HIS PASTORATE. XXXIII
lous ministers, Owen was invited by the same committee to occupy the vacant parish. Not long after his removal to Fordham, he was married to a lady of the name of Rooke. But nearly all the information that has descended to us regarding this union, from the earlier bio- graphies, amounts to this, — that the lady bore to him eleven children, all of whom, except one daughter, died in early youth. This only daughter became the wife of a Welsh gentleman; but the union jiroving unhappy, she " returned to her kindred and to her father's house," and soon after died of consumption.
This period of Owen's early pastorate appears to have been one of the happiest of his life. Fordham is a secluded village, overhanging the fertile and pleasing valley of the Stour, which divides Suffolk from Essex. Its inhabitants, at the present day, number about seven hundred ; but in the days of Owen they could not have been by any means so numerous. In this retreat, and surrounded by a not very dense rural population,^ he was allowed to pursue in peace the quiet duties of a country parish, and knew nothing as yet of those more public and distracting responsibilities which he ever undertook with reluc- tance, and which he appears to have usually renounced with satisfac- tion. The spiritual interests of the parish having been neglected by his predecessor, he set himself with earnest system to break up the fallow ground, and to preach those truths which had still to his mind all the freshness of first love. The good Puritan practice of visiting and catechising from house to house gave him a large place in the affections of his people, as well as revealed to him the measure of their Christian intelligence ; while his solid preaching soon gathered around him the inhabitants of his own parish, and even allured multitudes across the borders of the neighbouring parishes to listen to his weighty words. Like Baxter at Kiddemiinster, he was ere long cheered by witnessing one of those wide-spread and enduring reformations which have never followed on any agency save the earnest preaching of '*' Christ crucified."
The productions of his pen at this period indicate the current of his thoughts, and the liveliness of his evangehc zeal. The first of these is entitled, " The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished," and was published in 1643. Its main design is to " describe the means to be
' We are indebted for this information regarding the first scene of Owen's ministry to the Itev. Alexander Anderson, pastor of a Baptist Cliurch, Col- chester; who also informs ns that the signature of Owen is still to be seen in the parochial register at Fordham (four miles distant), and that it has this pecu- liarity attached to it, that whilst all preceding it, and also succeeding, so far as he continued his examination, sign themselves " Parson," the usual designation of the time, his signature has the word " Pastor" invariably attached to it; showing that he deliberately, and from the first, " preferred the more scriptural term of 'pastor,' to the presuming designation of parson, more especially if we accept its common derivation, ' Persona ecclesiae.' "
XXXIV LIFE OF DR OWEN.
used by the people of God, distinct from church officers, for the in- creasing of divine knowledge in themselves and others," and to show how " the sacred calling may retain its ancient dignity, though the people of God be not deprived of their Christian liberty/'"-^ It bears internal evidence of having been drawn from him by the unscriptural assumptions of those ecclesiastics who sought to place their interdict on every thing like the agency of private members in the church, though there are particular passages aimed at those fiery persons who sought to introdiice into the church the spirit of a wild democracy, and whose mode of making " all the Lord's people prophets," was to dispense with the inestimable benefits of a stated ministry. As it is the earliest, so it is one of the most useful of Owen's smaller treatises, and is remarkable for its skilful harmonizing of authority with liberty. How much of his axiomatic sagacity there is in the following sentence : " Truth revealed to any, carries with it an immovable persuasion of conscience that it ought to be published and spoken to others ! "^ And how much of wise restraint and rebuke in this: " Let not them who despise a faithful, painful minister in public, flatter themselves with hope of a blessing in private. Let them pretend what they "vvill, they have not equal respect unto all God's ordinances!"^ If Bur- net's " Pastoral Care" and Baxter's " Reformed Pastor" may be named as the guides and counsellors of the ministers of that age, tliis tractate might well have been placed beside them as the hand-book of the people.*
We still trace the signs of the busy pastor in his next publication, which is entitled, " The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ Unfolded, in Two Short Catechisms;" the first being intended for young persons, the second for adults, and as an aid to parents in domestic instruction. We are reminded, as we look on the stalworth Puritan, who is soon to mingle in the great theological discussions of the day, thus pre- paring " milk for babes," of Johnson's admiring sentence on Isaac Watts: "Providing instruction for all ages, from those who were lisping theu' first lessons, to the enlightened readers of Malebranche and Locke." ^