell, 475. Woolrych, ‘Good Old Cause’, 146. Owen, ‘Providential Changes’, 78 [ix.177]; Glory and Interest, 12 [viii.464]. Thomas Brooks, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, or, Meat for Strong Men and Milke for Babes Held Forth in Twenty-Two Sermons from Ephesians III, VIII (1655), 80. Owen, Communion with God, 153–4 [ii.136]; Glory and Interest, 12, 22 [viii.464, 471]. Derek Hirst explores Owen’s use of this text in ‘Bodies and Interests: Toleration and the Political Imagination in the Later Seventeenth Century’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly 70 (2007), 414. Owen, God’s Work in Founding Zion, 13 [viii.407]. Owen, God’s Presence with a People, 25–6, 36 [viii.445, 451]; Carol S. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement: Exclusions from the Second Protectorate Parliament: Part 1: The Process and Its Architects’, Parliamentary History 17 (1998), 178–97; Carol S. Egloff, ‘The Search for a Cromwellian Settlement: Exclusions from the Second Protectorate Parliament: Part 2: The Excluded Members and the Reactions to the Exclusion’, Parliamentary History 17 (1998), 301–21; Little and Smith, Parliaments, 80. CJ, vii.424, 447; TSP, v.384; Major-General Kelsey sent in a number of objections to those elected in his county of Kent. C.H. Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656–1658 (London: Longmans, 1909), i.21–3. Woolrych, ‘Good Old Cause’, 146–7; Little and Smith, Parliaments, 168. Baxter, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, i.101; iii.42; Vernon, Letter, 28; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, ‘Richard Baxter’s Apology (1654): Its Occasion and Composition’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4 (1953): 69; Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 243–56. A.G. Matthews, Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (London: Independent Press, 1959), 42–3; Steve Griffiths, Redeem the Time: The Problem of Sin in the Writings of John Owen (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2001), 129; Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 46. Ludlow, ii.144–6; Archibald Johnston, Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, ed., J.D. Ogilvie (Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society, 1919–40), iii.138–9, 145–6; Godfrey Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 1658–1660 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1955), 144–53; Ruth E. Mayers, 1659: The Crisis of the Commonwealth (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 265. Correspondence, 106–8, 111–12.

Conclusion

This monograph has analysed Owen’s preaching from 1646–59 within its historical context, arguing that it is best described as a form of prophetic preaching. For Owen, this period was a providential moment and, in his sermons, like a prophet, he guided his hearers according to his interpretation of the times. He emphasised the divine favour shown to England, with the consequent obligations which lay upon the people, whilst consistently warning about the dangers of their persistent negligence. The first chapter set out in some detail the eschatological framework which informed Owen’s prophetic worldview. This apocalyptic chronology was one dominated by the rise of the papal Antichrist, its reign of idolatry and tyranny and its coming destruction. Owen also held out the prospect of a coming golden age of latter-day glory on earth. Such views were reflected in the Congregationalists’ Savoy Declaration (1658). The chapter also described some important differences which existed between the eschatology of Owen and that of the Fifth Monarchist movement, demonstrating, pace Liu, that his rejection of their perceived errors should not be thought of as a rejection of millenarianism per se. As one of the ten Western nations described in the apocalypse, Owen believed that England was inextricably part of the eschatological drama which Owen believed to be unfolding in his days. His prophetic vision was further augmented by the ‘Israelite paradigm’ through which Owen drew multiple analogies between his contemporary situation and that of Old Testament Israel. The resultant intertextuality meant that a sermon need not necessarily be on an apocalyptic text in order for it to address important eschatological themes. If the themes of favour, obligation and negligence are thought of having a cyclical element, then chronologically, Owen’s assessment of the 1630s was that of a decade of negligence. He believed that in the Laudian era, God had a controversy with the land, not least because the people had allowed the King and some of his Bishops to participate in an Antichristian conspiracy to bring England back to the Roman Catholic Church. Although he thought that, during that time, England had done enough to forfeit the gospel; nevertheless, he believed that the nation had instead experienced a merciful divine appearance which had set the gospel at liberty in an unprecedented manner.

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Chapter 2 explained how Owen used his eschatological framework to interpret what he had identified to be providentially significant events during the Civil War and Interregnum. In the first instance, these were signs of divine favour towards the nation. Secondly, these signs vindicated the parliamentary cause, granting it a providential mandate. Furthermore, Owen believed that these remarkable events were evidence of an undeserved divine visitation of apocalyptic significance which would, eventually, bring about a complete transformation of church and state. He believed that the retributive justice, the ‘vengeance of the temple’, was falling on the enemies of the church and that a new era was dawning, in which the church itself was being ‘remeasured’ and returned to its primitive purity. Owen’s prophetic worldview was flexible enough to adapt to the twists and turns of changing circumstances (both political and religious); indeed, he constantly insisted that the transitional period leading up to this new age would be a turbulent one, full of startling ‘shaking’ and unexpected ‘alterations’. A purpose of his preaching was to articulate the cause of the English Parliament and the New Model Army, and Owen sought to do this by persuading his hearers and readers adopt his particular understanding of the times. Chapter 3 concerned the obligations Owen laid upon his hearers and readers to ‘improve’ such providential mercies. The divine favour shown to the nation placed great obligation upon the people to understand the times and to respond appropriately and he urged that this be done through a comprehensive godly reformation. For Owen, such obligations were informed by his eschatology and required a visible separation between the true and false churches. His preaching emphasised this by repeatedly making the distinction between two different types of religious thought and practice. We saw how Owen’s own response to these obligations is discernible in the programme of godly reform which he sought to implement in Cromwellian Oxford. The next two chapters examined the response which Owen required of magistrates to the providentially significant events the nation had witnessed. The important political dimension to Owen’s widespread use of the language of ‘interest’ in his sermons was highlighted. Once again, Owen’s particular eschatology proved determinative, in this case, helping to shape the role and specific priorities of the magistrate. He called magistrates to emulate the actions and attitudes of the magistrates which Scripture promised would lead the people out of Babylonian captivity and into the promised land of the church’s golden age. Owen used the apocalyptic trope of unravelling and untangling the ‘mystery of iniquity’ to describe how the magistrate must separate the civil and ecclesiastical powers and set them in their proper domains. It is important to recognise the significance of this idea, since Owen explicitly stated that he believed it to be the great discovery of his generation. For Owen, this work would require a new constitutional settlement from that of King, Lords and Commons and the extirpation of episcopacy. However, at no stage did Owen advocate what he would have conceived of as ‘revolutionary acts destructive of constituted authority’ (one

