In 1657 he published one of his best devotional treatises, — " Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, each Person distinctly, in Love, Grace, Consolation, etc." It forms the substance of a series of sermons preached by him at Oxford during his vice-chan- cellorship, and is another evidence of his " close walk with God " dur- ing the excitements and engagements of that high official position. There is, no doubt, some truth in the remark, that he carries out the idea of distinct communion between the believer and each of the per- sons of the Godhead to an extent for which there is no scriptural pre- cedent ; and this arises from another habit, observable in some degree even in this devotional composition, — that of making the particu- lar subject on which he treats the centre around which he gathers all the great truths of the Gospel ; but, when these deductions have been made, what a rich treasure is this work of Owen's ! He leads us by green pastures and still waters, and lays open the exhaustless springs of the Christian's hidden life with Christ in God. It is easy to understand how some parts of it should have been unintelligible, and should even have appeared incoherent to persons whose creed was nothing more than an outward badge ; and therefore we are not sur- prised that it should have provoked the scoffing remarks of a Rational ecclesiastic twenty years afterwards;^ but to one who possesses even a faint measure of spiritual life, we know few exercises more cangenial or salutary than its perusal. It is like passing from the dusty and beaten path into a garden fuU of the most fragrant flowers, from which you return still bearing about your person some parts of its odours, that reveal where you have been. And those who read the book with somewhat of this spiritual susceptibility, will sympathize with the
1 Dr Sherlock, in a treatise entitlec], " A Discourse concerning the Knowledge of Jesus Christ, and our Union and Communion with Him," etc., 1674. To wliich Owen replied in " A Vindication of some Passages concerning Communion with (lod, from the Exceptions of William Sherlock, Rector of St George's, Buttolph Lane." The controversy drew a considerable number of other combatants into the field, and appears to have been protracted tiirough a series of years. — Wood's Athen. Oxon., iv. 105, 106.
HIS RETIREMENT AND LAST DAYS. LXXIII
glowing words of Daniel Burgess regarding it : " Alphonsus, king of Spain, is said to have found food and physic in reading Livy ; and Ferdinand, king of Sicily, in reading Quintus Curtius; — but thou hast here nobler entertainment, vastly richer dainties, incomparably more sovereign medicines: I had almost said, the very highest of angel's food is here set before thee ; and, as Pliny speaks, ' Permista deliciis auxilia,' — things that minister unto grace and comfort, to holy life and liveliness.",^
In the same year Owen was engaged in an important and pro- tracted controversy on the subject of schism, which drew forth from him a succession of publications, and exposed him to the assaults of many adversaries. Foster has sarcastically remarked on the great convenience of having a number of words that will answer the pur- poses of ridicule or reprobation, without having any precise meaning attached to them ;^ and the use that has commonly been made of the obnoxious tenn, " Schism," is an illustration in point. Dominant reli- gious parties have ever been ready to hurl this hideous weapon at those who have separated from them, from whatever cause ; and the phrase has derived its chief power to injure from its vagueness. The Church of Rome has flung it at the Churches of the Reformation, and the Reformed Churches that stand at different degrees of distance from Rome, have been too ready to cast it at each other. Owen and his friends now began to feel the injurious effects of this, in the frequent application of the term to themselves; and he was induced, in con- sequence, to write on the subject, with the view especially of distin- guishing between the scriptural and the ecclesiastical use of the term, and, by simply defining it, to deprive it of its mischievous power. This led to his treatise, " Of Schism ; the true nature of it discovered, and considered with reference to the present differences in religion : " in which he shows that schism, as described in Scripture, consists in " causeless differences and contentions amongst the members of a particular church, contrary to that love, prudence, and forbearance, which are required of them to be exercised among themselves, and towards one another."^ From this two consequences followed; — that separation from any church was not in its own nature schism ; and that those churches which, by their corruption or tyranny, ren- dered separation necessary, were the true schismatics: so that, as Vincent Alsop wittily remarked, " He that undertakes to play this great gun, had need to be very careful and spunge it well, lest it fire at home."^ It is one of Dr Owen's best controversial treatises, being
' Preface to the reader. ^ Essay on the application of the epithet Romantic.
5 Owen's Works, xix. 1Z2, 133, Russell's edition.
* Melius Inquireud., p. 209. Orme, p. 199. Wood's description of Alsop makes one suspect that he had smarted from his M'it : " A Nonconformirig minister, wIki, since the death of their famous A. Marvell, hath been quibbler aud puniierin ordi-