' A*t f, p- xx'x- Xoncsn, Mem,, L 202, ' Jeukjo'e Eesa/ on life of Bajuer, p, zx. VOL. L G
XCII LIFE OF DR OWEX.
left comparatively unmolested, — probably owing to the influences we have specified ; and it is interesting to learn from an adversary with what zeal and constancy he employed his advantages to warn and succour the oppressed. " Witness his fishing out the king's coun- sels, and inquiring whether things went well to his great Diana, liberty of conscience? — how his majesty stood affected to it? — whe- ther he would connive at it and the execution of the laws against it? — who were or could be made his friends at court? — what bills were like to be put up in Parliament? — how that assembly was united or divided? And according to the disposition of affairs he did acquaint his under officers; and they, by their letters each post, were to inform their fraternity in each corner of the kingdom how things were likely to go with them, how they should order their business, and either for a time omit or continue theh conventicles."^ Surely this was being able to find nothing against him, except as concerning the law of his God.
There was no sufferer in whose behalf Owen exerted his influence more earnestly than John Bunyan. It is well known that, as a preacher, Bunyan excited, wherever he went, an interest not surpassed even by the ministry of Baxter. When he preached in barns or on commons, he gathered eager thousands around him; and when he came to London, twelve hundred people would be found gathered together at seven on the dark morning of a winter working-day, to hear him expound the Word of God. Among these admiring multi- tudes Owen had often been discovered; — the most learned of the Puritans hung for hours, that seemed like moments, upon the lips of this untutored genius. The king is reported to have asked Owen, on one occasion, how a learned man like him could go " to hear a tinker prate;" to which the great theologian answered, " May it please your majesty, could I possess the tinker's abilities for preaching, I would willingly relinquish all my learning."^ For some years Bunyan's confinement in the prison of Bedford had, through the kindness of his good jailer, been attended with many mitigations; but towards the latter pa,rt of it, its severities had been greatly increased, and Owen used every effort to engage the interest of his old friend and tutor, Dr Barlow, for his release. Some of the details of this matter have been questioned by South e}', and its date is uncertain ; but the leading facts seem above reasonable suspicion, and it is pleasing to know, that after some perplexing delay, Owen's interposition was successful m obtain- ing Bunyan's enlargement.^
During these chequered and anxious years, Owen's untiring pen
' Letter to a Friend, p. 34. Orme, p. 274.
^ Hamilton's Life of Bunyan, p. xxix.
' Asty, p. XXX. Southey's Life of Bunyan, p. Ixiv.
I
HIS RETIREMENT AND LAST DAYS. XCIII
had been as active as ever. In 1669 he had published "A brief Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity ; as also, of the Person and Satisfaction of Christ;" a little treatise, containing the condensed sub- stance of his great controversial work against Biddle and the Conti- nental Socinians, — the " Vindicise Evangelicse." There was wisdom in thus supplying the chiurch with a less controversial manual on those vital questions. Many of Owen's larger works remind us of some ancient castle, with its embrasures and port-holes, admirably fitting it for the purpo.ses of defence, but in the same degree render- ing it unsuitable as a peaceful habitation. In little more than forty years after Owen's death, this little work had passed through seven editions.^ In 1672 he had published "A Discourse concerning Evan- gelical Love, Church Peace and Unity," etc. ; a work combining en- larged and generous sentiment with wise discrimination, and in which Owen enters at great length into the question respecting the occasional attendance of Nonconformists on the parish churches, — a question which found him and Baxter once more ranged on opposite sides.
And there were other works whose origin dates from this period, in which we can trace the faithful watchman, anxiously descrying the coming danger, or seeking to rear bulwarks against the already swelling tide. Two of these were precious fragments broken off from his great work on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and enlarged to meet present exigencies. The first was his " Treatise on the Sabbath;" in which he joined with Baxter, and all the other great writers among the Puritans, in seeking to preserve this precious fence, which the goodness of God has drawn around the vineyard of his church, and which he found assailed on the one hand by fanatics, who denounced it as a mere ceremonial and carnal observance, and by the more nume- rous and noisy disciples of the " Book of Sports," who hated it for its spirituality. The reader will be struck with the contrast between the Puritan Sabbath, as it is depicted in its staid and solemn cheer- fulness by a Puritan divine, and as he often beholds it caricatured by the modem popular writer; and as he finds Owen arguing with the same classes of antagonists, and answering the same argximents and objections as are rife at the present day, he will be disposed to sub- scribe to the theory, that errors have their orbits in which they move, and that their return may be calculated at a given juncture. The other work of this class to which we refer was, " The Nature and Punishment of Apostasy Declared, in an Exposition of Hebrews vi. 4-6."^ It was emphatically a book for the times ; when the multi-