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of Wilson’s alleged hallmarks of the Independents’ apocalyptic preaching). Instead, in the tortuous quest for a constitutional settlement, Owen was always fearful of those who might destroy legitimate civil power, and instead he expected a change somewhat more akin to a ‘translation’, a ‘new moulding’ of government. Although generally ambivalent to particular political forms, he was hostile to royalism and to what he terms ‘carnal’ forms of government, such as classical republicanism. He called magistrates to engage in the specific reform of the law and provision for the poor, and even here, there is an eschatological element to his call. The reformation of law which he desired, embodied in William Sheppard’s proposals, was the appropriate response from those who desired the day of the Lord (Amos 5:18–24). The provision for the poor was reminiscent of the actions of Nehemiah towards those returning to the Promised Land from the time of Babylonian captivity. In matters of religion, from his first parliamentary sermon, Owen called for a magistrate-led reformation. Here once again, the motif of ‘unravelling’ was deployed in his description of how the magistracy and ministry might work together, having due mutual respect for the boundaries between their respective spheres. Although church power was to be separated from civil power, Owen believed that the magistrate was nonetheless called to see that the gospel was propagated and to take action against peace-disturbing, blasphemy and idolatry. Far from a retreat from a position he had previously espoused, this was part of a quest for what he saw as a broad, ‘middle-way’, religious settlement. We observed the important eschatological perspective on Owen’s call for a limited toleration for those who agreed on fundamentals. He believed that this had the potential to unite and protect all the godly during the transitional period before the church’s golden age, when such measures would be rendered obsolete. In the final chapter, we observed the third characteristic of prophetic preaching, namely Owen’s persistent warnings of the threat of judgment to a nation which he believed had been consistently negligent in its response. Although such warnings are present in his preaching throughout the period, they are particularly obvious later in the Protectorate and this suggests that the cycle of favour, obligation and negligence had gone full circle. Owen interpreted the sins and backsliding which he observed according to their place within his eschatological timeframe as part of the approaching apocalyptic ‘hour of temptation’. Similarly, the tokens of wrath which he identified were spoken of using striking motifs such as the healing waters of Ezekiel’s temple being dried up, the candlestick of the church being removed, and the unfruitful tree being cut down and burned. The chapter explored several persuasive ends for which these warnings were deployed. In the first place, they added urgency to his calls for reformation and strengthened his cause by calling into question the true identity of those who evidenced signs of compromise. The chapter also showed that Owen’s preaching attached such importance to the faithful remnant as, in the end, to encourage in his hearers a willingness to sacrifice the existing rule of law for the sake of achieving his goals.

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As suggested in the introduction, this analysis of Owen’s preaching challenges some of the conclusions of Wilson’s Pulpit in Parliament and Liu’s Discord in Zion. In the first place, it questions Wilson’s distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic preaching in which Congregationalists like Owen were seen as practitioners of the apocalyptic style. As Howard Hotson had recently noted, much of the ‘torrent of literature’ produced in the later 1960s and during the 1970s on seventeenth-century English apocalypticism suffered from too ‘loose a definition of millenarianism’, thereby frustrating proper analysis.1 Wilson’s work, which appeared in 1969, fails to give an accurate description of the diversity of millenarianism. In this study, we have seen how a precise definition of Owen’s particular species of eschatology reveals how, for him, the prophetic and apocalyptic cannot be separated. Such an accurate definition of both these elements shows not just their conjunction, but the causal links which existed between his eschatology and his prophetic preaching. It was Owen’s eschatological framework which allowed him, as a prophet, to interpret the times. His eschatology added apocalyptic significance to the evidences of divine favour, helped to define the nature of the obligations upon the nation and its magistrates, and heightened the sense of doom associated with his warnings of negligence. Secondly, this analysis suggests that there is no evidence to support the claim that there was a fundamental shift in Owen’s eschatology during 1652–53. Instead, throughout the Civil War and Interregnum, there was a remarkable consistency to his framework. Of course, different circumstances led to varying emphases in his preaching, but there was no fundamental shift in position. In fact, an initial examination of his sermons from the Restoration period suggests that this was to remain his position for the rest of his preaching ministry. In the late 1670s, his reading of the ‘book of providence’ led him to believe that soon the ‘long contest between Babylon and the church would have its issue’.2 Near the end of his life, in 1680, he was certain that the time of the Man of Sin had been fixed ‘by days, and months, and years’. But, he cautioned, this was ‘not to satisfy our curiosity’, instead warning: ‘Take heed of computations. How woefully and wretchedly have we been mistaken by this’. Nevertheless, he asserted that God would ‘pour out all his judgments and plagues upon the antichristian world, until Antichristianism be destroyed and rooted out’.3 In an unpublished sermon from June 1682, Owen was still preaching about the imminent destruction of Babylon and the deliverance of the church.4 Thus, whilst Owen’s exact ‘computations’ about the application of biblical prophecy may have evolved or, at the very least, become more cautious, there is no evidence that his overall hermeneutical framework changed. The third claim to be challenged by this research is Liu’s assertion that the Cromwellian church settlement, in which Owen had an instrumental role, represented a ‘great retreat from the eschatological precepts which [the Congregationalists] had cherished in the early years of the Puritan Revolution’. Rather, throughout the period 1646–59, we have seen Owen championing

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what he believed to be a broad-based, magistrate-led religious settlement for those agreed in the fundamentals of Reformed Orthodoxy. As Hunter Powell has recently shown, this had its roots in the Aldermanbury Accord between the Congregationalists and some of the moderate English Presbyterians in the early 1640s.5 Of course, Liu was not the first to claim that this was an area in which Owen compromised his earlier commitments, for in 1659, the Quaker ‘Thomas Truthsbye’ thought Owen ‘odious’ because of the way in which he could ‘sordidly comply with every Government’ and ‘pray and teach to every Faction’.6 Later, George Vernon would mock Owen for having ‘a Conscience that would allwayes bend and Crouch to Cromwells designs’.7 However, a potentially more straightforward explanation is that Owen was willing to submit pragmatically to the changing political situations which providence brought about, whilst all the time working towards his desired religious settlement. Fourthly, and relatedly, rather than the supposed abandonment of millenarianism in 1653 leading to a retreat from a radical agenda, we have seen that some of what might be thought of as Owen’s most radical political views find expression in 1656–59. Such a conclusion contrasts with the model suggested by Liu. Within Owen’s eschatological framework, the faithful remnant was determinative of the nation’s future. He attached such significance to this remnant as to justify irregular means and the use of extraordinary powers in order to preserve their interests. This allowed him to justify the purge of the Second Protectorate Parliament and the actions of the Army in 1659. Owen was prepared to sacrifice previously established legal norms and customs and to see the army use extraordinary power for the sake of achieving his goals for this remnant. Thus, Liu is mistaken in his claim that Owen and those like him turned away from a radical religious agenda.8 This conclusion makes some allegations of bellicosity levelled at Owen in 1659–61 a degree more plausible. For example, Ludlow recorded that Owen and Nye ‘entered into a private treaty with the principal persons of the Wallingford House party, and offered to raise a hundred thousand pounds for the use of the army, upon assurance of being protected by them in the full enjoyment of their respective advantages and profits’.9 Similarly, a report circulated in the aftermath of Thomas Venner’s uprising which drew attention to the arms cache discovered in Owen’s Oxfordshire home. In what Owen believed to be an increasingly dire situation, such actions may reveal him heeding his own advice ‘to consider all wayes and means’ in order to ensure that ‘the Power of these Nations may be in succeeding seasons, devolved on men of the like spirit’.10 Assuming the analysis of Owen’s prophetic preaching contained in this study, the suggestion can be made that Owen’s preaching was authenticated rather than challenged by failure and disappointment. He had, after all, consistently warned of the possibility of coming judgment and had sounded the alarm with increasing frequency during the final years of the Protectorate, as he warned of England’s increasingly precarious position. Even when he

