Owen's work is a noble illustration of the Gospel method of sanc- tification, as we believe it to be a living reflection of his own experi- ence. In his polemical works he was like the lecturer on the materia medica; but here he is the skilful physician, applying the medicine to the cure of soul-sickness. And it is interesting to find the ample evidence which this work affords, that, amid the din of theological controversy, the engrossing and perplexing activities of a high public station, and the chilling damps of a university, he was yet living near ' Preface, p. 69. 2 Preface.
HIS VICE-CHANCELLORSHIP. LXV
God, and, like Jacob amid the stones of the wilderness, maintaining secret intercourse with the eternal and invisible.
To the affairs of Oxford we must now return for a little. In the midst of his multifarious public engagements, and the toils of a most ponderous authorship, Owen's thoughts had never been turned from the university, and his efforts for its improvement, encouraged by the Protector and his council, as well as by the co-operation of the heads of colleges, had been rewarded by a surprising prosperity. Few things, indeed, are more interesting than to look into the records of Oxford at this period, as they have been preserved by Anthony Wood and others, and to mark the constellation of great names among its fellows and students ; some of whom were already in the height of their renown, and others, with a strangely varied destiny awaitmg them, were brightening into a fame which was to shed its lustre on the coming age. The presiding mind at this period was Owen him- self, who, from the combined influence of station and character, ob- tained from all around him willing deference;^ while associated with him in close friendship, in frequent conference, and learned research, which was gradually embodied in many folios, was Thomas Goodwin, the president of Magdalen College. Stephen Chamock had already carried many honours, and given token of that Saxon vigour of intel- lect and ripe devotion which were afterwards to take shape in his noble treatise on the " Divine Attributes." Dr Pocock sat in the chair of Arabic, unrivalled as an Orientalist; and Dr Seth Ward taught mathematics, already noted as an astronomer, and hereafter to be less honourably noted as so supple a tune-server, that, " amid all the changes of the times he never broke his bones." Robert Boyle had fled hither, seeking in its tranquil shades opportunity for undisturbed philosophic studies, and finding in all nature food for prayer; and one more tall and stately than the rest might be seen now amid the shady walks of Magdalen College, musing on the " Blessedness of the Righteous," and now in the recesses of its libraries, " unsphering the spirit of Plato," and amassing that learning and excogitating that divine philosophy which were soon to be transfigured and immortal- ized in his " Living Temple." Daniel Whitby, the acute annotator on the New Testament, and the ablest champion of Arminianism, now adorned the roll of Oxford, — Christopher Wren, whose architec- tural genius has reared its own monument in the greatest of Eng- land's cathedrals, — William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and the father of the gentlest and most benignant of all our Christian sects, — John Locke, the founder of the greatest school of English metaphysics, to whom was to belong the high honour of basing tole-
* " He was reckoned the brightest ornament of the university in his time." — Dr Calamy.
LXVI LIFE OF DR OWEN.
ration on the principles of philosophy, — William South, the pulpit- satu'ist, whom we alternately admire for his brawny intellect and matchless style, and despise for their prostration to the lowest pur- poses of party, — Thomas Ken, the future bishop of Bath and Wells, whose holiness drew forth the willing homage of the Puritans, and whose conscientiousness as a nonjuror was long after to be proved by his sufferings in the Tower, — Philip Henry, now passing to the little conference of praying students, and now receiving from Dr Owen praises which only make him humbler, already delighting in those happy alliterations and fine conceits which were to be gathered from his lips by his admiring son, and embalmed in the transparent amber of that son's immortal Commentary, — and Joseph Alleine, who, in his " Alarm to the Unconverted," was to produce a work which the church of God will not willingly let die, and was to display the spirit of a martyr amid the approaching cruelties of the Restoration, and the deserted hearths and silent churches of St Bartholomew's
Day.^
But events were beginning to transpire in the political world which were to bring Owen's tenure of the vice-chancellorship to a speedy close. He had hitherto befriended Cromwell in all his great mea- sures, with the strong conviction that the liberties and general inte- rests of the nation were bound up with his supremacy. He had even, on occasion of the risings of the Royalists under Colonel Penruddock in the west, busied himself in securing the attachment of the univer- sity, and in raising a troop of horse for the defence of the county, until one of his Royalist revilers, enraged at his infectious zeal, de- scribed him as " riding up and down like a spiritual Abaddon, with white powder in his hair and black in his pocket."^ But when a majority of the Parliament proposed to bestow upon Cromwell the crown and title of king, and when the Protector was evidently not averse to the entreaties of his Parliament, Owen began to suspect the workings of an ambition which, if not checked, would introduce a new tyranny, and place in jeopardy those liberties which so much had been done and suffered to secure. He therefore joined with Colonel Desborough, Fleetwood, and the majority of the army, in opposing these movements, and even drew up the petition which is known to have defeated the measure, and constrained Cromwell to decline the perilous honour.*