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was an influential insider, Owen had assumed the position of the alienated prophet, continually warning about the dangers of backsliding, the importance of the remnant and how a time of trial would precede the ultimate victory. When his cause collapsed in December 1659, it may be that Owen’s position as a leading voice among dissenters was actually enhanced.11 After all, Owen had all but prophesied that this would happen. In other words, given his warnings about of the threat of judgment to a nation which, he had argued, was consistently negligent in its response, the ‘experience of defeat’ actually confirmed the very ideas which would be used to make sense of it. In a sermon from 1672, Owen described how the ‘public minister of the church’ may be spoken of ‘as a prophet’ whose task was to explain God’s ‘special design’ towards the church in the ‘calamities’ and ‘devastation’ brought upon church and nation.12 The most significant conclusion of this analysis is that Owen cannot be treated as an abstracted academic theologian. He self-identifies as a prophet speaking in momentous times and it had been demonstrated that Owen’s prophetic worldview decisively shaped what he wanted to communicate to his audience. Given the constant influence of this worldview, even his theological treatises cannot be divorced from this perspective. His works of practical theology, such as Temptation, undoubtedly fit within this prophetic scheme, as for Owen, the prophetic is intensely pastorally relevant.13 Owen cannot be properly understood without taking his prophetic preaching, and the eschatology which was an integral part of it, seriously into consideration. This is challenging for two reasons. First, apart from a few notable exceptions, most of the pertinent works on midseventeenth-century English millenarianism belong to an inadequate and out-dated historiographical tradition. Secondly, a number of modern studies of Owen, while commendably seeking to bring aspects of his theology to bear upon current issues within the Christian church (either theological or practical), inevitably must frame the discussion around contemporary, rather than early-modern, theological categories. One of the potential dangers associated with this is that in works less attuned to the historical context, some aspects of Owen’s theology, such as his understanding of the times, might be dismissed as relatively unimportant. Thus, this study seeks to redress the balance with its insistence that whilst Owen was undoubtedly, as the title of Carl Trueman’s monograph puts it, a Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man, he was equally a prophetic preacher, urging upon his hearers and readers how to respond to what he believed to be a unique moment in the eschatological drama.

Notes 1 Howard Hotson, ‘Anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism, Apocalypticism, and Millenarianism: A Case Study and Some Methodological Reflections’, in Alister Chapman, et al., eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 93–5.

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2 Owen, ‘Discourse XIII’, A Complete Collection of Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1721), [ix.401]. 3 Owen, ‘Sermon XII’ (7 May 1680), in Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions: By the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1756), 199, 226 [ix.506, 510]. 4 Owen, ‘A Sermon on Isa. 45:11’ (30 June 1682), DWL, MSS L6/1. 5 Hunter Powell, ‘October 1643: The Dissenting Brethren and the Proton Dektikon’, in Michael A.G. Haykin and Mark Jones, eds., Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2011), 60. 6 Correspondence, 117; Toon suggests the author may have been Thomas Taylor. 7 George Vernon, A Letter to a Friend Concerning Some of Dr. Owens Principles and Practices (1670), 27. 8 Tai Liu, Discord in Zion: The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution 1640– 1660 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 121. 9 Ludlow, ii.161. 10 Owen, God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity; with Their Speciall Interest in Abiding with Him (1656), 25 [viii.445]. 11 Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 290, notes that ‘Puritans thrived on failure’. 12 Owen, ‘Faith’s Answer to Divine Reproofs’ (5 January 1672), in Works, xvii.508–9, 511. 13 The introduction to the otherwise very thorough modern edition of Owen’s pastoral writings, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, ed., Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), does not acknowledge the prophetic dimensions of these works.

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Manuscript sources Dr Williams’s library, London MSS L6/1 (Letters and a sermon of John Owen transcribed by Sir John Hartopp). MSS L6/3 (Sermons of John Owen transcribed by Sir John Hartopp). MSS L6/4 (Sermons of John Owen, David Clarkson, et al. transcribed by Sir John Hartopp).

Printed primary sources Works of John Owen Θεομαχία αυτεξουσιαστικη: Or, a Display of Arminianisme (1643). The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished (1643). A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646). Eben-ezer, a Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee (1648). A Discourse about Toleration, and the Duty of the Civill Magistrate (1649). A Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31 (1649). Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (1649). The Branch of the Lord, the Beauty of Sion: Or, the Glory of the Church (Edinburgh, 1650). Of the Death of Christ, the Price He Paid (1650). The Stedfastness of Promises, and the Sinfulness of Staggering (1650). The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ, in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World (1652). The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest (1652). God’s Presence with a People, the Spring of Their Prosperity (1656). God’s Work in Founding Zion (Oxford, 1656). Of the Mortification of Sinne in Believers (Oxford, 1656). Of Temptation the Nature and Power of It (Oxford, 1658). The Glory and Interest of Nations Professing the Gospel (1659). A Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen (1721).

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Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions: By the Reverend and Learned John Owen, D.D. (1756).

Modern editions of Owen’s works Biblical Theology: The History of Theology from Adam to Christ, ed. and trans. Stephen P. Westcott (Grand Rapids, 2009). Communion with the Triune God, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, 2007). The Correspondence of John Owen (1616–1683), with an Account of His Life and Work, ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge, 1970). Overcoming Sin and Temptation, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, 2006). The Oxford Orations of Dr. John Owen, ed. and trans. Peter Toon (Callington, 1971). The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 24 vols. (Edinburgh, 1850–62).

Other primary sources A Declaration of the Faith and Order Owned and Practised in the Congregational Churches in England (1658). A Declaration of the Officers of the Army, Inviting Members of the Long Parliament to Return to the Exercise and Discharge of Their Trust (6 May 1659). A Glimpse of Sions Glory, or, the Churches Beautie Specified (1641). A Letter from Utercht, to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster: Shewing the Conversion of Church-Lands to Lay-Uses, to Be Condemned (1648). Alsted, Johann Heinrich, The Beloved City or, the Saints Reign on Earth a Thousand Yeares, trans. William Burton (1643). A New Confession of Faith, or the First Principles of the Christian Religion (1654). Annotations upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament, ed. Thomas Gataker, et al. (1645). Archer, John, The Personall Reign of Christ upon Earth: In a Treatise Wherin Is . . . Proved, That Jesus Christ, Together with the Saints, Shall Visibly Possesse a Monarchicall State and Kingdome in This World (1642). Asty, John, ‘Memoirs of the Life of John Owen’, in John Asty, ed., A Complete Collection of the Sermons of the Reverend and Learned John Owen (London, 1721), i–xxxviii. A Testimony of the Ministers in the Province of Essex, to the Trueth of Jesus Christ, and to the Solemn League and Covenant; as also against the Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of These Times, and the Toleration of Them (1648). A True Copy of a Letter from Divers Ministers about Colchester in the County of Essex, to the Assembly of Divines, Against a Toleration . . . March 7 1645 (1646). Baillie, Robert, A Dissuasive from the Errours of the Time: Wherein the Tenets of the Principall Sects, Especially of the Independents, Are Drawn Together (1645). Baillie, Robert, Ladensivm Autokatakrisis, the Canterbvrians Self-Conviction, or, an Evident Demonstration of the Avowed Arminianisme, Poperie and Tyrannie of That Faction (1641). Barker, Matthew, A Christian Standing & Moving upon the True Foundation (1648).

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Barker, Matthew, The Faithful and Wise Servant Discovered in a Sermon Preached to the Parliament . . . at Their Late Private Fast in the Parliament House, Jan. 9, 1656 (1657). Barlow, Thomas, Several Miscellaneous and Weighty Cases of Conscience Learnedly and Judiciously Resolved (1692). Baxter, Richard, Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, or, Mr. Richard Baxter’s Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of His Life and Times Faithfully Publish’d from His Own Original Manuscript by Matthew Sylvester (1696). Bilson, Thomas, The True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (Oxford, 1585). Bridge, William, A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons at Their Publique Fast, Novemb. 29, 1643 (1643). Bridge, William, Twenty One Several Books of Mr. William Bridge . . . Collected into Two Volums (1657). Bridge, William, The Works of William Bridge, Sometime Fellow of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge: Now Preacher of the Word of God at Yarmouth, 3 vols. (1649). Brightman, Thomas, The Workes of That Famous, Reverend, and Learned Divine, Mr. Tho: Brightman viz. a Revelation of the Apocalyps . . . Whereunto Is Added, a Most Comfortable Exposition of the Last and Most Difficult Part of the Prophesie of Daniel . . . Together with a Commentary on the Whole Book of Canticles, or Song of Salomon (1644). Brooks, Thomas, Heaven on Earth (1654). Brooks, Thomas, The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized, Impeached, Arraigned, and Condemned Before the Parliament of England . . . upon Their Last Thanksgiving Day, Being the 8th of October. 1650 (1650). Brooks, Thomas, The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, or, Meat for Strong Men and Milke for Babes Held Forth in Twenty-Two Sermons from Ephesians III, VIII (1655). Burroughes, Jeremiah, An Exposition of the Prophesie of Hosea: Begun in Divers Lectures upon the First Three Chapters (1643). Burroughes, Jeremiah, An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued upon the Eighth, Ninth, & Tenth Chapters of the Prophesy of Hosea Being First Delivered in Several Lectures at Michaels Cornhil, London (1650). Burroughes, Jeremiah, An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued upon the Eleventh, Twelfth, & Thirteenth Chapters of the Prophesy of Hosea (1651). Burroughes, Jeremiah, An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued upon the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of the Prophesy of Hosea (1650). Burroughes, Jeremiah, A Sermon Preached before the Honorable House of Commons Assembled in Parliament, at Their Late Solemn Fast, August 26 1646 (1646). Burroughes, Jeremiah, A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Peeres, in the Abbey at Westminster, the 26 of Novemb. 1645 (1646). Burroughes, Jeremiah, A Vindication of Mr Burroughes, against Mr Edwards His Foule Aspersions, in His Spreading Gangraena, and His Angry Antiapologia: Concluding with a Briefs Declaration What the Independents Would Have (1646). Burroughes, Jeremiah, The Excellency of Holy Courage in Evil Times (1661). Burroughes, Jeremiah, The Glorious Name of God (1643). Burroughes, Jeremiah, Gospel-Conversation (1648). Burroughes, Jeremiah, Gospel-Worship, or, the Right Manner of Sanctifying the Name of God in General: And Particularly in These Three Great Ordinances, viz. 1. Hearing the Word, 2. Receiving the Lords Supper, 3. Prayer (1648).

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Burroughes, Jeremiah, Irenicum, to the Lovers of Truth and Peace: Heart-Divisions Opened in the Causes and Evils of Them (1645). Burroughes, Jeremiah, Jacobs Seed, or, the Generation of Seekers: And Davids Delight, or, the Excellent on Earth (1648). Burroughes, Jeremiah, The Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Books of Mr Jeremiah Burroughs: Containing Three Treatises: I. of Precious Faith: II. of Hope: III. the Saints Walk by Faith on Earth, by Sight in Heaven: Being the Last Sermons That the Author Preached (1655). Burroughes, Jeremiah, The Saints Happinesse (1660). Burroughes, Jeremiah, Sions Joy, a Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons . . . September 7, 1641: For the Peace Concluded Between England and Scotland (1641). Burroughes, Jeremiah, Two Treatises . . . the First of Early Mindedness . . . the Second Treatise of Conversing in Heaven and Walking with God (1649). Calamy, Edmund, The Great Danger of Covenant-Refusing, and Covenant-Breaking: Presented in a Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable Thomas Adams Lord Mayor . . . Jan. 14 1645: Upon Which Day the Solemne League and Covenant was Renued (1646). Canne, John, The Time of the End: Shewing First, Until the Three Years and an Half Are Come . . . the Prophecies of the Scripture Will Not Be understood, Concerning the Duration and Period of the Fourth Monarchy and Kingdom of the Beast: Then Secondly, When That Time Shall Come . . . the Knowledge of the End . . . Will Be Revealed, by the Rise of a Little Horn, the Last Apostacy, and the Beast Slaying the Witnesses (1657). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-One Chapters of the Book of Job (1653). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Chapters of the Book of Job (1649). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Chapters of the Book of Job (1649). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Chapters of the Book of Job (1650). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued upon the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Chapters of the Booke of Job (1645). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Thirtieth and Thirty First Chapters of the Booke of Job (1659). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practical Observations Continued upon the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, Fortieth, Forty-First, and Forty-Second, Being the Five Last, Chapters of the Book of Job (1653). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Twenty-Second, Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fourth, Twenty-Fifth, and Twenty-Sixth Chapters of the Book of Job (1655). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Twenty-Seventh, the Twenty-Eighth, and Twenty-Ninth Chapters of the Booke of Job (1657). Caryl, Joseph, An Exposition with Practical Observations upon the Three First Chapters of the Book of Job (1643).

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Caryl, Joseph, The Arraignment of Unbelief, as the Grand Cause of Our Nationall Non-Establishment: Cleared in a Sermon to the Honourable House of Commons . . . 28th of May, 1645 (1645). Caryl, Joseph, Englands Plus Ultra, Both of Hoped Mercies, and of Required Duties: Shewed in a Sermon Preached to the Honourable Houses of Parliament, the Lord Major, Court of Aldermen, and Common-Councell of London: Together with the Assembly of Divines, at Christ-Church, April 2 1646: Being the Day of Their Publike Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the Great Successe of the Parliaments Army in the West (1646). Caryl, Joseph, Heaven and Earth Embracing; or, God and Man Approaching: Shewed in a Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons . . . January 28 1645 (1646). Caryl, Joseph, That Great Duty of Praising God: Preached to the Parliament at Westminster, October: 8 1656: Being the Day of Their Solemn Thanksgiving to God for That Late Successe Given to Some Part of the Fleet of This Common-Wealth against the Spanish Fleet in Its Return from the West Indies (1657). Certain Quaeres Humbly Presented in Way of Petition, by Many Christian People, Dispersed Abroad Throughout the County of Norfolk and City of Norwich, to the Serious and Grave Consideration and Debate of His Excellency the Lord General and of the General Councel of War (February 1649). Cheynell, Francis, Sions Memento and Gods Alarum: In a Sermon at Westminster, before the Honorable House of Commons on the 31 of May 1643 (1643). Clarke, Samuel, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in This Later Age (1683). Cokayn, George, Divine Astrologie, or, a Scripture Prognostication of the Sad Events Which Ordinarily Arise from the Good Mans Fall by Death . . . Jan. 19, 1657, at the Funerals of the Honourable Colonel William Underwood (1658). Cokayn, George, Flesh Expiring, and the Spirit Inspiring in the New Earth .  .  . Delivered in a Sermon before the Honorable House of Commons, Nov. 29 1648 (1648). Commissioners of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, A Solemn Testimony Against Toleration and the Present Proceedings of Sectaries and Their Abettors in England (Edinburgh, 1649). Cotton, John, A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles (1642). Cotton, John, An Exposition upon the Thirteenth Chapter of the Revelation (1656). Cotton, John, The Bloudy Tenent, Washed, and Made White in the Bloud of the Lambe (1647). Cotton, John, Certain Queries Tending to Accommodation and Communion of Presbyterian & Congregationall Churches (1654). Cotton, John, The Churches Resurrection, or, the Opening of the Fift and Sixt Verses of the 20th Chap. of the Revelation (1642). Cook, John, Monarchy No Creature of Gods Making, &c. Wherein Is Proved by Scripture and Reason, That Monarchial Government Is against the Mind of God, and That the Execution of the Late King Was One of the Fattest Sacrifices That Ever Queen Justice Had (1652). Cotton, John, The Powring Out of the Seven Vials: Or an Exposition, of the 16 Chapter of the Revelation, with an Application of It to Our Times (1642). Cook, John, Redintegratio Amoris, or, a Union of Hearts, between the Kings Most Excellent Majesty, the Right Honorable the Lords and Commons in Parliament,

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His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax, and the Army Under His Command; the Assembly, and Every Honest Man (1647). Cranford, James, Hæreseo-Machia: Or, the Mischiefe Which Heresies Doe (1646). Cromwell, Oliver, A Declaration of His Highness, Inviting the People of England and Wales to a Day of Solemn Fasting and Humiliation (March 1656). Cromwell, Oliver, A Declaration of His Highness the Lord Protector and His Parliament for a Day of Solemn Fasting and Humiliation (September 1656). Cromwell, Oliver, A Declaration of His Highnesse the Lord Protector for a Day of Publick Thanksgiving (1658). Cromwell, Oliver, A Declaration of His Highness, with the Advice of His Council, Inviting the People of This Commonwealth to a Day of Solemn Fasting and Humiliation (November 1655). Cromwell, Oliver, Several Letters and Passages between His Excellency, the Lord General Cromwel and the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and the Ministers There, Since His Excellencies Entrance into Edinburgh (1650). Durham, James, A Commentarie upon the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh, 1658). Durie, John, Israels Call to March Out of Babylon unto Jerusalem Opened in a Sermon before the Honourable House of Commons Assembled in Parliament, Novemb. 26 1645 (1646). Edwards, Thomas, The First and Second Part of Gangræna, or, a Catalogue and Discovery of Many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of This Time, Vented and Acted in England in These Four Last Yeers (1646). Fairclough, Samuel, The Prisoners Praises for Their Deliverance from the Long Imprisonment in Colchester: On a Day of Publique Thanksgiving Set Apart for That Purpose by the Gentlemen of the Committee of Essex . . . Preached at Rumford Septemb. 28 1648 (1650). Ferne, Henry, A Compendious Discourse upon the Case, as It Stands between the Church of England and of Rome on the One Hand, and again between the Same Church of England and Those Congregations Which Have Divided from It on the Other Hand (1655). Foxe, John, Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days Touching Matters of the Church, Wherein Are Comprehended and Described the Great Persecutions & Horrible Troubles, That Have Bene Wrought and Practised by the Romishe Prelates (1563). Gale, Theophilus, The True Idea of Jansenisme (1669). Gee, Edward, A Plea for Non-Scribers: Or, the Grounds and Reasons of Many Ministers in Cheshire, Lancashire and the Parts Adjoyning for Their Refusall of the Late Engagement (1650). Gillespie, George, Wholesome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty, or, the True Resolution of a Present Controversie Concerning Liberty of Conscience . . . and in Conclusion a Parænetick to the Five Apologists for Choosing Accommodation Rather Than Toleration (1645). Goodwin, Thomas, The Great Interest of States & Kingdomes: A Sermon Preached before the Honorable House of Commons, at Their Late Solemne fast, Feb. 25 1645 (1646). Goodwin, Thomas, The Returne of Prayers: A Treatise, Wherein This Case [How to Discerne Gods Answer to Our Prayers] Is Briefly Resolved: With Other Observations upon Psalm 85.8 Concerning Gods Speaking Peace (1643).

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Goodwin, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, D.D. Sometime President of Magdalen Colledg in Oxford, 5 vols. (1681–1704). Goodwin, Thomas, Zerubbabels Encouragement to Finish the Temple, a Sermon Preached Before the Honourable House of Commons . . . Apr. 27, 1642 (1642). Goodwin, Thomas, et al., An Apologeticall Narration, Humbly Submitted to the Honourable Houses of Parliament: By Tho: Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jer: Burroughes, William Bridge (1643). Goodwin, Thomas, et al., The Principles of Faith Presented by Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sydrach Simson, and Other Ministers; to the Committee of Parliament for Religion, by Way of Explanation to the Proposals for Propagating of the Gospel (1654). Greenhill, William, An Exposition Continued upon the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1651). Greenhill, William, An Exposition Continued upon the Sixt, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1649). Greenhill, William, An Exposition Continued upon the XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1658). Greenhill, William, An Exposition of the Five First Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1645). Greenhill, William, The Exposition Continued upon the Nineteen Last Chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel (1662). Greenhill, William, Sermons of Christ, His Last Discovery of Himself of the Spirit and Bride, the Waters of Life, and, His Free Invitation of Sinners of Come and Drink of Them: From Revel. 22. 16, 17 (1656). Grey, Zachary, An Impartial Examination of the Third Volume of Mr. Daniel Neal’s History of the Puritans (1737). Hall, Joseph, Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience in Continuall Use Amongst Men Very Necessary for Their Information and Direction (1649). Hall, Joseph, The Revelation Unrevealed Concerning the Thousand-Yeares Reigne of the Saints with Christ upon Earth: Laying Forth the Weak Grounds, and Strange Consequences of That Plausible, and Too-Much Received Opinion (1650). Hall, Thomas, Chiliasto-Mastix Redivivus, Sive Homesus Enervatus: A Confutation of the Millenarian Opinion, Plainly Demonstrating That Christ Will Not Reign Visibly and Personally on Earth with the Saints (1657). Hammond, Henry, Of Resisting the Lawfull Magistrate Under Colour of Religion (Oxford, 1644). Hayne, Thomas, Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, Opened According to the Scriptures: Herein Is Examined What Mr. Th. Brightman, Dr. J. Alstede, Mr. J. Mede, Mr. H. Archer, the Glympse of Sions Glory, and Such as Concurre in Opinion with Them, Hold Concerning the Thousand Years of the Saints Reign with Christ (1645). Heylyn, Peter, A Coale from the Altar, or an Answer to a Letter Not Long Since Written to the Vicar of Gr: Against the Placing of the Communion Table at the East End of the Chancell; and Now of Late Dispersed Abroad to the Disturbance of the Church (1636). Hooker, Thomas, The Danger of Desertion, or, a Farwell Sermon . . . Preached Immediately before His Departure out of England (1641).

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Prynne, William, The Popish Royall Favourite: Or, a Full Discovery of His Majesties Extraordinary Favours to, and Protections of Notorious Papists, Priestes, Jesuites, Against All Prosecutions and Penalties of the Laws Enacted against Them (1643). Prynne, William, Romes Master-Peece: Or, the Grand Conspiracy of the Pope and His Jesuited Instruments to Extirpate the Protestant Religion, Re-Establish Popery, Subvert Lawes, Liberties, Peace, Parliaments (1643). Rohan, Henri, duc de, A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome Written in French by the Duke of Rohan; Englished by H.H. (1641). Rous, Francis, The Ancient Bounds, or Liberty of Conscience Tenderly Stated, Modestly Asserted, and Mildly Vindicated (1645). Rowe, John, Mans Duty in Magnifying Gods Work (1656). Rushworth, John, ‘Historical Collections: The Trial of William Laud’, in John Rushworth, ed., Historical Collections of Private Passages of State: Vol. 3: 1639–40 (London, 1692), 1365–81. Saltmarsh, John, A Solemn Discourse upon the Grand Covenant, Opening the Divinity and Policy of It (1643). Sedgwick, Obadiah, Elisha His Lamentation, upon the Suddain Translation of Elijah: Opened in a Sermon at the Funeral of Mr. William Strong (1654). Several Letters from the Parliament and General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to the Houses of Parliament of England, the Lord Mayor and Common Council of London and the Assembly of Divines at Westminster (1646). Sheppard, William, Englands Balme: Or, Proposals by Way of Grievance & Remedy . . . Towards the Regulation of the Law, and Better Administration of Justice (1656). Sheppard, William, The Offices of Constables, Church-Wardens, Overseers of the Poor (1652). Sleidanus, Johannes, A Famouse Cronicle of Oure Time, Called Sleidanes Commentaries . . . Translated Out of Latin into Englishe (1560). The Souldiers Pocket Bible: Containing the Most (If Not All) Those Places Contained in Holy Scripture, Which Doe Shew the Qualifications of His Inner Man, That Is a Fit Souldier to Fight the Lords Battels (1643). The Speeches and Prayers of Some of the Late King’s Judges (1660). Strong, William, A Voice from Heaven, Calling the People of God to a Perfect Separation from Mystical Babylon as It Was Delivered in a Sermon at Pauls before the Right Honourable the Lord Major and Aldermen of the City of London, on Novem. 5, 1653 (1654). Strong, William, Higay’on Selah, the Commemoration and Exaltation of Mercy . . . Novemb. 5 1646 (1646). Strong, William, Jesus Christ Gods Shepherd, and the Man Gods Fellow, on Zach. 13. 7 with His Ananeosis, or, The Two Sticks Made One, on Ezek. 37. 19 (1658). Strong, William, The Trust and the Account of a Steward, Laid Open in a Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons . . . 28 of April 1647 (1647). Strong, William, The Vengeance of the Temple: Discovered in a Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Major . . . May 17 1648: Being the Day of Publique Thanksgiving for a Victory Obtayned by the Forces Under the Command of Colonell Horton, at St. Faggons, Neere Cardiffe in Wales (1648). Strong, William, XXXI Select Sermons, Preached on Special Occasions (1656). Taylor, Jeremy, Collection of Offices, or, Forms of Prayer in Cases Ordinary and Extraordinary (1657).

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Unpublished dissertations Bradley, Rosemary Diane, ‘“Jacob and Esau Struggling in the Wombe”: A Study of Presbyterian and Independent Religious Conflicts, 1640–1648’, PhD Thesis, University of Kent (1975). Cook, Sarah Gibbard, ‘A Political Biography of a Religious Independent: John Owen, 1616–1683’, PhD Thesis, Harvard University (1972). Halcomb, Joel, ‘A Social History of Congregational Religious Practice during the Puritan Revolution’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2010). Knapp, Henry M., ‘Understanding the Mind of God: John Owen and SeventeenthCentury Exegetical Methodology’, PhD Thesis, Calvin Theological Seminary (2002). Lawrence, Thomas Michael, ‘Transmission and Transformation: Thomas Goodwin and the Puritan Project, 1600–1704’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2002). Leggett, Donald, ‘John Owen as Religious Advisor to Oliver Cromwell, 1649–1659’, MPhil Thesis, University of Cambridge (2006). Powell, Hunter, ‘The Dissenting Brethren and the Power of the Keys 1640–44’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2011). Powell, Hunter, ‘The Last Confession: A Background Study of The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order’, MPhil Thesis, University of Cambridge (2008). Van Dixhoorn, Chad, ‘Reforming the Reformation: Theological Debate at the Westminster Assembly 1642–1652’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (2004). Vernon, Elliot C., ‘The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during the English Revolution’, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge (1999). Williams, Lloyd Gwynn, ‘Digitus Dei: God and Nation in the Thought of John Owen: A Study in English Puritanism and Nonconformity, 1653–1683’, PhD Thesis, Drew University (1981).

Index

Alsted, Johann Heinrich 17, 32n73 Archer, John 15 Arminianism 23–4, 54 Army: chaplains 2, 58, 84, 102, 126; in England 40–1, 58; in Ireland 39–40, 58; and parliament 57–8, 60, 98, 111, 156, 169; religion 140; in Scotland 41, 59 astrology 71, 87 Baillie, Robert 21, 125 Barker, Matthew 100, 117n37, 124, 175n73 Baxter, Richard 80–1, 83, 99, 169 Bellarmine, Robert 10, 12, 29n14, 30n37, 141 Best, Paul 132 Bilson, Thomas 108 Binning, Hugh 126 blasphemy 123, 130–2, 134, 138, 142, 144 Book of Common Prayer 77, 91n72, 91n90, 92n105 Bradshaw, John 105 Bradwardine, Thomas 80, 92n118 Bridge, William 2, 17, 43, 64n75, 64n77 Brightman, Thomas 17, 28n3, 29n14 Brooks, Thomas 168 Bullinger, Heinrich 125 Burroughes, Jeremiah: eschatology 17, 19, 52–3; exile 25, 43; providence 38, 62n38, 70, 88n17; religio-political settlement 124, 126, 130, 139, 145n3, 151n127; see also Dissenting Brethren Burton, Thomas 111 Calvin, John 125, 140 Cambridge Platform (1648) 127, 129, 134, 136, 144

Caryl, Joseph: eschatology 116n15, 151n137; Job 115n1, 122n156; parliamentary preaching 106, 121n152, 139; providence 70–1, 88n7, 121n152, 156; see also Dissenting Brethren Casuistry 83–4 Charles I, King 39, 101, 107–9; Civil Wars 58, 74, 159; pre-Civil War 21–3, 25–6; see also regicide Charles II, King 55, 100, 155 Christmas 12, 78, 81 Civil War, First 27, 40, 54, 69, 81, 88n17; see also Marston Moor and Naseby Civil War, Second 39, 44, 48, 58, 97, 102, 107, 127, 159, 164; see also Colchester and Preston Coggeshall 40, 74–5 Colchester 2, 38–42, 44–5, 48, 58, 73, 127 Collins, Samuel 22–3, 34n113 Committee for the Propagation of the Gospel 123–4, 134–6, 138–9, 143 Communion with God (1657) 75, 77, 103, 105 Conant, John 157 Congregationalism 2–4, 18, 50–1, 73–5, 89n43, 128, 131 Cook, John 100, 175n92 Cosin, John 21, 77–8 Cotton, John 23, 145n9, 89n46; conformity 23, 25; eschatology 11, 14–15, 28n3, 31n62–3, 54, 64n95, 148n60; toleration 47, 63n61, 124, 131, 138 Council of State 1, 103, 105, 168 Court of High Commission 25–6, 36n144, 43, 125 Cromwell, Henry 156, 173n35

216

Index

Cromwell, Oliver 15, 106–7, 137, 173n35; eschatology 65n114, 31n63; and Owen 1, 66n136, 81, 104, 126, 156–7; providence 28–41, 58–9, 161 Cromwell, Richard 132, 156–7 Davenport, Christopher 21–2 Dee, Francis 22–3 Diggers 102–3 Display of Arminianisme (1643) 24, 54 Dissenting Brethren 2, 23, 138, 144 Downing, Sir George 107 Dunbar, battle of 38, 41, 58–9, 112, 126 Durie, John 98 Duty of Pastors (1643) 16, 24 Eben-ezer (1648) 42, 58 Edwards, Thomas 46, 139, 151n127 Engagement Controversy 59, 81, 94n144, 105, 110, 155, 172n21 episcopacy 14, 21, 26, 100–02, 114, 123, 179 Erastianism 125, 127–8 Erbery, William 132 eschatology: apocalyptic shaking 37, 54–7, 60, 65n108, 73, 75–6, 96, 101, 108, 179; beast 9, 11–12, 14, 49, 70, 96; futurism 9–10, 29n14; latter day glory 5, 16–18, 26–7, 53–4, 56, 86, 160, 178; measuring of the temple 50, 54, 60, 72–3, 179; millenarianism 3–4, 16–18, 26–7, 32n7, 104, 160, 170, 178, 181–3; new heavens and earth 5, 44, 51–2, 54–7, 60, 72; papal antichrist 8–20, 26, 50, 56, 70, 80, 99–102, 124, 127, 141, 143, 178, 181; preterism 9–10, 57; vials of wrath 13–15, 26, 31n62, 64n95, 131; western nations 4–5, 8–9, 13, 18, 26–7, 48, 96, 100, 107, 178; whore of Babylon 9, 48, 52, 96, 100 Eshcol (1648) 74 Everard, William 103 Fairclough, Samuel 44–5, 48 Feake, Christopher 104, 142 Fifth Monarchism 4–5, 15–16, 27, 32n72, 104, 112, 142, 178 Fisher, Edward 78 Fleetwood, Charles 111, 167; see also Major-Generals Foxe, John 10, 13, 16, 23, 29n17 France 11–13, 30n31 Fulgentius of Ruspe 79

Gauden, John 77 Gentles, Ian 38, 41 Gildas 10, 159 Gillespie, George 141 Gillespie, Patrick 58, 106, 155–6 God’s Presence with a People (1656) 42, 65n108 Goodwin, John 128–9, 136, 140, 147n50 Goodwin, Thomas 2; conformity 23, 91n72, 93n137; Congregationalism 50, 98; eschatology 8, 11–12, 14, 16, 31n62, 54, 104; preaching 63n66, 103, 176n94; providence 48, 56, 65n109; religio-political settlement 63n66, 64n77, 98, 132, 135, 137–8, 173n35; see also Dissenting Brethren Greenhill, William 2, 52, 126 Grotius, Hugo 9, 81, 83 Hall, Joseph 84 Hammond, Henry 9, 77–8, 81, 83 Harrison, Thomas 143 Hayne, Thomas 10, 29n12 Henri, duc de Rohan 98 Hesilrige, Sir Arthur 105, 169 Heresy 54, 60, 63n61, 80–1, 130–1, 133–4, 138–9, 141, 144 Hewitt, John 162 Heylyn, Peter 22, 24, 77 Hooker, Thomas 26 Humble Petition and Advice (1657) 106, 111, 137, 144, 156 The Humble Proposals (1652) 135–6 idolatry: Babylonian 19; judgment of 25, 158; Laudian 20–1, 26, 178; magistrate’s response to 123, 131–4, 142, 144, 180; pagan 13, 18–20, 51, 102 Instrument of Government (1653) 105–7, 137 interest theory 98–9 Ireland: Cromwellian conquest of 39–40, 49, 58, 61n12, 68–9, 71, 126, 166; Cromwellian settlement of 155–6; evangelisation of 18, 58, 81, 132, 134–5; pre-Commonwealth 39, 49, 100 Ireton, Henry: funeral of 2, 71, 104, 119n81, 133, 135–6, 160; Irish campaign 40; religio-political views 71, 87, 105, 119n85, 128, 146n29, 154, 163

Index Islam 110, 133; see also Ottoman Empire Israelite paradigm 20, 27, 158, 170, 178 Jaffrey, Alexander 59, 126, 156, 163, 176n94 Jeremiad 158, 170 Jews 9–10, 15–16, 18, 56–7, 68 Johnson, Archibald 38, 137 Josselin, Ralph 73, 82, 113, 160 Kelsey, Thomas 168, 177n131; see also Major-Generals Lambert, John 105, 132, 137 Laud, Archbishop William 14, 21–5 Laudianism: altar controversy 21–4, 78–9, 133–4; enforcement of conformity 17, 25, 53, 125; Owen’s critique of 5, 14, 21, 23–7, 48, 123, 133, 170, 178; resurgent 46, 77–8, 82, 140 legal reform 95, 112–13, 115, 157 Levellers 2, 39, 41, 102–3, 110, 113–14, 128, 132, 166 Lilburne, Robert 59 Lilly, William 71 Liu, Tai 4, 175n85, 178, 181–2 Lockyer, Nicholas 51, 59 London Common Council 125 Long, Thomas 76–7 Love, Christopher 75 Ludlow, Edmund 182 Luther, Martin 23, 57, 66n129, 140 magistracy: eschatological role of 5, 96–7, 102–3, 109, 179; godly examples 68, 87, 115n1, 129, 136; response to providence 71, 95–7; reform programme 5, 98–99, 111–15, 180; role in religious matters 97, 123–45, 182; temptations faced by 154, 157, 169 Major-Generals 82, 143, 161, 168, 177n131 Manton, Thomas 106, 119n104 Marston Moor, battle of 41, 44 Mede, Joseph 4, 8, 17, 47 Milton, John 59, 117n44, 128, 136 monarchy: arguments regarding restoration of 107–8, 129; Biblical 61n10, 107, 119n105; in history 10, 107; Stuart 55, 101 Monck, George 169 Mortification (1656) 81–4, 164

217

Nalton, James 46, 63n57, 139 Naseby, battle of 41, 44, 139 Nayler, James 107, 137 Nedham, Marchamont 98–100, 109, 136 Netherlands 13, 17, 25, 36n148, 43, 166 Nye, Philip 43, 118n60, 128, 135, 138, 156, 182; conformity 23, 91n72; eschatology 16, 104; parliamentary preaching 106; see also Dissenting Brethren Ottoman Empire 15 Oxford: Christ Church 1, 69, 77, 81–2, 86; Cromwellian 5, 68, 80–7, 157, 165, 179; Laudian 24, 26, 82; St Mary’s Church 75, 81, 86, 157 Parker, Samuel 17, 37, 49, 99 Parliament: Barebones (Nominated Assembly) 4, 16, 59, 104, 136–7, 169; Long (1640–48, 1658–60) 107, 111, 162, 165; Protectorate, first (1654–55) 97, 137; Protectorate, second (1656–58) 56, 70, 97, 105–6, 142, 167–8, 182; Rump (1648–49) 44, 99, 102, 105, 109–13, 132, 135–6, 140, 144, 165, 169 plague 139, 141 Pocklington, John 22 Poor laws 95, 112–13, 115, 180 Potter, Christopher 24 preaching: corruption of 48, 83–5; prophetic 1–3, 5–6, 37, 42, 44, 51, 54–5, 57–60, 73, 82, 95, 163–6, 169–70, 178–83 Presbyterianism: English 59, 73, 75, 81, 125, 137, 157; eschatology 46–7, 75; polity 51, 125, 139–40; religiopolitical settlement 48–9, 100, 110, 113, 119n104, 126, 128, 139–40, 144, 167, 182; Scottish 64n86, 126; Ulster 58, 156; views of toleration 45–6, 139–42 Preston, battle of 39, 41, 44, 58 Pride’s Purge 96, 167 providence: identification and interpretation of 18, 37–45, 47, 57–60, 158, 181–2; improving providence 70–2, 81, 86–7; magistrate’s response to 99, 109–111, 114, 128, 154 Providential Alterations (1651) 55

218

Index

Providential Changes 105–6, 165 Prynne, William 14

Steele, William 156, 172n24 Strong, William 32n78, 48, 50, 61n18, 89n43, 148n60, 174n65

Quakers 107, 111, 137–8, 144, 182 Racovian Catechism (1652) 81, 133 Ranters 132, 148n72 regicide 43, 59, 66n136, 96, 100, 107–9 republicanism 99, 105, 108–9, 111, 114, 169, 180 Reynolds, Edward 81 royalism 9, 39–41, 58, 81, 97, 109, 111, 162, 166 Rutherford, Samuel 58, 90n54, 125, 151n135 Sabbath observance 22, 48, 82, 112 Saltmarsh, John 102 Sanderson, Robert 83–4 Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658) 18, 26, 98, 127, 132, 138, 144, 178 Scotland: Clergy 21, 58, 106, 126, 141; Cromwellian invasion of 2, 38, 41, 51, 58–9, 126; defeat of 68–9, 75, 166; pre-civil war 100; Protectorate era 155; Reformation era 13, 142; Resolutioners 94n144, 106, 155, 167; see also Solemn League and Covenant Scot, Thomas 105, 169 sects 45–6, 54, 60, 123, 130, 132–3, 136 Sharp, James 167 Sheppard, William 112–13, 115, 157, 180 Simpson, John 142; see also Fifth Monarchism Simpson, Sidrach 2, 16, 43, 104, 135; see also Dissenting Brethren Sindercombe’s plot 106 Sleiden, Johann 13, 57 Socinianism 80–1, 137–8, 144; see also Racovian Catechism Solemn League and Covenant (1643) 45, 48, 73, 105, 127, 142, 155, 172n21 Spain 11, 13, 15, 31n63, 42, 65n114, 69, 80, 122n152, 160–2 Spiritual Barrenness (c. 1658) 161–2 Star Chamber 43 Stedfastness of the Promises (1650) 69, 154

Taylor, Jeremy 77–8, 83 Temptation (1658) 157–8, 161, 163–4, 170, 183 Thurloe, John 106, 173n35 toleration: calls for wider 47, 136, 140; Owen’s proposals for 130–1, 136–42, 144, 147n56, 152n151, 180; presbyterian views 46, 63n59, 127, 139–41, 150n120 Treaty of Newport 101, 117n56, 167 triers and ejectors 137–8, 155 Udall, Ephraim 101 Ulster 39, 58, 156 Vane, Henry 128, 136 Vernon, George 74, 108, 110, 113, 144, 169, 172n21, 182 Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy (1646) 46, 52, 57, 69 Waldensians 13, 140 Wales 38, 123, 135, 143 Walker, Clement 110 Walking Humbly With God 84–5, 165 Wallingford House, London 111, 166–7, 169, 182 Ward, Nathaniel 101 Ward, Samuel 26 Ward, Seth 85 Warren, John 55, 175n73 Webster, Tom 23 Western Design 15, 161 West Indies 15, 31n63 Westminster Assembly 125, 139 Whitehall debates 128, 140, 147n50 Whitelocke, Bulstrode 58 Wilkins, John 82, 85–6 Williams, John 22–3 Williams, Roger 31n63, 47, 63n61, 128–9, 136, 140, 147n50 Wilson, John F. 3–4, 7n19, 170, 180–1 Winstanley, Gerrard 103 Winter, Samuel 156 Wood, Anthony à 37, 108 Woolrych, Austin 110, 126, 156, 167–8 Worcester, battle of 44, 49, 69, 75, 100, 109, 112, 166

Index Worden, Blair 57–8, 75, 98, 136, 144 worship: corruption of 11, 13, 19, 21, 26, 48, 50, 76–7, 78–9; enforced conformity 19, 25, 48, 73; fixed liturgies 77–8; restoration of 17, 37, 49–51, 54, 56, 72, 74–82, 86–7, 91n75; see also Book of Common

219

Prayer; magistracy’s role in religious matters; preaching; and Sabbath observance Worth, Edward 156 Wren, Matthew 25, 151n127 Zanchi, Jerome 17